Welcome, Rich. Some people are confused about the whole concept of hard skills vs. soft skills. How would you define these two categories?
有些人對于硬技能和軟技巧有些困惑，我們怎么劃分這兩種類型的能力？
First of all, I might not have chosen those labels, but that’s what everybody uses. When I think about hard skills on the product management side, they tend to be skills that are transactional and easily measured. So, we write user stories, we pull data down to check usage, we do business cases. These things are more factual. They’re more data- and content-driven. In some sense, they are process recipes. You can’t be a product manager without doing that stuff.
首先我可能不會選擇這兩個很多人會用的標簽。當我考慮產(chǎn)品管理上的硬技能時，就是那些交易或者易于衡量的技能。比如說我們寫用戶故事，我們記錄使用數(shù)據(jù)，我們做商業(yè)案例，這些事情比較實在。同時更多是數(shù)據(jù)或者內(nèi)容驅(qū)動的。某種角度這些都是過程的收據(jù)。這些事情不做你不會是一個產(chǎn)品經(jīng)理。
Soft skills are all about the interpersonal stuff, the people skills. They’re a little more subjective and emotion-based. They tend to be very situation-specific or situation-dependent. It’s how we communicate with different kinds of people, how we manage stakeholders. It’s networking, leadership, and how we show ownership for our stuff. It’s how we generate emotional support and love among our developers so that they really care about our users and products.
軟技能都是關(guān)于人際關(guān)系的東西，人際關(guān)系的技能。它們更多的是主觀的和基于情感的。它們往往是非常特定的情況或情況依賴性。它是我們?nèi)绾闻c不同類型的人溝通，如何管理利益相關(guān)者。這是網(wǎng)絡(luò)，領(lǐng)導(dǎo)力，以及我們?nèi)绾物@示我們的東西的所有權(quán)。軟技巧是我們?nèi)绾卧谖覀兊拈_發(fā)者中產(chǎn)生情感上的支持和愛，使他們真正關(guān)心我們的用戶和產(chǎn)品的東西。
Soft skills are all about the interpersonal stuff, the people skills. They’re a little more subjective and emotion-based. They tend to be very situation-specific or situation-dependent.
軟技能都是關(guān)于人際關(guān)系的東西，人際關(guān)系的技能。它們更多的是主觀的和基于情感的。它們往往是非常特定的情況或情況依賴性。
Those are all really important skills, but they’re hard to quantify. The higher people move up in an organization, the closer they get to the executive suite, the more critical those soft skills become. I’m able to delegate most of the transactional tasks back to the product management team.
這些都是非常重要的技能，但它們很難量化。在一個組織中，人們越是往上走，越是接近頂層位置，這些軟技能就越是關(guān)鍵。管理者可以將大部分事務(wù)性工作放回產(chǎn)品管理團隊。
You mentioned earlier that you might have chosen a different name than soft skills. Why is that?
你剛才提到，你可能選擇了一個與軟技巧不同的名字。為什么會這樣呢？
The term soft skills is sort of pejorative, right? Sometimes we say EQ – you know, emotional quotient. But when we call them soft skills, it sounds like they’re optional or not important – and that’s entirely contrary to almost everything I’ve experienced and helped with over the last couple of decades.
軟技巧這個詞有點貶義，對吧？有時我們會說EQ--你知道，情商。但當我們稱它們?yōu)檐浖寄軙r，聽起來就像它們是可有可無的，或者不重要--這與過去幾十年來我所經(jīng)歷和幫助的幾乎所有事情完全相反。
“When we call them soft skills, it sounds like they’re optional or not important – and that’s entirely contrary to almost everything I’ve experienced and helped with over the last couple of decades.”
'當我們稱它們?yōu)檐浖寄軙r，這聽起來像是可有可無或不重要--而這與過去幾十年來我所經(jīng)歷和幫助的幾乎所有事情完全相反。'
As far back as 1918, research funded by the Carnegie Institute of Technology found that 85% of job success was down to interpersonal skills. Why do you think we’re still struggling with this topic?
