Equity of Trust

Trust that is earned, and later cashed in, for product teams

As many of us likely know, being a Product Manager is a tough job in the real world - i.e. away from the sanitised version described in books, workshops, bootcamps etc. Product managers rely on colleagues to get stuff done, and while this is true of all parts of the business, I feel this is especially critical to the product role where there is a large degree of coordination of efforts, between engineers, designers, marketers, sales, leadership, other product teams… all need to be in sync and aligned for product to be thought up, built, out the door and successful.

And guess what, this doesn’t always work right.

When this happens, product teams rely on others to help in a variety of ways.

• Engineers jump in to find the bugs.

• Support teams handle the disgruntled customers.

• Marketing & Sales manage their accounts and contacts, and the wider public image.

• Leadership carve out the time, resources, budget needed to ensure there are no blockers to a speedy resolution.

These are basic, I know, and there are more teams that support.

Throughout all this, they also want those teams to NOT throw them under the bus.

Here is my spicy take: