When Politics Play a Role in Product Management, w/ Adam Thomas, Product Leader

Today's session is about what happens when politics starts to play a role within our organizations, how it starts to creep into the product process. And for this discussion, we have Adam Thomas with us. And again, Adam from New York. Adam, thanks a lot for joining us. I really appreciate it.

I'm really happy to be here, Mike, and super excited to talk about, like, how politics plays a role when it comes to our product processes, product development. So very excited to chat.

Yeah, I remember when we were connecting about having you on for an industry interview and you brought this topic up. It, it was definitely of interest to me because I've been in situations where, I mean, I feel like everybody has, and almost every single organization I've been with, politics can kind of play a role in some way, even, even in smaller kind of startup organizations. So, but maybe where we should start off is, in your perspective, like, what does that mean when we say politics can creep up in product? What do we, what do we really mean by that? And maybe we could just start there.

Well, I'm thinking about politics not in terms of kind of like national politics or politics, right? That's a whole nother—

we could, we could have a whole other session on that.

Um, but I'm, I'm talking about how essentially how resources are divvied up internally inside of organizations, right? Once you hit a specific— once you hit a level of sophistication within your product development, org politics will spring up, right? That's— it's an inevitability. So what we're talking about today here is identifying those politics, understanding product's role within that political structure, and also you know, things you can do to find your way inside of that political structure. Yeah.

And I guess maybe to start off, is this— when we say that this happens, is it automatically a bad thing? Can it be a good thing? Like, is it just— is it is what it is and we have to learn to live with it? Like, what's your take on that?

My take is I tend to think of Tom Peters when I— when this is brought up, essentially, right? Politics are neutral, right? They're going to exist just because we're, we're very— we're social creatures, we're social animals, right? We're human beings, and we all have our biases about one thing or another. Politics is just how those biases get enacted. So it's, again, it's not necessarily a bad thing, Right. I think what a lot of people do when they hear politics is they recoil and go like, no, we don't do that here. We're happy and like everybody likes each other, which again is also a choice if you want to get into that, and really miss out on the power dynamics that are happening inside of your organization that do cascade into the actual projects that you're trying to get done. Get done. So we might as well face this very clear-eyed, and especially as product people, because I've seen, seen this play out a couple of times in my career as a consultant or working and running product teams where the— where this has— when product leaders and design leaders are included in this, when they decide to just not play the political game, how that affects everything downstream. So yeah, it's not good.

So yeah, maybe. Yeah, I mean, can you expand on that? Like, you could leave the innocents nameless if you want to. Oh, yes.

I don't want to be sued.

But if you can recall theoretical situations maybe where you've seen that play out, like, what does that look like?

I'll say hypothetically, in a Fortune 100 company, I have seen design and product basically left to make screens for presentations and have zero input as to where these screens go or what these screens mean or what's on these screens. Right. They're basically handed off a task to And this is, again, happening at the executive level, right? And that same kind of just handoff, we don't really need your opinion, you're here to make things beautiful, blah, blah, blah, I saw that flow through the entire organization, all the way through to, again, hypothetically seeing people, designers, get on planes to just hand off something, literally almost like hand off a piece of paper. And essentially electronically, and then jump back on a plane. Again, no input on the product itself, no input on the team, no input on anything, right? This poor— seeing this poor designer kind of just run back and forth between these two hypothetical big cities was really sad, and I saw a direct connection from how their VP was doing things and that, right? And I'm sure there's a bunch of people in the chat that even if they're not at the VP level or director level have seen this play out with their own careers, they just kind of wonder like, why are we not involved in any decision-making? Why are we not involved in any— like, I'm sure that's something that almost everyone in here can attest to. Especially with product and design.

Absolutely. Well, and when you're— I could, I could speak firsthand, like, when you're in that position, it's frustrating because, you know, we're all, especially as product people, like, we want to have our say on the product. We're not just project managers, right? Like, we're, we're in it for to try to shape, like, why we're creating this in the first place and what should be created in the first place. So if you find yourself in the position And this might be different as a product manager versus a product leader. And maybe we could talk about kind of the distinction there. But I guess as a product manager first, what, what can you do? Because I imagine it might frustrate you, but you're in this situation. So like, how— yeah, how can we— what do we do?

