Why Product Management Will Remain Vital

What works for Airbnb might not be applicable elsewhere.

Several heated debates have been triggered after Airbnb recently announced its decision to combine Product Management and Product Marketing into one department. This may or may not be the right step for Airbnb, maybe it helps them to improve communication and collaboration within the organization.

But in general, I strongly disagree. I cannot see Product Management going away anytime soon. At least not in innovative companies trying to bring new solutions to solve problems of customers. I am deeply convinced that embedding Product Management in Marketing (or any other team for that argument) will be counterproductive in the long run.

What is Product Management?

To start with, I don’t care about job titles. Instead, I am referring to a Product Manager as the person being accountable for reducing the four key risks around products:

• Customer value, sometimes called desirability, so that customers receive a benefit

• Usability so that target users can effectively utilize the product or even better love it

• Viability so that a sustained business can be built

• Feasibility in terms of technology

In early-stage companies, the founders might be in charge. But later, when the company grows, a dedicated team needs to take over. To me, this is Product Management: a person or team that is accountable to reduce and mitigate these four risks and, thus, increasing the chances of success for the business.

Why am I so convinced that our guild is here to stay? Let’s dissect a few arguments in favor of Airbnb‘s decision that I have come across (*):

#1 The Gap Filled by Product Management Will Disappear

One argument that I came across repeatedly was like this:

Traditionally, creative, technical, and business functions used to be separated by way of a huge gap. Product Managers acted as the glue to bridge that gap. But this gap is closing now.

I think exactly the opposite is true: Technology is getting increasingly complex and evolving quickly. The variety of devices grows. Customers are more and more demanding. All of that will result in higher degrees of specialization, both on the technology as well as the creative side. Ideally, such a team of specialists cooperates in an empowered team guided by a clear vision — defined by Product Management.

Of course, members of technology or creative teams can take over parts of the Product Manager‘s job. Tony Fadell might be a role model here, initially leading creative teams, then building innovative products, and finally ending up as the CEO and Founder of Nest. On a much smaller scale, I experienced a similar path from software engineer to Engineering Leader to CTO to CPO. But in these cases, the person who previously worked in another role becomes a Product Manager — rather than making the role obsolete.

#2 Automation Will Make Product Management Obsolete

A second argument I often hear is:

With advances in Generative AI as well as No Code tools, the entire Product Management job will be automated.

Sure. All Product Managers will be replaced by a Generative AI that applies web3 on top of the blockchain. Sarcasm end.

As impressive as some of the tools are, Generative AI involves training models to learn patterns and characteristics from existing data and then using that knowledge to produce original content that resembles the training data. As a consequence, all these tools do not possess genuine understanding or creativity to come up with new solutions.

It requires human curiosity to dig deeper into the problems of customers. It needs empathy to truly understand the pain points of users. Even more so in business domains that are not fully digitized, where not every single step taken by users is immediately visible in some data log. It’s simple to eye-track users of a digital app to optimize usability. Now try the same for construction workers, in industrial manufacturing or chemical plants.

#3 CPG Successfully Worked with Brand Managers

I have read something like that by a brand manager in one of the global players around fast-moving customer goods (FMCG):

It’s been like that forever in CPG. We never needed Product Managers because it’s the brand that matters. So, like in CPG, everybody should have just Brand Managers.

C’mon. I have built products for that market in previous roles. I know a bit so let’s be honest. CPG and FMCG are barely about product innovation. Maybe they innovated in advertising and marketing, where all their budgets go. To tell us that their junk food consisting of 50% fat, 45% sugar, and 4% highly processed chemicals is healthy. Or to make us buy detergents that wash whiter than white (for 100 years). „Raider is now Twix“ — wow, what an innovation.

Also, Brand Managers barely do any customer research but instead outsource this to external research agencies, such as Mintel, Kantar, and the likes. As a result: they do not research and they do not build something innovative — OK, I see the point, they might not need a true Product Manager.

But this is completely different for digital products.

#4 Product Management Needs to Own the Business

Finally, I hear an argument that goes like this:

Product Managers have to be accountable for the business success of the products they build. Hence, they will become more business leaders, similar to General Managers or Brand Managers, and their Product Management role will vanish.

The first part is true. Business viability is one of the four key risks to be addressed by Product Management. To make things even more complicated, that question arises at different levels:

• On the feature level: When we enhance our product with that specific feature, how will we distribute, market, and sell? How will it help the business?

• On the product level: When we build that specific product, what is our target market, how do we implement Go-To-Market, and why will we win?

• On the company level: What are purpose, vision, and mission? And how can we turn this into a sustained business?

The latter is probably managed on the executive leadership level but feature and product level have to be considered by Product Managers.

Sometimes, I hear people arguing in favor of Product Managers owning full P & L. Frankly, this is not realistic in most companies as it would involve so much more. But a Product Manager needs to care about selling and growing their product.

Product-Led Growth (PLG) is a strong movement in that direction. But when the product shall be used as the vehicle to acquire, onboard, monetize, and expand customers — who will design the details of the PLG strategy if not the Product Manager?

To summarize, I believe that the business success of products will become a more important aspect for Product Managers. This will strengthen their role — instead of making this function disappear.

(*) I recall these arguments top of my head as I have come across them in various blog posts or articles on LinkedIn etc. Hence, no references to specific sources or authors were given.