Guest Greg Coticchia an Entrepreneur, Product Manager, Author and Teacher joins Product Love — Product Love

Hey, welcome here again on Product Craft with Product Love. Eric Botha hosting, and today we have Greg Koticka, author and executive director of the master's program in product management at Carnegie Mellon University. Welcome, Greg.

Great to be here, Eric. Thanks for having me.

Awesome to have you. So now you've recently written a book, but you have a long history of product management, but we'll get to the book a little bit later. But let's talk about a little of your background. So if you want to take a few moments just to describe your experience in the industry and maybe a little bit about how the industry has changed as you've been involved in it.

Sure. I have been in product management and as an executive in small companies played the role of product manager in about 14 startups over a career of 30+ years, extending back to when dinosaurs roamed the earth in the mid-1980s. All the way to almost present day. I started my career in academia about 5 or 6 years ago. I've always loved product management, always thought that it was a terrific place being that bridge between business and technology, and more importantly, creating both the strategy and tactics to drive successful products for businesses and make customers happy, get customers to uptake your product. Very early on in my career, I was very lucky as a product manager to have a winning product or two, and I don't think there's anything quite like that feeling of being involved with the team as the product leader, as the product champion, as a product manager, and having enjoyed that from idea all the way through to commercialization.

So talk to me a little bit about, you know, some of the winning products there. Give us a little overview of those opportunities, those products, what made them different. And in particular, I think our listeners would love to hear, you know, how you might have managed those products a little bit differently, or maybe how they evolved differently.

Yeah, so I think product management's changed a lot, you know, with the advent of Agile and SaaS. One thing I didn't mention I should have is that most of my career has been in enterprise software in the B2B world, so my perspectives and opinions are molded by that purview. And product management certainly had a different flavor, you know, 5 years ago, 10 years ago, certainly 25, 30 years ago. You know, I still think that fundamentally it deals with the challenges of defining the what of the product, how you're going to bring that product to marketplace, and how you work particularly with development or engineering and other places particularly with the advent of agile and SaaS business models, I think it's changed rather dramatically. Gone are the days of, you know, really sitting around a table looking at your feature list for months, planning out something that, you know, you put together a plan, you get budgeting, it's going to get approved. You know, the waterfall part of not only the business, but the waterfall part of actually the product itself, and then getting it out there and hoping that people loved and desired what you, what you thought of a year or a year, you know, 18 months ago. The ability to rapidly change ideas, to work in sprints and themes and stories, become much more aware of customer desires and get iterative feedback from customers in a quick fashion, you know, makes the job, the pace of the job more challenging, but also gives you more data than ever before about what's working and what's not, and also makes the decision turnaround time as the product manager more challenging as well. So if I were to kind of summarize that transition, while the basic purpose of the job has not changed, how you're making the sausage, both in terms of, you know, the pace, the testing, the feedback, the iteration, all those elements have changed. I think for the good, But it creates a different type of product manager than they were not too long ago.

Yeah, so let's talk a little bit more about that. You started in a world that I would say had business, meticulous detailed business cases, marketing requirements documents, product requirements documents, all that were stage-gated, so to speak. Today's world, how has that affected the skills a product manager needs and how they approach their job? Are product managers the same type of people back then as today? Do the same type of product managers work in, in both environments?

I think they can. I'm not sure they do, right? One of my concerns with the newer definitions of product management is that it removes some of the more strategic business elements of what product management was, and less of the mini CEO or CEO of the product and more of the operational management of the product, more of the programmatic needs of the product, right? And forces more of the balance to a tactical rather than strategic. And I'm, you know, I'm sure different companies adopted different ways, but it's an overall concern. There's no doubt because of the pace, the information, the data, the feedback, the style of how products are built today, that it's easy for what's defined as a product manager to get sucked into, you know, into the forest and not look at the trees, to work in the business and not on the business. And so I think that is— there's some good things about that. I think you get some, some things right about the bundle of functionality that you're bringing out as the product and more accuracy. I worry that strategy and strategic maneuvering of the product sometimes can get lost because there's just less time to spend on those things given the way products are built today.

