The Small Dose of Product Management Needed for Successful Teams

Speaker 1
Where we have one, one product manager for like two major products that each have, what are you kind of like six active teams, maybe across the two products, hey, in basecamp? That's enough. Each single team need just one sixth, and it's not even one sixth, because Brian is also thinking about the next cycle and so on. They get one tenth of Brian in a given cycle. That's enough. That drop of product management is all you need. It's like the food coloring, right? You have this beautiful clear glass, one drop of red, boom, the whole glass is red. You don't need to mix in a gallon to turn it red. So realizing that it's not that this is no management, it's not that this is a flat organization, it's not that there's no hierarchy, it's not that there's no one thinking about where the product needs to go, it's that those things can be done at a much, much smaller doses than almost everyone realizes.
Speaker 3
Okay, so you guys might not know the answer to this, but I'm just curious about your opinion, because we've seen in tech huge numbers of hiring, but then also huge numbers of firing. Like where are companies getting it wrong? Clearly, we operate with very small teams. Other software companies have triple quadruple the size, but aren't necessarily making updates as often. Like where did it go wrong?
Speaker 2
There's probably a lot to say here. Most of it's upstream where the ambition is so large in the projects balloon and there's too much planning, central long-term planning. Like here's our roadmap for two years. Here's all the things we promised our customers that we're going to do. Here's what we promised our investors, how much we're going to grow. Like there's all these promises that are pushed out into the future.

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