Growing a Teachable Spirit in Product Management

One of the most grueling belt ranks in my system of martial arts is first kub, or the rank right before first degree black belt. In yongmudo, first kub is considered a black belt candidate, which means all of the black belts in the club begin to be very helpful at the same time, and offer all sorts of suggestions for how to get you to the right level of fitness and form to succeed on the test.

In some ways, the bombardment of feedback is both gratifying and demoralizing. On the one hand, people care enough to give you feedback. On the other hand, you’re in the unenviable position of having everything you thought you did well criticized in the name of helping you get better. The only way to survive is to grow a teachable spirit, or the ability to seek and integrate feedback, no matter how harsh.

This same attitude is integral to a product manager, as customer feedback is the lynchpin of developing a product strategy that really makes a difference.

“What I believe is that all clear-minded people should remain two things throughout their lifetimes: Curious and teachable.”
― Roger Ebert

#1 Create a space for honest feedback

Getting people to say what they’re really thinking is sometimes like pulling teeth. As any user researcher will tell you, often people will subconsciously want to please you by telling you something you want to hear. They’ll try to be as helpful as possible, because that’s a part of the social contract of meeting with a product manager in the first place. But that often means that you might get inaccurate or misleading information.

I often walk into customer meetings and tell the people in the room that I’m looking to discover what works and what doesn’t work for them in their current system, no matter what it is. I create space for them to express their frustration with their current workflows, and reward them for their candor with proof of active listening. By picking away at topics as they come up, I’m able to get a more real picture of friction in the design process, which I then take back as real problems to solve on Adobe XD.

#2 Actively listen without reacting

Active listening, for me, often looks like summarizing or rephrasing someone’s feedback, positive or negative. This gives those in the room the feeling that I’m responding to them and engaging with their ideas. However, one of the things that I have to do is not emotionally react to what they’re saying. They could be criticizing something I worked on or a topic I feel strongly about. But if I rise to the bait, I can destroy the very sense of safety that enables them to share in the first place.

I’m going to pause right here and say that this is probably the most difficult part of taking any kind of criticism. Simply listening, without giving into the temptation to respond defensively or in a knee-jerk reaction, is a tough thing to do when you’re close to a specific subject. This is, in part, why it’s sometimes a good idea to have the help of a separate research arm that is more detached from the product; as independent researchers, they’re better able to ensure the feedback is honest and contains less bias.

In my martial arts career, I’ve found that the simple act of listening and asking clarifying questions has given me more insight into my own problem areas. But this wasn’t always the case; historically, I’ve always taken criticism of my athletic performance as criticism of myself as a person. However, by intentionally divorcing the two concepts in my head, I’ve been able to more quickly identify and address these issues and improve more rapidly.

#3 Filter the information afterward with a lens of digging into subtext

Customers will often tell you what they want, and often times will identify very specific solutions. But most of them will define a feature set because they see it as a solution to a problem. In product, you’re more interested in the underlying issue than in the solutions the customers offer. After your research trip, the hard process of qualitative analysis comes in: you want to identify the structural issues in whatever problem you’re solving in order to address the real problem the customer is trying to solve, not just the outcome.

For instance, a user could tell you they want a post-hole digger, which is a tool to make holes in the ground. But when you ask a little bit more about why they’re asking for a post-hole digger, you’d discover that what they’re trying to accomplish is putting up a fence. So while a post-hole digger helps solve a part of the process of putting up the fence, it isn’t actually what they want. By looking at your qualitative feedback with the lens of problem-identification instead of taking your customers’ feedback at face value, you begin to open up a broader set of features that would address a larger market.

Similarly, I often take in feedback on my martial arts performance (often specific pointers on techniques) and build a foundational concept that I can work on. Whether it’s hip placement, power, or other concept, these frameworks help me to find and implement solutions that will affect multiple areas of my performance.

#4 Develop and test solutions

Once you have validation that the problem exists, the next step is to craft a solution that might meet that need that the customer has expressed, and then bringing that solution to the customer to test to see how it meets their needs. This, too, is a part of the listening process. For digital products, prototypes are a huge part of this process, but it doesn’t have to be a huge investment; some have run paper prototypes instead of investing in digital prototypes for testing their concepts. By iterating on this feature (or product)-market fit exercise before development happens, you save a lot of time and money — because building the wrong product is much more expensive than all this testing up front.

Similarly, in martial arts, one of the biggest dangers is developing muscle memory of an incorrectly performed technique. I try to fix these issues in my students before they get cemented in, as unteaching poor techniques (or breaking bad habits) is an order of magnitude more difficult than correcting after it’s the only way a student knows how to do a technique.

The longer I practice martial arts, the more I realize that it’s not just about self-discipline and hard work; it’s about a profound shift in mindset. From lessons in selflessness to pushing one’s ego aside, from measuring oneself through achievement and accomplishment to a pursuit of lifelong learning, martial arts has influenced both the way I perceive life as well as the way I approach my profession.

This kicks off a new series: one that focuses on how martial arts applies to the art of product management. Want more of this type of content? Let me know by applauding, leaving a message for me here, or contacting me on Twitter.

“Too Big for Tae Kwon Do?” courtesy Paul. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 2.0 Generic.

“Year 2, Day 51 of 365” courtesy Michael. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 2.0 Generic, with color edits.