So let's talk too a little bit about the skill set. Like we grew up, you know, dating myself, I'm a little bit older too. In a lot of cases, product managers weren't the most technical people. They might have had some technology background, but, you know, you see a lot of product managers, especially in the Google model where they're heavily technical, might have been, you know, solid programmers. Important? Not important?

I'm still a believer, only because I've seen it, that you don't have to have a technology background to be a great product manager. That doesn't mean that you, you know, you don't have to understand the technology issues. I think great product managers always understood, you know, the challenges that developers and engineers had to face with building their product. They need to have good listening and empathetic skills so that they can understand the what of what they're asking for can be achieved and its importance, particularly when it comes to architectural changes and things along that line that have to be modified or changed with the product. There's no doubt though, I think to your point, Eric, that there's more of a sense that product managers should come from an engineering/computer science background, and that that will be helpful. I think these things go in waves. I mean, there Also used to be, and I'm sure there still is in some places, a strong desire that a product manager has to be an expert at the domain they're being hired for. I was just going to ask you that.

Domain space expertise, another area.

I'm neither a believer in technology will make you successful nor domain expertise will make you successful, which may sound like heresy to some of your listeners out there, but I fundamentally believe that those that have domain expertise from other areas may actually be beneficial that they don't come from the domain because of the perspective of the way they look at things. I think if you're a good product manager, you'll get caught up with what is 80 to 90% of what you have to know about the domain in the first 90 to 120 days of your job. If you can't do that, then you're not a good hire, right? So I look at the domain expertise as a short-lived benefit to the hiring company. And I think that, and this, I'll give you an example from my own career. I worked in industrial automation for a number of years, and then came over and started working data center automation. It turns out that those marketplaces were in two different stages of their lives, and that industrial automation was probably, the time that I worked at it, 7 to 10 years ahead of data center automation. And so when I came into data center automation, even though I was not an expert at data center automation, I was able to apply a lot of the lessons that were learned in the industrial automation area areas from functionality to usage to even product messaging, I had seen the future, right? And I was able to apply that. If I had worked just in data center automation, I'd have been stuck where everyone else was. I think that's an important, you know, it's an important lesson for people to learn. Also, you know, as a product manager, you're going to be surrounded by a lot of great technologists and engineers and developers. You know, while you have to be able to converse with them and intellectually understand what they're doing and not be at a loss for understanding the challenges they have, you don't have to be the person programming, right? If you're spending your time thinking about those issues, you're in the wrong place and you need to rethink that. So, I mean, to the degree in which you need to understand the technology is the degree in which I think a product manager can be successful. So there's no doubt that both of those are valued by a lot of companies. I tend to go against that in terms of thinking, you know, I'm an engineer myself and I think that's provided me credibility with my development counterparts. I'm not sure that it's ever, you know, been extremely useful to me other than that.

Understood. So, you know, the value in a lot of technology organizations of a head of product management or a chief product officer has definitely increased a lot over the past few years. Where do you think product management as an organization should sit in a company structure? Does it deserve a seat at the executive table? You know, should it be part of the engineering group, part of the marketing group, part of sales? I don't know. What's your thoughts on that?

Well, I think the survey says that you see, you know, surveys that are put out by a number of different groups that it sits in a variety of different places. I really hate when it sits— I think if it sits in sales or engineering, that's just terrible.

And why is that?