早在1918年，由卡內(nèi)基理工學(xué)院資助的研究就發(fā)現(xiàn)，85%的工作成功都歸結(jié)于人際交往能力。為什么你認為我們還在為這個話題而苦惱？
Everywhere I go in the world, I find that there are two tribes in almost every technology company. There’s the maker side – the developers, designers, and product managers – the folks who are heads down, putting stuff together. Then there’s the go-to-market side. And there’s a huge communications gap between those folks, with different styles of discussion and exposition, different ways of arguing.
無論我走到哪里，我發(fā)現(xiàn)幾乎每家科技公司都有兩個部落。一種是制造者--開發(fā)人員、設(shè)計師和產(chǎn)品經(jīng)理--他們低頭把東西組裝在一起。還有就是走向市場的一方。而這兩撥人之間存在著巨大的溝通差距，有不同的討論和論述風(fēng)格，不同的爭論方式。
For people who have come through the engineering side, particularly those who studied technology in school, the classes are all about getting to the right answer. Often, they’re solo projects or problem sets. Engineering and business schools are now emphasizing a lot more group work and collaboration, which is really important. But if I grew up thinking that the way to succeed is by getting the best answer in the class and having the teacher give me a gold star – none of that helps me understand how to work with the rest of the people in my company.
對于工科出身的人來說，尤其是在學(xué)校學(xué)技術(shù)的人，上課都是為了得到正確的答案。往往都是單獨的項目或問題集?，F(xiàn)在工程學(xué)院和商學(xué)院都強調(diào)更多的小組工作和合作，這真的很重要。但是，如果我從小就認為成功的方法就是在課堂上得到最好的答案，讓老師給我一顆星--這些都不能幫助我理解如何與公司里的其他人合作。
“If I grew up thinking that the way to succeed is by getting the best answer in the class and having the teacher give me a gold star – none of that helps me understand how to work with the rest of the people in my company.”
'如果我從小就認為，成功的方式就是在班上得到最好的答案，讓老師給我一顆金星--這些都不能幫助我理解如何與公司里其他的人合作。'
So some of it is down to education. But also, we all want to think of the world as full of people like us. The part of the world that loves Slack believes that everybody should be on Slack, and the part of the world that hates Slack and doesn’t want anything to do with it thinks those other folks are bizarre. And it’s not that one is better. It’s that we have to understand that we’re going to reach across the aisle a lot, and we’re going to work with people who are not like us.
所以，有些是歸結(jié)于教育。但同時，我們也都希望認為這個世界上充滿了和我們一樣的人。世界上喜歡Slack的那部分人認為每個人都應(yīng)該在Slack上，而討厭Slack、不想和它有任何關(guān)系的那部分人則認為其他那些人都很奇怪。而這并不是說哪個更好。而是我們要明白，我們要經(jīng)常去接觸對面的人，我們要和那些和我們不一樣的人合作。
Go back to Myers Briggs, or go back to Dale Carnegie’s famous book, How to Make Friends and Influence People. This problem isn’t new, but somehow it’s not strongly emphasized on the way up.
回到邁爾斯-布里格斯，或者回到戴爾-卡耐基的名著《如何交朋友和影響別人》。這個問題并不新鮮，但不知為何在成長路上沒有強烈強調(diào)。
Rich and his administrative assistant.
Yeah, I recently moved from a product-centric role to a consulting role, which has given me a completely different perspective on things like customer success, for example.
是的，我最近從一個以產(chǎn)品為中心的角色轉(zhuǎn)到了一個咨詢的角色，這讓我對客戶成功等事情有了完全不同的看法。
Yeah, it’s really important when you’re in the product seat, and you’re sitting down with somebody in customer success, to deeply understand how they’re motivated and what they care about.
是的，當你在產(chǎn)品的位置上，和大客戶銷售人員坐在一起時，深入了解他們的動機和他們關(guān)心的事情是非常重要的。
Customer success folks, particularly in the enterprise world, are often attached to a couple of big accounts. They see the world through those big accounts – what they want must be the most important thing in the universe. And they don’t understand why people over on the product side keep asking how many more customers are going to use the feature other than just those three huge ones.
