Escaping the Build Trap: How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value

by Melissa Perri

When you don’t have safety built in to your company, your product managers won’t feel comfortable trying something new.

I advise product managers to have the boundaries conversation to make it less scary. Explain to your boss the possible impact of your experiments. How are you going to mitigate risk? How can you save money?

Not all of my experiments were hits, but by communicating how the approach helped us de-risk the solution that we eventually chose, my organization trusted me to keep going.

“This is where we are. These are our next goals. We need this much money to get to those goals.”

In addition to a culture that rewards and promotes learning, you need a culture that focuses on the customer.

The Marquetly team was able to escape the build trap by implementing a customer-centric product management division, supporting them with the right strategy and then enabling their processes of experimentation with safety and policies that promoted learning.

When I was first starting off as a product manager, I needed to learn about humility. I learned that my role was not that of the big idea generator but that of the bad idea terminator.

As I moved on to more senior roles, I learned that having a good strategic framework could make or break a company.

Even good product managers become tired of waking up and going to war every day.