As a product manager who’s trying to do the right thing in a room full of strong opinions and hidden agendas, I want to learn how to read the room, speak up without starting a war, and influence people without feeling fake or manipulative so that I can protect my reputation and still push the product in the right direction.
When did product management turn into running for office? In this episode, the guys dig into the reality of product management politics and what it really takes to influence without authority. They debate whether great PMs have to act like politicians, what separates ethical influence from manipulation, and why stakeholder alignment often matters more than your title.
You’ll hear practical ways to read the room, build coalitions across teams, and avoid the quiet mistakes that quietly damage trust. They also talk about the lines you don’t cross, like trading long-term credibility for short-term wins or cheerleading an idea before doing the hard fact-finding.
If you’re stuck navigating strong personalities and organizational politics, this conversation will hit close to home. Pull up a chair on the porch, rethink how you show up in tough rooms, and learn how to move decisions forward without selling out your integrity.
Introduction and Setting the Stage
[00:00] Why “politician” isn’t a dirty word – Reframing the PM role as managing expectations, not manipulating outcomes
[01:02] PM as an ethical politician – Understanding constituents, pain points, and communication
[02:48] The compliment that sparks debate – Is politicking actually a core PM skill?
The Role of Politics in Product Management
[04:29] Building coalitions without authority – Why influence matters more than org charts
[05:27] Advocacy vs. selfish intent – Defining good versus bad politicking
[06:38] Ethical influence explained – Championing product, customers, and stakeholders
[08:59] Trust as the foundation – How transparency shapes perception
[12:32] Anchor to the problem – Defend the customer problem, not your personal idea
Stakeholder Management and Social Dynamics
[14:25] “Mayor of your product” – Listening, shaking hands, and making people feel heard
[15:01] Power dynamics in the room – Why people laugh harder at the boss’s jokes
[17:24] Reading the room – Knowing when to push and when to pull back
[21:45] Early-career mistake – Talking too much instead of asking better questions
[23:37] Learning through feedback – How experience sharpens political instincts
Unspoken Rules and Ethical Boundaries
[24:08] Politics as unspoken norms – Making invisible expectations visible
[25:43] Lines you don’t cross – Never weaponize confidential information
[26:09] Don’t trade long-term trust – Short-term wins can cost your reputation
[26:47] No empty promises – Protect credibility at all costs
[27:09] Fact-finding before cheerleading – Data first, advocacy second
Key Takeaways and Conclusion
[28:41] You can’t avoid politics – Influence is part of the job
[29:01] Urgency must be real – Anchor decisions in explainable problems
[29:34] Integrity over labels – Call it politics or influence, just do it ethically
[30:15] Final reflections – Moving decisions forward without selling out
Todd Blaquiere (00:00):
Hey, thanks for listening. Please subscribe to our newsletter at theproductporch.com for notifications on the latest episodes and exclusive
Joe Ghali (00:06):
Content. So politician, maybe it's the wrong phrase, maybe it's a really good product manager has to be really good at managing the expectations of stakeholders.
Todd Blaquiere (00:17):
For the third time in this episode, I'm going to take this wrench and I'll throw it right in the spokes. I think you have to behave like a politician sometimes in product management. Okay.
Joe Ghali (00:30):
[00:00:30] Welcome to The Product Porch with Ryan Cantwell, Todd Blaquiere, and me, Joe Ghali. Today we dig into what it means to practice good politics as a product manager and the lines you should cross. Now settle in folks because on the product porch, every topic is a product topic.
Ryan Cantwell (00:48):
Joe, just doing a little
Joe Ghali (00:50):
Dance. I'm stuck in my house all day. It's like freezing cold out here. It's like I need something to work off some of this energy.
Ryan Cantwell (00:58):
Joe, you live in Milwaukee. It's always freezing [00:01:00] cold until May rolls around.
Joe Ghali (01:02):
Yeah. We have two seasons in Wisconsin. We have winter and summer. We just forego the fall and the spring. We just jump. Gentlemen, it is good to see both of you. Happy Monday. Yes. I'm excited about tonight's topic because it's something I've talked about in the past just in conversations with both of you. And I wanted to level set and just make sure I'm not speaking bad truths [00:01:30] about the role of the product manager. And in the past, I've always said that a really good product manager is like a politician, but I'm like, not in a bad way. And the reason why I say that is I say, all right, a politician has to understand their constituents. They have to understand the needs of their constituents of their group. They have to understand their pain points. They have to meet people where they are. They have to be a good [00:02:00] communicator.