That's just a terrible decision. I think you're basically swayed by the purposes of those organizations, and I always look at product management as sitting in between those organizations and playing a role that bridges both of those, that plays a neutral business and technology role. You know, small companies, early-stage companies, as you know, Eric, you've participated in so many of them successfully, is that, you know, they really are comprised of someone to build it and someone to sell it, basically sales and engineering. And as you scale that business, you add add elements like product management because they add a fiber in between those areas that's really, really important. I've worked in organizations where sales on every Monday morning would say, "Here's what we need," to product managers, and you get whipsawed, right? And you're not really building a product, you're building lots of one-offs for various sales situations. I've also seen product manager organizations where they become the gofer for engineers, the project managers versus being the product managers, right? And there's been a lot of non- customer listening goes on because the engineers know better what the customers want. So I think you can suffer terribly, you know, whether it's, you know, politically or inadvertently by being placed in those organizations. So I'm not a big fan of product management being— and I know that it still happens today, but not a fan at all. I think in today's world, the more mature company does have a VP of product management or a chief product officer and a product organization, and they do have a seat at the table. It's kind of broken out the way that believe it or not, customer service and, you know, customer support and those areas used to be under engineering or related to those. So I think that more mature, established organizations understand that it is a separate organization. You know, you and I grew up when marketing held both product management and marketing communications together as one. I believe there are some benefits to that. Of having those two areas work closely together under the same umbrella for, you know, correct messaging, promotion. It certainly, in theory, should make it easier for go-to-market activities. So I see a lot of benefits in that. You know, I'm not certain though that that model is workable in today's world or as necessary as it once was. You know, I'd be the first person to tell you, you don't want to have somebody that is a chief revenue officer or VP of sales and marketing, you know, that has both sales and marketing. You need to have that divide. So similarly, there's some good reasons to divide marketing communications and product management. So, you know, I guess net, one of those two would be good. A separate seat at the table where product gets its voice is probably always the best.

So let's change the direction of thought or conversation here a little bit. You live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. You've more or less lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for a while now, right?

So you've lived here, lived in a number of other places, but yeah, anchored here for many years.

Yeah. So you've seen a lot of changes, I suppose, in Pittsburgh over the years. And now it seems like Pittsburgh's one of the up-and-coming tech darlings, right? Talk about how Pittsburgh has changed for technology as a whole and product managers.

Well, I think Pittsburgh actually has been lucky to have more product management people in it than a lot of other areas. The times that I actually was hired in Northern Virginia or Boston or Cupertino or other places where I did consulting in those areas in product management roles was because they couldn't find enough people in those communities. And strangely enough, I was here, but I was not the only one. There's a lot of folks like yourself and other people that you and I know, Eric, that are very talented product management folks. So I think while we probably think of ourselves in Pittsburgh as still not having enough product management, we're actually lucky to have more than a lot of other communities. And I think we've had a lot more of those people for a number of years. I would say they would spend back to, you know, 20 or 25 years ago. Product management though remains a very, very, very difficult job. People in product management tend not to last in that job because it's a grinder. And I think it's hard to find the right person because of some of the things that we've talked about early in this conversation. You know, some people are really good at the technology part. Some people are good at the strategy part. Some people are good at the go-to-market part. Some people are good at interacting with customers. Some are really great at working with engineering or sales. To find that person who can manage, you know, all the boxes from strategic to tactical, from inside to outside, the full range of all the functions and do a good job at all of them, that's a wondrously big job. I think in some part that's why the job kind of is now orienting itself slightly different. You know, some of it is the things we also spoke about earlier, the how we're building products, but I think some of it is just the recognition that it's an enormous job. It's a big job and it's hard to find somebody who can actually step into that job and be that product leadership role. It's aspirational, and I still think it's a great thing to try to manufacture, as we are at CNU now with this first-only and we think best product management master's degree. I know there's lots of other great certificates that people can earn as well that are out there that have been around for a long time, and of course there's the standard on-the-job training. All those are great methods to become a terrific product manager, but there's still not enough product managers, and the product managers we have, you know, people would tell you that there's a handful of really great ones.

So let's talk about, you know, do you have any specific words of wisdom for, you know, young or aspiring product managers?

Yeah, I would say most of all, a lot of people think that this job, like a sales job, is about talking, or thinking that engineering is about, you know, you're going to invent great products. Most of this job is about listening, and so making sure that you have really, really, really good deep listening skills, that you have a well-developed sense of empathy, because you're going to need it, that you really have great communication skills. And that is not just standing up in front of an audience or writing skills. Those are excellent and important ones, but persuasiveness, internal selling skills you're going to need, because you are not ever going to have the resources you want. You're going to have demands put on put on you by yourself, your team, executive management, your company, whatever, and you're going to have to figure out how to thread that needle and make it work. It is an extremely high-pressure and challenging role where you have to be a leader to other people, and so your leadership, your communications, your empathy, and your listening skills, those soft skills tend to be the ones that people forget about. You may be the smartest person in the room, but it doesn't make any difference if you can't convince anybody else. So, I would really highly encourage you to think about those communication skills and other skills I just talked about, those soft skills and how important they are, and get good at them early on.