成功獲得客戶人士，尤其是在企業(yè)界，通常都是和幾個大客戶聯(lián)系在一起的。他們通過這些大客戶來看待世界--他們想要的東西一定是宇宙中最重要的東西。而他們不理解為什么產(chǎn)品那邊的人一直在問，除了那三個大客戶，還有多少客戶會使用這個功能。
They don’t understand the sense of urgency. And when we put the product hat on, it’s vital that we respect and honor their viewpoint, even though, for the most part, we’re not going to give them what they want.
他們不明白這種緊迫感。而當我們戴上產(chǎn)品的帽子時，至關(guān)重要的是，我們要尊重和尊重他們的觀點，即使在大多數(shù)情況下，我們不會給他們想要的東西。
In the book Product Management in Practice by Matt LeMay, he notes that many PMs get hired based on hard skills that have little to do with the day-to-day work that they will be expected to perform. Why do you think this pattern exists?
在馬特-勒梅（Matt LeMay）所著的《實踐中的產(chǎn)品管理》一書中，他指出，許多PM是基于硬技能而被聘用的，而這些硬技能與他們將被期望執(zhí)行的日常工作關(guān)系不大。你認為為什么會存在這種情況？
I think the first things inexperienced PMs learn are those easily observable, easily quantifiable, transaction-style skills, like how to write a user story. I think we start at the bottom with those hard skills.
我認為，沒有經(jīng)驗的PM首先學(xué)習(xí)的是那些容易觀察到的、容易量化的、事務(wù)式的技能，比如如何編寫用戶故事。我認為我們從最底層開始學(xué)習(xí)這些硬技能。
Also, HR always wants some checklist or rubric where they can say, “Oh, you can get promoted to the next level if you’re doing more than four customer interviews a month and all your tickets are in on time.” You know, something that’s observable.
另外，HR總是想要一些檢查表或評判標準，在那里他們可以說：'哦，如果你每個月做了四個以上的客戶訪談，并且所有的票據(jù)都能按時送達，你就可以晉升到下一個級別。' 你知道，一些是可觀察的指標。
Unfortunately, that’s not what turns a junior product manager into a senior product manager. Instead, it’s judgment, strategic insight, the ability to move along all the stakeholders. So I see the focus on hard skills as the default either for people who don’t really understand how product adds value or who need something to put on a scoresheet.
不幸的是，這并不是把一個初級產(chǎn)品經(jīng)理變成高級產(chǎn)品經(jīng)理的原因。而是判斷力、戰(zhàn)略洞察力、調(diào)動所有利益相關(guān)者的能力。所以，我認為那些不真正理解產(chǎn)品如何增加價值的人，那些需要在成績單上寫點什么的人對硬技能的關(guān)注是默認的。
In the work you do with product leaders, how do you diagnose where they are on that spectrum or journey?
在你與產(chǎn)品領(lǐng)導(dǎo)者的交流中，你如何診斷他們在這個光譜或旅程中的位置？
I spend a lot of time talking with the people I coach about the different functional groups and how they’re motivated, measured, and rewarded. We talk a lot about trying to find the generosity in our hearts for the people who aren’t aligned with how we want to do things.
我花了很多時間和我指導(dǎo)的人討論不同的功能組，以及如何激勵、衡量和獎勵他們。我們經(jīng)常討論如何嘗試為那些與我們想做的事情路線不一致的人發(fā)現(xiàn)我們內(nèi)心的真誠。
So again, with customer success or sales teams, they want what they want. And my explanation for why they’re not going to get it doesn’t actually solve their problem. So there’s a lot of emphasis on negotiating skills. There’s a lot of game-playing and role-playing. It’s like, OK, for two minutes, pretend you’re my head of sales and act the way that your head of sales is acting.
所以同樣，對于客戶成功或銷售團隊，他們想要的是他們想要的。而對他們?yōu)槭裁吹貌坏侥硞€東西的解釋并不能解決他們的問題。有很多人強調(diào)談判技巧。比如說嘗試的角色扮演。就像，好吧，兩分鐘，假裝你是我的銷售主管，用你的銷售主管的方式來行事。
“I find that the hard skills, the transactional skills, are what most of the product leaders get and understand. But how do we deal with unreasonable CEOs who have a new request to put in the queue every two to four hours? We role-play it a couple of times so that we don’t get angry, and we don’t act out. We think about what the right responses are.”