I think the best thing about product, and depending on where you are, could be a bad thing too, is the freedom that individual contributors in a product team have to leverage their influence, because the job itself is basically leveraging influence. So I think for product managers that find themselves in this situation where their leadership team isn't really doing their job when it comes to stakeholder management, the thing that they can do is really try to own their circle of influence, their circle of control, their circle of competence. Because of how mostly most teams are structuring their product teams, at least as far as I've seen today, the product manager is kind of like a Navy SEAL in a sense, where like they're completely kind of disconnected from everyone else, right? Like it's kind of just like, hey, you have the ability to advocate for these resources and you have the ability to get this project done. I think for individual product managers themselves, they can take advantage of that in order to leverage politics for their own space. Like, I'll give you an example.

If you—

let's say you're in this situation and as a product manager, you just kind of find yourself kind of sitting in that room where, like, sitting in that space where things just seem to be dictated towards you. First thing you can do is really find out who's dictating those things. Do your own investigative work as to like where, how these decisions are being made. Once you understand kind of where the map is or how kind of institutional power is kind of laid out, there's an opportunity to find cracks in, in that map to where you can needle your influence in. And, you know, kind of the higher up better. Like, if you can find an executive sponsor, right, even if that executive sponsor is, sorry, product leader, but you've already abdicated that by how you're not doing the work itself, right? If that product person can find another sponsor in sales, let's say, or another sponsor in engineering, right, like, they're probably going to get stuff, more stuff done, right? Actually, not probably, they will get more stuff done. And as other people of the rest of the product organization goes, "Oh, I don't know, they just don't like us," suddenly, you know, you're the person that's, you know, knocking out your projects with the resources that you need. So, in short, I think, you know, product managers that find themselves in these solutions and in these spaces, right, play the political game yourself. There's space there. Also, this doubles as great training for when you're the product leader later, like you're going to need to know how to do all of this stuff, right, in order to make sure that your team underneath you has the ability and the, the air cover to, to actually actualize and operationalize their projects or their products. So yeah, super important.

And what I'm glad you brought that up too, because, and you've, you've been in that product manager role, but you've also been a product, you know, you are a product leader. Like, how does that— when we're thinking of politics creeping up into product, how does it differ for a product leader versus a product manager? And what's your advice to that product leader? Like, is it— because I imagine now that might be coming at both ends, or sort of the— yes, there's the up and the down. So yeah, how does that— how does that all work?

Yeah, so like, if you are a product leader, and especially if you have senior product people, Like, if you're not doing your job, they will go out and do your job for you because, right, like they understand, like, they just got to get stuff done. And at a certain, at a certain point in a certain experience level, I think every product, like, especially if you're talking about at the principal level or like the senior level, just know, like, screw everything else. I've been already in this hellhole. I'll go make the politics if I have to in order to get some stuff done. So you have that kind of on one side, right? If they don't trust you, they'll go do it, especially if they're, again, if they're experienced. So as a product leader, you have to keep your eye on that. And then also, right, like your job, I think, as a product leader and product as a whole, right, is all around this alignment for the organization. So for a product leader, to face that other side of folks, other peers, right? Like, it's your job to go out, it's your job to have coffee with them, it's your job to understand their point of view, it's your job to understand their biases, and then take that to your team so that they understand and they can see it and leverage it, right? And once they do, Again, now you don't have to worry about that trust downstream. And then also at the same time, right, I've never met a leader from a different discipline that has hated having product on their side. Like, never, ever, ever. Or having product that understands their point of view, right? So, like, I've never seen that. Especially if you're able to negotiate and dance, as you probably should have been learning anyway through your product career, right? That's just part of the journey. Being able to negotiate and talk and build those relationships with your peers and then have that come down is your job as a product leader, right? So if you're doing that, then you don't have anything to worry about.

Well, and I'm curi— by the way, let me pause for a bit to again say to everybody else, um, feel free to load up some questions in the Q&A, or, or if you want to mention the chat or whatever. I'm going to do my best to take as many audience questions if you have them for Adam, because I, I love being able to get in as many, um, as I can. So feel free to do that. Um, but I still have more for you, Adam. I'm curious, I'm curious if you Like, have you seen common mistakes made when it comes to politics in the workplace for product teams and whether it's people trying to navigate that landscape incorrectly or ignore— maybe— I don't— is ignoring it altogether a mistake? Like, maybe you could tell me about that.

