Product Management Mastery: Why PMs Fail and How to Succeed

Product management expert Christian Idiodi reveals why most PMs fail, his proven reference customer method, and leadership secrets.

Key Takeaways

• Most people dislike product managers because they haven't experienced truly competent ones who earn trust through deep expertise.
• Value is the most overlooked and critical aspect of the four PM competencies (value, usability, viability, feasibility).
• Reference customers willing to recommend your product are the ultimate validation of product-market fit and business success.
• Building trust requires demonstrating competence by learning from the most influential people in your organization first.
• Promotion failures happen when people advance without practicing leadership skills before receiving the title or responsibility.
• Great coaching focuses on creating safe practice environments rather than expecting perfection in high-stakes situations.
• Product management essence: wake up to solve problems for others well enough that they give something back.
• The fastest path to organizational trust involves asking influential leaders to teach you their expertise.
• Successful products emerge from immersing yourself with customers who have real problems until you solve them completely.

Timeline Overview

• 00:00–15:00 — Christian's background at SVPG, why product managers are disliked, and the competency-based nature of the role
• 15:00–30:00 — The four PM competencies with focus on value, plus introduction to reference customers as discovery method
• 30:00–45:00 — Detailed example of building staffing product using reference customer approach, generating $32M in first 90 days
• 45:00–60:00 — Coaching techniques for building trust with executives and becoming better leaders through practice environments
• 60:00–75:00 — Promotion pitfalls, training before titles, and finding good coaches in absence of formal programs
• 75:00–90:00 — Christian's nonprofit work in Africa, lightning round questions, and final advice on product passion

Why Product Managers Are Often Disliked

• Product management competency centers on representing customers better than anyone else in the organization, combined with deep knowledge of data, industry, business, and the product itself. When someone possesses this level of expertise, teams naturally trust their decision-making because they become the logical person to consult when customer-related problems arise.
• Many organizations experience misplaced influence and mistrust because of poor PM competency, where others feel they know more about the business or customers. This creates tension when people question why they should take direction from someone they perceive as less knowledgeable than themselves.
• The role functions as a team sport where product managers work with others to discover solutions, but friction emerges when PMs cannot deliver results that help teams meet their desired outcomes. Teams lose confidence when their PM fails to demonstrate the expertise necessary to guide important decisions.
• Executive-driven or sales-driven product management often indicates that the discipline has not elevated itself to earn decision-making authority. The individual PM and the broader discipline must prove competency to gain the right to influence what gets built and prioritized.
• Building competency requires a period of humility where product managers acknowledge what they don't know and actively work to accelerate their learning. This involves finding the most influential person in the organization and asking them to teach you or volunteer to help them with their work.
• Trust develops through extending another person's credibility to yourself while building genuine relationships with influential stakeholders. The goal is learning what drives that person's influence, which typically stems from their competence in business or customer knowledge, then continuing discovery work until you surpass their expertise level.

The Four Core Competencies of Product Management

• Product teams work together to uncover solutions while managing four types of inherent risk: value risk (will people buy, choose, or use it), usability risk (can they use it), feasibility risk (can we build it), and viability risk (does it work for our business). Product managers specifically drive value and viability while partnering with designers and engineers on all four aspects.
• Value represents the most important and most overlooked competency because teams often receive roadmaps of predetermined projects and features to build. When leadership assigns specific features, teams assume value without questioning whether customers actually want what they're building or if better alternatives exist.
• The certificate of appreciation concept illustrates product management essence: you wake up to solve problems for someone else and must do it well enough that they give you something valuable in return. This return could be revenue, engagement, loyalty, references, or other meaningful forms of appreciation that validate your solution's worth.
• Product managers often fail at value because they mistake usability testing results for true validation, assuming that because 300 users scored something 84% positive means people will actually buy it. Just because someone can use your product doesn't guarantee they will choose it, buy it, or continue using it regularly.
• Teams frequently get trapped in bad patterns where they check boxes on roadmap items without ensuring they're solving meaningful problems. The core job involves ensuring teams work on something people genuinely want, making the PM accountable when everything goes wrong despite shared credit when everything succeeds.
• Product management becomes incredibly fulfilling when practitioners recognize they have inherent permission to solve problems on behalf of others. "If it's not fun you're probably not doing it right, if it's not hard you're probably also not doing it right" captures the essence of this challenging but rewarding discipline.

Reference Customers: The Ultimate Discovery Method

• Reference customers represent the Holy Grail of product work - people who have used your solution, love it enough to tell others about it, and are willing to put their reputation on the line by recommending it. This willingness to recommend creates the ultimate definition of customer love and product-market fit validation.
• The technique works by discovering who has the problem while simultaneously discovering and delivering a solution to that problem. Rather than staying in your building with assumptions and opinions, you immerse yourself in the environment with people who have the actual problem and don't leave until you solve it completely.
• For B2B products, you need six to eight reference customers willing to recommend your solution, while B2C requires 15 to 25 references as indication of product-market fit. These numbers provide statistical confidence that you've solved a problem shared by many people, not just a few edge cases with unique situations.
• The pressure-cooker discovery approach accelerates learning because you're forced to confront real constraints and feedback immediately. When you ask someone to leave a five-star review and they hesitate, you discover their real concerns rather than polite responses people give to avoid hurting feelings.
• This method eliminates product failures because it includes a natural pivot mechanism - if you cannot find enough people willing to work with you and eventually recommend your solution, you shouldn't build that product. The recruitment challenge itself serves as market validation since people with real problems will engage with potential solutions.
• Reference customers provide authentic marketing language and sales materials because you use exactly what customers tell you rather than making up descriptions. When customers say your product is "cool and sleek," you market it as cool and sleek, ensuring expectations match reality and preventing disappointment after launch.