So, you wrote a book. Talk to me about that process.

What inspired you to write it? I wrote a book and I will tell you for your listeners, it's called Start Your Startup Right, and you can order it on Amazon, whether in a paperback or Kindle version, whatever your preference is. You can also go to the website www.startyourstartupright.com. Which I was shocked to see was actually available as a, as a domain name, but it's out there. You know, it has a lot of, even though it's about startups, there's a lot of things in it that are about product management and new product development and taking products to marketplace. So I think you'd find it interesting if you're a product manager. I started the process and the journey, actually it's kind of funny, it's just like agile development and iterative work that we see so much today. You know, when you start It's a rather daunting task to think about, "Oh, I'm going to sit down and write a book, and we're going to have an outline, and we're going to write this," and kind of the waterfall management of writing a book. That's why most people never got to it. So, I decided to write it in chunks, and I did it on LinkedIn. And what I did is I did LinkedIn postings, and the ones that got really very good feedback or lots of comments or things, I promised myself one year that I'd do one a week for the year. I ended up doing 90 that year. I did a lot the year before and after, but not as many as that year. And then I just went through and I curated them, organized them, put Q&A sections together, rewrote sections to make them more current or updated, and compiled them together and then self-published it. And while I like to think of it as more than a vanity project, because I think it has a lot of meaning and a lot of usefulness, I wanted to also get it accomplished and learn the process of publishing. And it's been a lot of fun. It's gotten a lot more sales than I ever thought it would, and I'm very proud of it.

Awesome. Is there going to be a second?

There is. I have 2 or 3 ideas that I'm noodling on, but I'm going to do my customer discovery first. There's been a lot of things that came out of the first book that I find people that have read the book that they like. They like the style of the writing. A lot of people say, oh, I feel like I'm in a conversation or listening to you. And I'm like, wow, that's That's nice, and I think they mean that in a positive sense, at least I hope so. You know, and then there's been some terms used in the book and some ideas in the book that I think can be more fully developed. The whole idea of customer discovery, which I labeled very early on and referred to in the book about getting out there and getting bloodied, for instance, and what that process is of getting bloodied and how you, you know, it's, I really took it off the Mike Tyson idea or quote that, you know, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. And, you know, I like that idea because you learn so much that first engagement. So the cheaper, the minimum viable product idea, the cheaper you can get something out there, get it tested, get feedback on it. I know some developers I've worked with over the years, even though the term MVP wasn't coined or created yet, that had that style of, let's put together a lightweight version of the feature and see if people use it and how they use it, what they use it for. You know, some of the best developers from way back in the late '80s and '90s that I worked with were using those style of ideas. I love that stuff. So it's really, it's great feedback. So hopefully those types of things will help me create a second book.

Well, speaking of writing, how about reading? Are you more likely to read about like the Kim Kardashians of the world, or are you reading about Apple over TechCrunch?

I, first of all, I'm a total nonfiction person. There is little fiction, which is, it's kind of sad but true. And it just is one of those things. I've been reading a lot about stoicism. I'm into The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday, who also wrote some great marketing books, by the way. And I'm also reading another one called Beyond the Sales Process, which is a really good reader. It's only a couple years old, but that's one of my favorites. I also enjoy biography, so I'm reading the Ulysses S. Grant book. Book that was recently published, which is extremely, extremely well done. He's been thought about a lot. Ron Chernow's a great author and wrote Hamilton and other books. I think that's a good read. You'll learn a lot about people under duress and leading different things. It's not always as clean and simple as our history books tell us or what we remember.

And finally, and most importantly, Greg, 3 words to describe yourself.

Oh, 3 words: passionate, intense, fun. I'll say that with some laughter. Well, thank you.

I appreciate your time today. I look forward to chatting again in the future.

Hey, thanks for having me on, Eric. I look forward to working with you on maybe on another one of these in the future. Thanks, Craig.