Yes. Let's start with where you ended off, and I think I alluded to it earlier, right? The whole ignoring it thing. Again, as our social systems get more sophisticated, politics are going to creep in. That's just kind of human experience, right? That's, that's just who we are. By ignoring it, you're making a choice of saying, I'm happy with whatever happens. There is nothing that we need to— I don't need to fight for anything, and I am responsible for whatever comes down my way. Now, sometimes maybe that works. I mean, I haven't seen it, but, you know, I'm sure there's a possibility that, you know, there's a place where not having any political control, just abdicating all of it to a singular head of, like, maybe the CEO or something, works. But again, I haven't seen it, especially if your job is alignment, right? If you have no power to align, I don't know kind of what you're doing there, to be honest. Some common mistakes. I know I've made this one several times, and it's taken me a long time in my career to kind of beat this back. For product leaders coming into an organization, trying to— trying to make changes immediately, both as an IC and as a product leader, without building trust. Just starts you and your discipline deeper and deeper into the hole, right? When I have office hours and I talk to younger product managers, they do this all the time, right? They'll go, I worked at Facebook and now I'm coming into this organization and I'll tell you how to make this work. And trust me, I've worked at the wonderful organization, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, no one wants to hear that. No one. Again, for in terms of politics, right, there's a, there's a piece of where attention is very important and like you need to really drive processes and things, but there's also a piece of where people need to trust you and kind of like you and like they at least think you don't think of them as a jackass before they want to listen to you. So, right, coming in and barking orders immediately because you think you have a higher pedigree is recipe one for for you to be ineffective. All right. And for you to lose the political battle. Another thing I see is people trying to be also very peaceful all the time. Right. Like, oh, hey, you know, they use their political power to just pacify. Right. And that's great that you have political power, which means you're doing some of the things that are very— that's very important. But also Right, I think for products specifically, right, some of your job, some of the work that you need to do is to agitate, right? You need to learn where to turn the heat up, right? And having the politics at your back, right, to power you through makes that turning things up a lot easier because, yeah, you have the trust and the faith and people are going to start looking at ideas as opposed to you. Again, I think great politics is the ability to— or if you're a great politician, you're able to leverage your personal identity to move things forward or hold them back whilst not looking like you're using your personal identity to do either of those things. Right? That's when you're a genius politician, right? And I think for product people, since that's the gig, when we're doing our job well, right? That's what we should all strive to be.

Yeah, I love that.

I—

yeah, we have to speak up when, especially if there's something that we feel like, you know, we— our voice is needed, right? Like maybe things aren't going in the right direction, we need to speak up. That's why we were brought there. So yeah, not, not necessarily being quiet, but especially if you're coming in to a new team or a new organization. You mentioned before, it'd be a mistake to just come in guns blazing like, I'm gonna make all these decisions right away. I guess to follow up on that too, what you— for people that are coming into a new organization or a new team, maybe it's the same organization but it's a brand new team for them, what advice do you have on being able to sort of gain that influence and trust right away? Because it seems like that influence and trust, like, those are, those are critical elements, it seems like, in order to be able to navigate whatever political landscape you're in.

100%. And I think the, the thing that works is, and I think that works regardless whether we're talking about politics or product development, whatever, is looking and identifying these small wins that you can go and grab quickly to elevate people's idea of your competence. Right. Because, you know, that's, that's kind of rule one, right? You coming in, right? People have to know you're competent. Right, first, and then everything else can come. Focus clearly on that confidence. Find those small wins. So, like, finding those small wins, you know, requires you to go out and talk to people, right? Like, you should almost— I think product leaders should almost act almost like politicians their first, like, 3 months in an organization, right? They should be glad-handing people. They should be talking, right? They should be finding out where promises they can make, where the promises they can make and they can actually land. In short order to help people and make people feel better, right? All these things generally help with your confidence level, or at least the confidence level inside of an organization. And, you know, once you've spent a couple months doing that, I like that. That's when you, that's when you can spring out and start to, start to really show the world your point of view. That's great.

I do— there is an audience question, so I want to go to that. And yeah, keep sending more at me if you would like. The question was whether there's a structure that you've seen that has been successful in terms of maybe not eliminating politics in organization, but maybe minimizing the reliance on it, maybe something that encourages more equality, you know, throughout the company. Just if— what— What's your take on that?