Building Products Through Real Customer Immersion

• The staffing product example demonstrates reference customer methodology in action, starting with a Starbucks executive calling about 800 potentially undocumented workers needing replacement after an acquisition. Rather than assuming solutions, the team drove around investigating who else faced similar hiring challenges, discovering construction sites, retail stores, and seasonal businesses with urgent staffing needs.
• McDonald's became the first test case where the team committed to sending interview candidates in exchange for payment only for successful hires. The initial attempt failed dramatically with poor show-up rates, but this failure taught crucial industry dynamics about minimum wage worker behavior and interview patterns.
• Learning from failure, the team doubled recruiting efforts and implemented reminder calls, ultimately helping McDonald's hire 45-50 people successfully. This success led to the breakthrough insight about volume requirements - sending 3,000 candidates to help Starbucks hire 800 people, accounting for industry-standard no-show rates.
• The Los Angeles Airport contract taught important lessons about customer selection when demographic matching requirements made staffing incredibly difficult and expensive. This experience helped define ideal customer profiles and avoid painful market segments that didn't align with their capabilities and business model.
• Technology development emerged naturally from team members being immersed in the problem rather than writing requirements documents or user stories. Engineers and designers witnessed recruiting challenges firsthand, leading them to build scaling tools, notification systems, mapping features, and interview management platforms organically.
• The product launched with $32 million in sales during its first 90 days because major customers like McDonald's, Starbucks, and NASCAR had already validated the solution through direct collaboration. Reference customers became immediate revenue sources rather than requiring separate sales and marketing efforts to find new buyers.

Coaching Excellence and Building Organizational Trust

• Most people provide poor coaching because they've never experienced good coaching themselves, and people generally cannot give others what they haven't received. Corporate structures often fail at creating high performance because leadership lacks fundamental coaching skills, despite coaching being the daily job of managers rather than one-time activities like vision creation.
• The fastest method for building trust involves making influential people accountable for your success by asking them to teach you. When you approach the loudest, most influential person in your organization and request mentorship, you force relationship building while extending their credibility to yourself through association.
• Trust acceleration happens when you accompany influential leaders to meetings for a full week as a quiet observer. This impossible-to-refuse request creates forced interactions where the leader naturally introduces you to their network, shares context about company dynamics, and becomes invested in your success to protect their reputation as a teacher.
• Companies fail to create practice environments for essential skills, expecting people to perform perfectly in high-stakes situations without preparation. Good coaching requires designing safe spaces where people can make mistakes, receive feedback, and improve their capabilities before consequences become serious for the organization.
• The most powerful emotional intelligence technique involves reversing typical power dynamics by making senior people accountable for your outcomes. Rather than seeking approval, you position yourself as someone they need to develop successfully, which creates psychological investment in your growth and achievement.
• Coaching transforms individual performance across entire organizations because it addresses the root cause of most product problems. Every significant product challenge can be traced back to people issues, making coaching skills essential for any leader serious about driving sustainable business results.

Avoiding Promotion Pitfalls Through Preparation

• Early promotion failures occur when companies promote people to learn jobs rather than to perform jobs they've already demonstrated competency in. A successful engineer promoted to engineering manager faces identity crisis when recognition disappears and micromanagement patterns emerge because they've never practiced management skills before receiving the title.
• The promotion competency gap creates dysfunction when newly promoted leaders cannot admit ignorance without appearing incompetent, forcing them to Google management techniques and implement random frameworks without proper understanding. This cycle perpetuates poor leadership practices throughout organizations as people copy ineffective approaches from their managers.
• Preparation for leadership roles must happen before promotion, not after, by giving people opportunities to practice management skills in safe environments. Rather than waiting until someone becomes a VP to learn VP responsibilities, organizations should create structured ways for potential leaders to exercise those capabilities with proper coaching and feedback.
• Group product manager roles exemplify smart progression when used correctly - giving someone one direct report to test management interest and capability before expanding responsibility. However, many companies skip this validation step and assign multiple direct reports to unproven managers, amplifying bad practices across larger teams.
• Leadership development requires creating succession plans where potential managers practice leadership skills while still in individual contributor roles. This approach allows mistakes without serious consequences while building confidence and competency before formal authority creates higher stakes for performance failures.
• The "doing VP things" mentality helps individual contributors understand promotion paths while demonstrating readiness through actual performance rather than theoretical knowledge. When someone already performs at the next level consistently, promotion becomes obvious and uncontroversial rather than a risky bet on potential rather than proven capability.