'我發(fā)現(xiàn)，硬技能、交易技能，是大多數(shù)產(chǎn)品負責(zé)人都能理解和掌握的。但如何應(yīng)對不講理的CEO，每隔兩到四個小時就有一個新的需求放到需求隊列中？我們可以角色扮演幾遍讓我們自己不要生氣，或者不表現(xiàn)出來。我們會思考正確的應(yīng)對措施是什么。'
How can PMs shift their focus from hard skills and force themselves to spend more time and energy on soft skills?
PM們?nèi)绾螌⒅匦膹挠布寄苻D(zhuǎn)移到軟技能上，逼迫自己花更多的時間和精力？
Well, along the way, we don’t actually get to stop doing any of the other things. But I think that product managers should go out on the road and spend three days not speaking and just listening to how salespeople sell. On the one hand, you’ll get deep empathy. On the other hand, you may spot a whole bunch of things that you can do to help them sell better.
好吧，在這個過程中，我們其實并不能停止做任何其他的事情。但我認為，產(chǎn)品經(jīng)理應(yīng)該出去走走，花點時間不說話，只聽銷售人員如何銷售。一方面，你會得到深刻的共鳴。另一方面，你可能會發(fā)現(xiàn)一大堆可以幫助他們更好銷售的事情。
So when you observe those things and help in terms of positioning, fixing docs, or whatever, suddenly you have their attention and some of their goodwill. Whereas criticizing them for doing the wrong thing isn’t so successful.
所以，當你觀察到這些事情，并在定位、修改文檔等方面提供幫助時，突然間你就會得到他們的關(guān)注，也得到一些好感。但是如果你批評他們做的不對 ，則大概率得不到好的反饋。
I think it’s about going to different departments, shutting up, observing what they do, and pitching the roadmap in terms of value instead of deliverables. Nobody cares that we’re about to deliver version 6.35, code-named Scorpio. They care that we’re adding a bunch of new features that will let our customers integrate with some back-end finance systems that they’ve been screaming about.
我覺得就是要去不同的部門體驗，少說多看，觀察他們的工作，用價值而不是交付物來推銷產(chǎn)品路線圖。沒有人關(guān)心我們即將交付6.35版本，代號為天蝎座。他們關(guān)心的是，我們增加了一堆新功能，這些功能可以滿足他們一直嚷嚷的讓客戶與一些后端財務(wù)系統(tǒng)進行連接。
So when we’re dealing with the go-to-market side, we need to start by talking about benefits, customers who care, target segments, and little vignettes that when salespeople repeat them word for word, people are going to sign purchase orders. We’ve got to go out there and walk, if not a mile, then at least a few yards in their shoes.
所以，當我們在處理產(chǎn)品市場落地的問題時，我們需要從談?wù)摾?、關(guān)心的客戶、目標細分市場和其他細節(jié)開始，當銷售人員一字不漏地重復(fù)這些內(nèi)容時，人們就會簽署采購訂單。我們要走到市場前端接近用戶，即使不走一英里，至少也要穿上他們的鞋子走一小段。
You’ve been in the product world for a long time. I’m curious about your transition through this. Was there a lightbulb moment when you went, “Oh, that’s what it’s all about!” in relation to these soft skills?
你在產(chǎn)品領(lǐng)域已經(jīng)有很長一段時間了。我很好奇你在這其中的轉(zhuǎn)變。有沒有一個靈光乍現(xiàn)時刻？，'哦，這就是我要去關(guān)注的，這些與軟技能有關(guān)的點!'
Sure. I graduated with an MBA a long time ago, and I lasted about a year and a half in my first job, as did almost all of my MBA classmates, because we had this huge chip on our shoulders.