I haven't seen it. Like, I wish there was a way that we could just, like, we can make it like in Civilization and we can click on a thing, right? And then everybody goes, all right, we're all equitable now. But I have not seen that in my career, nor kind of like, kind of my reading on companies. And how this stuff works. Oddly enough, I think the cure to that is getting enough political backing for you to make things more equitable, right? Like, people have to kind of fall in love with you in order for you to really make things more fair. And I mean, I've done that in places, again, kind of NDAs, allow me to give specifics, but like, one of my things when coming into a company is to start, is to gain that trust quickly and then make things more equitable as soon as possible, right? Whether that is salaries, whether that's conversations that happen, decision-making, whatever, like how that cascades, diversity inclusion, all of that, right? Like, I work hard at that, but I know that they have to see me as competent first before I can start, you know, I can say, hey, give that woman a $15,000 raise because, like, the other engineer is making, you know, X and she's vastly underpaid, right? Or like, hey, we should consider more Black people in our hiring funnel because, like, we're missing out on, you know, our product services, a bunch of Black folks, we need to have that perspective. Throughout our organization, right? Nobody's gonna care if I, as a product leader, show up and can't do my job, right? Like, just no one's gonna care. So I think it's important to make those equitable, to get to that equity or equality across an organization. If that is what you believe, you better show off your competency and you better be able to maneuver politically.

Yeah, so yeah, what I'm kind of taking away from that is It's not like, I mean, because you haven't seen a structure that's better or that's eliminated that, that's not like all hope is lost. But what it means is that we need to make sure that we're constantly working on building up our own influence, and then we might be able to bring change to our organization with that influence. But that's going to take time, right?

Yeah, it, it, it takes time. I, um, I think I was having a conversation with Melissa Perry about this, right? And like, it's like an— like, for product specifically, it takes like 6 months to a year, right? Like, it's not going to come, right, in a week. It's not going to come in a month, right? Like, politics, just like the ability to— well, the ability to influence, right? It's a slow— it's a long game. It's a long game and one that I think any product leader, especially product leaders, need to be very aware of and, yeah, very clear-eyed about.

You know, another question that came in, and I think this is an interesting one, it's like we can— I'll kind of preface this with what you said before. It's like politics is there. It is what it is. It's going to play a role. This question was if there's any sort of red flags to watch out for that might indicate that there's dirty politics or bad politics? And I imagine that there are certain times where it's like, yes, there's politics in play, but then there's probably situations where it is like overtly bad, like we should be running maybe from. Like, are there warning signs to look out for?

Yeah, and I think this red flags are often things that are happening that are extreme, right? If a CEO is barking at people, right, like that's a red flag that this is a— like there are no politics to play. It's decisions by fiat. So like probably run for the hills, right? Because like if your job is alignment inside an organization and from the top they're showing that they don't want to get feedback, right, this is not going to be a fun job for you. No, again, NDAs withstanding, I have been in this situation. It is not fun. Save yourself. Yeah, so like whenever you see, you know, people spending money or like dark forces, like somewhat similar to like wherever, like if things are happening outside of the balance sheet, right? If you see like bribery happening, if you see like, Like, if you see kind of these things that make you go, ugh, ethically, right? Not just conversation, not just peer influence, but just like these other things, run, run, run. It's just not going to be worth your time and the therapy bills later.

That's not like a, yeah, in 6 to 9 months I'll have enough influence to change it. That's like probably a lost cause, it sounds like.

Yeah, get out of there.

Yeah. Yeah, I know, I got you. And that makes sense. Yeah, nobody, I mean, heck, is it even worth it? Even if it took a year, it's like, is it even worth a year of your life? Like a year, gosh, a year is a long time in the grand scheme of things. Like nobody wants to feel awful for a year. So yeah, I appreciate it. Somebody else asked around, okay, they said to get around politics, you know, if let's just say you're building relationships up, but it happens to be with, you know, maybe your boss's superior. How does that affect your relationship maybe with your boss? Like, how do you sort of manage having influence above you, but not, you know, it's like if it's too far above you, that could create some awkward situations.

