Product Management in Practice, 2nd Edition

Chapter 7. The Worst Thing About “Best Practices”

When I train product managers at large and small organizations alike, the first thing they usually ask for is “best practices.” “How does Netflix do product management?” “How does Google define the difference between a product manager and a program manager?” “What are the things we can do to make sure we’re running product like a best-in-class organization?”

These are great questions to ask, and the answers to these questions are great to know. But implicit in these questions is often an unspoken and counterproductive addendum: “How does Netflix do product management...because if we do the same thing, then surely we will become a massively successful company.”

The appeal of this thinking is not difficult to understand. Given the ambiguity around the work of product management, it makes perfect sense to look for guidance from the companies that in many ways defined the discipline in its current form.

But the dangers of this thinking are a bit more insidious. Here are three particular ways in which a focus on best practices can actually make it more difficult for working product managers to succeed:

Focusing on best practices leads to an incurious mindset. 

Reducing product management to a set of repeatable best practices means wishing away all of the messy, unpredictable, and truly unavoidable human complexity that must be navigated in the role. Product managers who rely too much on best practices become deeply incurious about ...