當然，我很早以前就拿到了MBA學(xué)位，我在第一份工作中堅持了一年半左右，幾乎所有的MBA同學(xué)都是如此，因為我們肩上有一個巨大的籌碼。
We’d spent two years reading cases that all started with the phrase, “You are the CEO of…” So when I went to my first job, which happened to be at a commercial bank, I came in swaggering. But I knew nothing. And people who’d been in the banking business for 20 years had to give me a talking to about reinstalling some humility.
我們花了兩年時間閱讀案例，所有的案例都是以 '你是... ...的CEO '開頭的。所以當我去找第一份工作的時候，恰好是在一家商業(yè)銀行，我什么都不懂就大搖大擺地進來了。那些在銀行工作了20年的人不得不給我講講如何重新建立謙遜的態(tài)度。
I didn’t stay there very long, but I was as impolite and offensive as anybody who comes out of business school. It took me a little while to relearn. It wasn’t until my third or fourth time as a Director of Product where it finally became clear that it wasn’t my job to convince everyone that they cared about product management, and that being the person who said no all day long wasn’t making me any friends.
我在那里呆的時間不長，但我和其他從商學(xué)院出來的人一樣，沒有禮貌和富有攻擊性。我花了一點時間重新學(xué)習(xí)。直到我第三次或第四次擔(dān)任產(chǎn)品總監(jiān)的時候，我才終于明白，我的工作不是說服所有人他們應(yīng)該關(guān)心產(chǎn)品管理，并且做一個整天說 '不 '的人不會讓我有任何朋友。
Do you have any similar examples where people you have worked with have shifted in their approach to product management?
有沒有一些你共事的人在產(chǎn)品管理方法上有大轉(zhuǎn)變的例子？
One thing I run into a lot is what Melissa Perri calls feature factories in her book, Escaping the Build Trap. I see a lot of the go-to-market side delivering demands in the form of mediocre-to-poor technical requirements that don’t work, don’t support the product, and aren’t strategic, but which somebody asked for. And the product side is told that they’re in charge of making engineering more productive, instead of building the right things.
我經(jīng)常遇到的一件事是Melissa Perri在她的書《逃離構(gòu)建陷阱》中所說的功能工廠。我看到很多走向市場的一方以平庸甚至低劣的技術(shù)來交付需求，這些需求沒什么價值，不能支持產(chǎn)品力，也不是戰(zhàn)略性的，但是有人要求這樣做。而產(chǎn)品方則被告知，他們負責(zé)讓工程師們產(chǎn)出更多，而不是構(gòu)建正確的東西。
That’s a vicious cycle where there’s no trust. So what I usually start with is a little analysis with the Head of Product where we look back a quarter or two and see what we actually spent our engineering hours on.
這是一個沒有信任的惡性循環(huán)。所以，我通常會先和產(chǎn)品負責(zé)人做一個小小的分析，讓我們回顧前一兩個季度，看看我們到底把工程人員時間花在了什么地方。
Perhaps we had an idea that we were spending a third of our energy on bug fixes, a third on features, and a third on scalability and infrastructure. But when we look at it, we find out that 20%, 30%, or even 50% of the work was on individual special requests for deals that didn’t close. That’s important because instead of going back to the other side of the house and saying, “You guys are dumb,” we bring back the list of interrupts.
也許我們有一個想法，我們把三分之一的精力花在錯誤修復(fù)上，三分之一花在功能上，三分之一花在可擴展性和基礎(chǔ)設(shè)施上。但是，當我們重新審視它時，我們會發(fā)現(xiàn)，20%、30%甚至50%的時間是花在甚至沒有完成個別特殊請求上。這一點很重要，因為我們會帶著中斷任務(wù)列表和需求方溝通而不是直接和他們說：'你們是一群蠢貨'。
So we can say, “Here are the names of the 18 most recent interrupts that weren’t in our roadmap for the quarter, and for which somebody applied enough political leverage to displace something that we had promised.”
所以我們可以說，'這是最近18個中斷的需求的名字，這些中斷需求其實不在我們季度的路線圖中，但是有人運用了足夠的政治影響力，取代了我們原先承諾給客戶的東西。'
That sets us up to have a grown-up trade-off discussion. We can say, “OK, we can do that next thing you’ve asked for. But here are the features we’re going to have to throw out this quarter as a result.” Instead of being the folks who always say no, we are the folks who bring hard choices forward.
