Don't Join the Cult

Paul Adams, who runs product design at Intercom and previously led Google’s Social UX Research team and was Global Head of Brand Design at Facebook, gave this talk at Mind the Product in 2018. His message is that product managers are not the centre of the world. Everything we build is temporary: the code for the Intercom Messenger V3 was deleted five days after the talk to make way for V4. The tools and terms we use are temporary too, and methodologies like Lean and Scrum exist only in our collective imagination. As Adams puts it, “We made this shit up.” That can be liberating, because what is made up can be changed.

He compares the PM-centric view, where product managers sit at the hub and sales and support are spokes, to the geocentric world view of 500 years ago, which led people to wrong conclusions. Product managers are not the centre, nor the CEO of the product. A healthier picture is product management as one of many spokes, held together by leadership at the core, which makes teams less preoccupied, prejudiced and naive.

With that view in place, Adams presents a 12-point plan for building great products together with the rest of the organisation. The bottom line: it takes everybody to build a great product, so go wide for real impact.