Yes. Um, for me, uh, being honest and, and, and, uh, like, again, keeping your boss in the loop of things. I think where bosses get angry, right, when, when people are doing skip-level stuff is when they feel like they are being left out, like when they feel like they don't have any influence. And even if that is true, right, like this is where you kind of go back to that 48 Laws of Power thing, never outshine the master, right? Like, there has to be— you have to make them feel like they have some influence, right? This is something that, like, one place that I don't have an NDA signed, this is something that I found earlier in my career at DTCC, where like I built a really good relationship, still have it with my VP at the time, right now he's, yeah, my VP at the time, still lovely relationship, still find him as a mentor. And I didn't realize at the time that the managers that were below him started thinking like, hey, why does this kid have access to Tony? Tony doesn't give access to anybody. Right, like there are people that have worked here for 10 or 15 years that Tony, like, will just shoo away. Like, he makes time for this kid. What is going on? Right, is he taking my job? What's happening? And at the time I didn't pick up that, like, I wasn't talking to them, my bosses. And I would talk to Tony about personal stuff, I'd talk about life, right? But like, in their opinion, in their eyes, like it was just like, he's trying to usurp me. So like I would deal with ridiculous punishments for small infractions because of that. And it didn't occur to me until like after I left, like, oh, hey, maybe you should like not skip over the director's head when, like, when you're having conversations. Like, the managers and directors do not like that when you go right to the vice president, especially like when you have such a relationship, like problems eventually slip out. Uh, like, why is Tony dealing with this? This is my job. Starts happening, right? Um, yeah, bad for you.

I know.

I—

and I think that's a great reminder for us. It's like, hey, it doesn't mean we can't build those relationships up, but at least making sure that we keep that communication strong with whoever our boss is and make sure that it's not going to surprise them. Yeah, nobody, nobody likes surprises. That's That's for sure.

That's what I tell, like, I tell people that if you work for me, or if you're mentored by me, that's one thing that you're going to walk away with. Don't— no one ever wants to find out about anything. Do not let anybody find out about anything. That's my fraternity lesson.

I think that's a good— and, you know, I was going to ask you kind of what's— if there's one big takeaway, because we're at the end of our time for the conversation, which it always goes by really fast, but It does. If somebody was to walk away with sort of one quick takeaway, though, from this conversation, like, what do you want them to be left with?

Politics is real, and do not let your career be thrown off track because you aren't taking it seriously. So yeah, pay attention. Be aware, uh, and if it doesn't work, if the political situation isn't working for you, right, either learn more about that situation, or if it's one of those red flags, which we didn't really get a chance to touch on, but like, if it's one of those red flags, leave, leave, leave, leave. It is not going to be worth your time.

Well, I, I appreciate it, Adam, and I know there's probably questions that we didn't get a chance to to get to. Maybe, would you mind sharing with folks how they might be able to maybe throw a question at you later? I know you're on social media. You also do a lot of writing, so maybe if you could let people know about that too.

Yes, uh, so, uh, I'm always on Twitter, for better or for worse, @TheHonorableAT. So feel free to send something my way there. Um, my website is another place to get in contact and get all my information, theadamthomas.com. My email is right there on the front page. Feel free to send anything. I love corresponding with folks because that's, that's when it's beautiful. Also host office hours. I'll throw those out. We are booked out for August, but, you know, if you find it and get some time in September, we can talk in depth about anything you want. And most importantly, I am launching a column with Built In This month we are talking about decision science product management. Keep an eye on my Twitter for now when the formal announcement will come out with everything and all that good stuff. But yeah, we're— if you're seeing this in the future, go to Built In. I have a column. It's there. We've already talked about AI. It's the first one. So for those that were early in the, uh, early here, early, so me and Mike talking about AI, that's literally like my first column. So, uh, uh, specifically around chatbots and all the things we were talking about earlier. So, uh, yeah, it'll be there.

Awesome. And I'll— what I'll do, everybody, is I'm gonna post the recording of the last half hour, uh, on the YouTube channel later. I'll email you with the recording And I'll link to Adam's website and his Twitter so that you can all, you know, if you didn't jot it down yet, you'll have that in the email. So, keep an eye out for an email from me and thank you for joining everybody. And Adam, I really appreciate you making the time for this.

Mike, this was a pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.

You're welcome. You're welcome.

All right.

Well, I'll see everybody later.