這讓我們可以有更成熟的權(quán)衡討論。我們可以說，'好吧，我們可以做你要求的下一件事。但我們這個季度要因此而不得不扔掉某個其他功能。' 我們不是總是說 '不 '的人，而是提出艱難選擇的人。
This reminds me of a quote from George Bernard Shaw: “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it’s taken place.”
這讓我想起了蕭伯納的一句話：'溝通中最大的問題，就是溝通已經(jīng)發(fā)生的錯覺。'
That’s right. And the idea that I, as the head of product, am going to convince everybody else in the company to behave differently than they’re used to – it’s just backward.
這句話說的沒錯。作為產(chǎn)品負責(zé)人，要說服公司里的其他人，讓他們的行為與他們習(xí)慣的不同--這種想法實在是太落后了。
On the product side, we have to figure out how to communicate in ways that people can hear, appreciate, and understand. Otherwise, we’re wasting our time and energy. It isn’t useful to complain about how sales or marketing aren’t getting it.
在產(chǎn)品方面，我們必須想辦法用人們能夠聽懂、欣賞和理解的方式進行溝通。否則，我們就是在浪費時間和精力。抱怨銷售或營銷同仁什么都不懂是沒有用的。
“On the product side, we have to figure out how to communicate in ways that people can hear, appreciate, and understand. Otherwise, we’re wasting our time and energy. It isn’t useful to complain about how sales or marketing aren’t getting it.”
在產(chǎn)品方面，我們必須想辦法用人們能夠聽懂、欣賞和理解的方式進行溝通。否則，我們就是在浪費時間和精力。抱怨銷售或營銷同仁什么都不懂是沒有用的。
How do you think soft skills evolve as we move from being individual contributor product managers to sitting in that product leader seat?
當我們從個人貢獻型的產(chǎn)品經(jīng)理轉(zhuǎn)變成產(chǎn)品負責(zé)人時，你認為如何發(fā)展對應(yīng)的軟技能？
I think they are always there, and good individual contributor PMs have a lot of them already. But again, I think individual contributor PMs are mostly judged on the success of their product and their ability to get through transactional work with their development teams.
我認為它們總是存在的，優(yōu)秀的PM已經(jīng)有很多。但同樣，我認為一般PM主要是根據(jù)他們產(chǎn)品的成功和他們與開發(fā)團隊的事務(wù)性工作的能力來判斷的。
As you move up into the product leadership roles, you’re doing less and less of the actual strategy, product management, pricing and packaging, and customer interviews. You’re now the exponent, the representative, the champion for product managers doing their jobs and succeeding. The Head of Product has to spend a lot of time showing the rest of the company that product, engineering, and design are successful – that they are heroes.
當你升到產(chǎn)品領(lǐng)導(dǎo)崗位時，參與具體落地產(chǎn)品策略、產(chǎn)品管理、定價和包裝以及客戶訪談的細節(jié)工作會越來越少。你現(xiàn)在是產(chǎn)品經(jīng)理做好本職工作并取得成功的闡釋者、代表者、支持者。產(chǎn)品負責(zé)人必須花大量的時間向公司的其他人展示產(chǎn)品、工程和設(shè)計是成功的。
Our entire role as product managers is to be catalysts for alignment and collaboration. Where do you see us falling down here?
作為產(chǎn)品經(jīng)理，我們的全部角色就是成為協(xié)調(diào)和協(xié)作。你看到一般人在哪里跌倒了？
I think when somebody interrupts you and tells you they need something, one of the places we fall down is that we leap right into telling them why they can’t have what they want, without first having a moment to appreciate and thank them for taking time out of their day to come bother us.
我想，當有人打斷你，告訴你他們需要什么東西的時候，我們的失誤之一就是我們直接告訴他們?yōu)槭裁此麄儾荒艿玫剿麄兿胍臇|西，而沒有先花點時間去欣賞和感謝他們抽出時間來打擾我們。
If we become the ogres, if we become the people that nobody wants to talk to, they’ll find some other way around us and go directly to our development teams. So we have to appreciate the requestor even if we’re not going to approve the request.
