It’s the end of product management as we know it.

My Cornell colleague Josh Hartmann and I recently spoke at a Cornell keynote about the rapid changes that have hit the tech world and how CEOs, CPOs, and CTOs are adapting. Let’s break down what tech leaders are doing and how you can think about evolving your product organization.

We have seen market crashes, most recently in 2001 and 2008. We have also seen several platform shifts: PCs, internet, cloud, and mobile. But we are on truly rare ground right now. A pandemic obliterated prior assumptions about office space, the market crashed, with SVB as a kicker, and we are on the precipice of a new platform shift with AI. All. At. Once.

So product management as we know it is done. It’s time to adjust our thinking, quickly.

One trend in the market is the revival of the General Manager role. This position has been around for a long time. It means running a P&L, including all costs that go into making and selling a product: product, design, engineering, marketing, sales, and operations. During the past ten years, many tech companies have used functional org designs with product, engineering, and design teams that report to their own executives without arbiters at the director or VP level who control resources cross-functionally. GMs were occasionally used in international teams or new ventures but rarely in core product development teams. In the functional model, P&L “ownership” is dispersed. During times of abundance, this org design works well because it optimizes for product decisions, tech tradeoffs, and distinct product, engineering, and design cultures. The big downside is that cross-functional decisions such as pricing changes, headcount changes, reorgs, or strategic shifts take longer because they require intense cross-functional negotiations. During times of abundance, those decisions can be slow and it is merely a nuisance. During times of scarcity, slow decisions will cause failure. We have been in abundance for 10+ years due to the incredible business models at big tech companies such as Meta and Google and the nearly endless venture capital fueling startups and growth companies.

Welcome to times of scarcity. It is now increasingly important to make hard tradeoff decisions rapidly. Creating GM roles or morphing other roles into GM roles is one tactic. I’m seeing a revival of the GM at tech companies and I like it.

It’s not the only way. AirBNB is doing something totally different. There has been a lot of talk about AirBNB implementing an Apple-style product marketing manager role that blends product and marketing. But listen to Brian Chesky carefully in his interviews; you see several key points many people are missing.

AirBNB’s efficiency is mind-blowing. They have less revenue and profit than companies like Google, but their Free Cash Flow per employee is in a league of its own. AirBNB has natural tailwinds because marketplace models at scale are highly profitable. But it’s still a remarkable example.

So what should you do in your org?

First, figure out who the decision-maker is in any given context or domain and lean into it. Great companies tend to be politically dominated by a specific function, usually driven by the founders' personalities. At Meta and Google, engineering runs the show. LinkedIn is product-driven. Apple and AirBNB are design-driven. Costco is operations-driven. The problem with these cultures is that dominant functions create the feeling of second-class citizens. Google PMs know they’re not the most important people in the room. But the advantage is giving somebody access to the accelerator and removing other people’s access to the brake pedal so you can move fast.

In today’s world, you better move fast. Figure out who should have the reins for specific decisions, and let them move.

Roles and responsibilities are frequently fuzzy, especially between product and other functions. An hour spent clarifying roles and responsibilities is a very high-leverage hour. Determine what artifacts must be created (roadmap, positioning statement, pricing page, etc.), what decisions must be made, and what activities must happen. Then make sure you have a function that clearly owns each.

Decisions need to be made by people close to the problem, with overall strategic context. If people on the ground make decisions but don’t fully understand the company’s strategy and investment areas, they won’t make the best decisions, and that’s not their fault. In contrast, ivory towers with execs making decisions on problems they don’t intimately understand will lead to failure and culture rot. So ensure your communications flow effectively; it’s the WD-40 for effective decisions. In today’s market, making difficult decisions with limited information quickly will give you the velocity you need to win.

If you have comments or questions or are taking a different approach on your team - shoot me a note!