#40🦑 Core PM Skills - What is to be a Product Manager with ADHD? (Part 4)

How navigating the unknown can drive us to create and be paralyzed by fear all at once.

Welcome to Tech Atypically 👋, your weekly blog that explores ADHD, product management, and the complexities of a neurodiverse life. In each issue, I help you navigate the challenges of ADHD and being in the tech industry.

Part 17 of the Book of ADHD Product Management, a guide to navigating the basic principles of product management and ADHD.

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This is part 4 of “What is a product manager with ADHD”. Check out part 1, part 2, part 3.

4 aspects of a great PM

1. Be a multiplier to your stakeholders

2. Navigate the unknown

3. Write, present, talk, juggle, de-escalate, whatever needs to be done

4. The first to get blamed, the last to be praised

🌋Takeaways

• The emotional dysregulation that comes with ADHD makes navigating the unknown the ultimate driver or the greatest blocker from doing anything.

• In my experience, one of the key features that distinguish product managers from similar roles such as product owner or program manager, is the type of ambiguity they manage.

• ADHD gives me the gifts of a strong desire to create and a fear of the unknown.

• The job of a PM is not about being right or wrong but getting to the next question.

⭐Introduction

I believe that a core aspect of being a product manager is the ability to navigate the unknown and confront ambiguity. As I mentioned previously, “PMs work with whomever they can build new shit that delights customers and gets you paid”.

Making new shit often requires new ideas and approaches. It requires you to become uncomfortable with not knowing what an answer might be and taking a shot anyway. Becoming comfortable with ambiguity, uncertainty, and outright failure.

Sometimes it’s unlearning previous ideas and rebuilding how you think about your product or yourself. These experiences help you grow, but the feelings that often come with it, suck.

The emotional dysregulation that comes with ADHD makes navigating the unknown the ultimate driver or the greatest blocker from doing anything. Thanks, ADHD.

Today I talk about how the type of ambiguity PMs confront makes it unique from other roles and what a PM should be thinking when navigating the unknown.

I thought about putting a Frozen 2, “into the unknown” meme but decided against it.

🦑The responsibilities that come with ”Navigating the unknown”

In my experience, one of the key features that distinguish product managers from similar roles such as product owner or program manager, is the type of ambiguity they manage. To be clear, I’m not saying one role is better than another, I’m saying they all work towards the same goals in different ways.

Product managers tend to deal with the type of ambiguity that requires making assumptions and goals that help define the North Star for an organization. They form the top-line business “shots in the dark” or “bets” that set the tone and direction for a specific area. PMs look around the unknown, pick a point to walk towards, and try to get everyone else to walk in the same direction. With luck, they launch something new.

Program managers and product owners tend to deal more with the ambiguity of how to get to those points in the dark.

Product owners are “accountable for maximizing the value of the product resulting from the work of the Scrum Team”. (source).

Program managers are “strategic project-management professionals whose job is to help oversee and coordinate the various projects, products, and other strategic initiatives across an organization.” (source)

POs and program managers look to the goals and direction of their PM partners and work with them to define the most effective path to get to the goal. Their ambiguity is more about “how” and “when” to get there, whereas PMs focus on “where” and “should”.

Ultimately, product managers, program managers, and product owners all work on creating new shit in their own ambiguous and essential ways.

PMs rarely execute alone. You work with others to get to a place together. You get to point on where to go a little though

🦚The Gifts of ADHD - The desire to create

ADHD gives me the gift of a strong desire to create. Creating something that hasn’t been done before satisfies my need for novelty and a sense of purpose. It’s why I’m a musician, photographer, event producer, writer, fighter, athlete, and product manager (yep, I’m super ADHD).

My creative desire is what drove me to create a blog about ADHD and product management. One didn’t exist yet, so I created one. I saw there wasn’t a whiskey company that focuses on bi-cultural, BIPOC, and marginalized groups in the US. So I made that too. My ADHD drive to create has been responsible for some of my best accomplishments in my career and life.

My desire to create also gives me the gift of having to constantly confront my fear of the unknown. My fear stops me from following through with ideas or starting something new. Its ambiguity and possibility of failure are always telling me the ways I’m doing it wrong and how I’m going to fail. It can be paralyzing and I have more failed and abandoned projects than successes.

The fun part is I never know which feeling I’m going to do any task, regardless if it’s a product or creative task. I rarely have an idea how this newsletter was going to turn out. Yet each week I show up, write up some stuff, and do it again the following week. I don’t know if I’m doing it right but I keep doing it.

Here’s the thing though, the goal of a PM shouldn’t be to find the right or wrong answer. Binary outcomes are not often luxuries you get in building products. There’s too much uncertainty and uncontrollable variables to say if something was purely the right or wrong decision. Most of the time the answer is, “Maybe? Let’s try the next thing and see how it goes”.

Instead, the job of a PM should be to guide teams to the next decision point. To the next data point where new information can be assessed, bets calculated, and action taken. It’s not about being right or wrong, it’s about getting to the next question. Navigating the unknown rarely gives you binary answers so why should I enforce them on myself?

✨Conclusion

I have no idea what I’m doing as an ADHD coach, ADHD writer/speaker, CPO of a whiskey company, and product manager in tech. On paper, no one person should be doing these all at once. It’s too many responsibilities, ambiguous, needed skills, and makes no sense.

Yet, I came up with a vision for myself to be an ADHD coach for tech professionals who also runs a whiskey company, and works on global tech products when interested.

I stared into the unknown and made my own world. The fear is always there but I keep choosing to keep going. All thanks to ADHD and good friends.

Keep creating friends.

🐼Want to learn more, talk to me.

⏭️Next Week

What is a PM with ADHD? Part 5 Be a multiplier to your stakeholders