如果我們變成了討厭鬼，變成了沒有人愿意和我們說話的人，他們可能就會繞過我們直接去找開發(fā)團隊。所以我們即使不打算滿足提出者的需求，也應(yīng)該表達感謝。
In a lot of the sessions I run, I talk about treating feedback as a gift. Would you agree with that?
在我參與的很多課程中，我都會說要把反饋當作禮物。你同意嗎？
That’s right, even if you don’t want it. Even if we know that there are 847 other things in the product backlog that are never going to see the light of day, and we’re going to file this one in position 360, and it’s never going to pop up. Sometimes there’s a pattern that we can learn from, and even if we can’t, we owe them the respect to do that.
沒錯，即使你不想要它。即使我們知道在產(chǎn)品代辦列表中還積壓了847件幾乎永遠沒法落地的事情，我們要把這件事歸檔在360號位置，它可能永遠不會出現(xiàn)。有時候，有一種模式是我們可以借鑒的，即使不能借鑒，我們也需要尊重反饋。
I have many concerns and trepidations about the feedback I get from enterprise sales teams because I know it’s heavily slanted. But I have to remind myself that there are often important things in there.
Yes, it’s true that every sales rep tells me that good salesmanship is the reason we won a deal and that the fact we’re missing 50 or 100 features is the reason we lost a deal. But there’s still some goodness in there. And I have to hold myself in check and not chew them out. Because you know what? I might learn something.
Candor is a key ingredient in communicating effectively and working in teams. How can product leaders bring this skill to bear in their work? And should they approach this differently when speaking to a co-founder vs. someone lower down the ranks?
坦誠是有效溝通和團隊工作的關(guān)鍵要素。產(chǎn)品負責(zé)人如何在工作中運用這一技能？在與聯(lián)合創(chuàng)始人或普通員工交談時，是否需要采取不同的方式？
The challenge with the co-founder CEO is that they can fire you. So it’s hard to convince them that they’re not an expert in the customer base and that they’re getting very biased information because they’re only on sales calls with big customers.
It’s tough to convince the person who founded the company that they have to give up, that they have to delegate a lot of decision-making to other people. I don’t always get it right, but you have to figure out how they individually think and what their basis is.
與聯(lián)合創(chuàng)始人CEO們聊天所面臨的挑戰(zhàn)是，他們可以解雇你。一方面他們不是客戶群的專家，另外他們只和大客戶有銷售電話來往所以他們得到的信息非常相對比較宅，所以很難說服他們。
If you look further down in the organization, I see a lot of folks who either lack the skills or lack good input. I think I’m a little less candid than I might be, and that’s OK because I want to encourage everyone that I think is a keeper for the company. I want to give them a hint. I want to point them toward a blog post. I want to walk them through the exercise a couple of times.
如果你再往組織圖往下看，會看到很多人要么缺乏技能，要么缺乏好的輸入。我認為我可能比我假象的更不坦率，這沒關(guān)系，因為我想鼓勵每一個我認為是公司需要保留的人。我想給他們一個暗示。我想給他們出一篇博文。我想引導(dǎo)他們進行多次練習(xí)。
In the book Product Leadership, the authors mention that experienced product people with strong soft skills are in short supply. What tips do you have for PMs who want to develop or grow into these opportunities?
在《產(chǎn)品領(lǐng)導(dǎo)力》一書中，作者提到有經(jīng)驗的、軟技巧能力強的產(chǎn)品人員非常緊缺。對于想要發(fā)展或抓住這些機會的PM，你有什么建議？
First, if you’re an individual contributor PM and want to move up the stack, I would go to your current manager and say something like, “I’m interested in moving up. I’d like a job like yours someday. I’m not gunning for your job. I’m not trying to gaslight you or kick you out. What I’d really like is some input, some help on areas that I might need to work on. Can you give me a punch list?”
首先，如果你是一個個人貢獻者PM，想往上爬，我會建議你找現(xiàn)在的經(jīng)理，說：'我有意愿努力向上。我希望有一天能得到像你這樣的工作。我不是要搶你的工作。我不是想氣你也不是想趕你走。我真正想要的是您的一些意見，一些在工作領(lǐng)域可能需要的輸入。您能幫我一起制定一個攻關(guān)清單嗎？'
The other part is to look for opportunities to do the things that product leaders do that are different from what product managers do. Volunteer to be on a cross-functional task force. Spend some time with the sales team or the field team. Work on an announcement of your new product with marketing instead of throwing them a bunch of docs. If your support team has a second headset technology, spend a couple of hours listening in on calls to understand what they are going through.
另一部分是尋求機會去做產(chǎn)品負責(zé)人，做的與產(chǎn)品經(jīng)理不同的事情。我是建議可以志愿性質(zhì)加入一些跨職能的任務(wù)組?；ㄒ恍r間與銷售團隊或其他現(xiàn)場支持團隊一起工作。和市場部一起制定新產(chǎn)品的公告而不是把一堆文檔扔給他們就了事。如果你的支持團隊有第二種耳機技術(shù)，花幾個小時打打電話，聽聽他們正在經(jīng)歷的事情。
“Look for opportunities to do the things that product leaders do that are different from what product managers do.”
尋找機會去做產(chǎn)品負責(zé)人所做的與產(chǎn)品經(jīng)理所做的不同的事情。
If I’m the manager here, I might encourage my direct report to go to a bunch of staff meetings and present the group’s roadmap and see how that feels. It’s all about getting ourselves out of the transactional work and forcing some experience of what directors and product leaders do.
如果我是這里的經(jīng)理，我可能會鼓勵向我匯報的同事去參加一堆員工會議，了解集團的路線圖，對于整體有一些感覺。這就是讓我們自己從日常事務(wù)性的工作中脫離出來，強行體驗一下總監(jiān)和產(chǎn)品負責(zé)人的工作。
Then you can ask yourself, “Well, did that make me happier or not?” The increase in salary might, the more stock options might, but if you’re going to come into the office and feel miserable, maybe that’s not the job you really want.
然后你可以問自己：'嗯，這樣操作做到底有沒有讓我更開心？' 薪水的增加可能，股票期權(quán)的增多可能，但如果你在辦公室就覺得很痛苦，也許這不是你真正想要的工作。
What three things could a product manager do tomorrow to improve their soft skills?
產(chǎn)品經(jīng)理可以做哪三件事來提高自己的軟技能？
There are a lot of great books about coaching, mentoring, scrum mastering, and things that come out of the agile movement that aren’t specific to product management. They don’t mention product management anywhere, but they’re about how to get things done. So I might read up on them.
有很多關(guān)于教練、指導(dǎo)、迭代掌控的好書，還有很多從敏捷行動中輸出不是專門針對產(chǎn)品管理的東西。它們在任何地方都沒有提到產(chǎn)品管理，但它們是關(guān)于如何把事情做好，是關(guān)于如何搞定任務(wù)的。所以我會建議讀一讀它們。
It’s certainly worth reading about the Myers Briggs view of life if you haven’t already. It’s a bit pseudoscience, but it can help open your eyes to people who are not like you.
如果你還沒有讀過Myers Briggs的人生觀材料，當然也值得一讀。它有點偽科學(xué)，但它可以幫助你開闊眼界，讓你看到和你不一樣的人是怎么樣的。
What else? There’s a woman named Karen Katlin, who has a site called Better Allies. It’s all about how to be a little more inclusive in the way we hire, in the way we treat people, and in the way we promote people. I found it eye-opening in terms of the things I might be doing that are off-putting to others but that I perhaps don’t notice.
還有什么？有一個叫凱倫-卡特林的女人，她有一個叫 '更好的盟友 '的網(wǎng)站。它的內(nèi)容是關(guān)于如何在我們的招聘、待人接物的方式和晉升團隊成員上更具包容性。我發(fā)現(xiàn)它讓我大開眼界，因為我們可能做了一些讓別人不爽的事情，但我們可能沒有注意到。
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