(02:00):
They have to be charismatic. They have to be a really good storyteller. You have to rally the troops around. You have to get people around the organization to kind of follow your lead. You're motivational. You got some charisma. So when I say product manager, I think a really good ethical, am I going to say, I'm going to say ethical product individual. What say you? Am I too positive when I think about it? Am I missing something [00:02:30] glaring?
Ryan Cantwell (02:31):
I guess first things first, I love how you immediately had to qualify a politician, but not in a bad way.
Joe Ghali (02:38):
I just feel like in this world we live in today, you say politician and it drops you into one or two spots and I just assume not be dropped into one or two spots.
Ryan Cantwell (02:48):
Yeah. And the second thing, Joe, is I'm going to hit you with the unexpected. If there were a product management manager's role model for being [00:03:00] a good politician in that role, it would be you.
Joe Ghali (03:04):
Okay. Thank you. Well, hopefully we can unwind this and it's all good. Hopefully there's nothing there that's like, wow, I just got dissed. Or is that what kids call when they go, I got lit up or I got ... What's not flamed? What's the term? Gaslit? Am I using those terms wrong? I'm not. I'm not hip, Joe. I'm not hip. Yeah. I'm so mid. I'm so mid. [00:03:30] Todd, you've been
Todd Blaquiere (03:31):
Quiet. I think the perception is what matters. So if you're going to walk in the room and say, "I'm a politician." You got to be ready for however anyone's going to take that.
Ryan Cantwell (03:43):
Yeah.
Todd Blaquiere (03:43):
And so my assumption though is when you're asking that question, you're not asking about the term politician. You're not actually asking us if we should put that in our resume or on LinkedIn or refer to ourselves as politicians. I assume what you're asking is, is there any virtue [00:04:00] in the act of politicking? Is there any value found in being a politician and what that means? Is that your real question, Joe?
Joe Ghali (04:12):
It is.
Todd Blaquiere (04:12):
So if you listed out all the things a politician does, made a nice buffet of politician behaviors and capabilities or whatever, is there anything worthwhile in there for a product manager?
Joe Ghali (04:29):
I think so. [00:04:30] The first thing that comes to mind is as a really good and effective product manager, you build coalitions. Across the organization, you build coalitions, you bring people along with you in the journey because we're mostly individual contributors. We don't necessarily have control, right? We don't have people reporting into us. And so we have to influence, we have to motivate, we have to get people excited, right? We have to get all these different groups [00:05:00] across organization that are complimentary to our function and get them to march in our direction.That's the first thing that comes to mind because ultimately we're individual, mostly, not all, mostly product managers that I've seen are ICs and because of that, the act of building coalitions across organization, that's a critical skill that a successful product manager possesses.
Ryan Cantwell (05:27):
Yeah. If I try to look at [00:05:30] the buffet of political skills, I guess, is what we're talking about, right? I think about a politician is going to be advocating for a very specific outcome. I think that is admirable for a product manager. We're focused. We need to not only focus, but Liz Jo is coordinate people towards that particular outcome. So I think that would come off the buffet into a product manager's purview.
Joe Ghali (05:59):
Yep. [00:06:00] I would think also in that buffet is storytelling. You're going to have to tell the same story over and over again. You're going to have to be really effective and inspiring maybe is a little too, not drastic, but you're going to have to tell the same story over and over again to get people to rally behind you. And maybe that's tied to the coalition piece of it of the buffet. Maybe they're next to each other.
Ryan Cantwell (06:22):
And I think there's an important distinction to make here because would Joe immediately qualified, but the good kind of politicking. [00:06:30] And I want to say the bad kind of politicking I think can be defined as those with selfish intent. There
Joe Ghali (06:37):
You go. Yep.
Ryan Cantwell (06:38):
The good kind of politicking is that where you are advocating for your product, your customer, or perhaps any stakeholders, you're making more consideration than just your selfish motivations.
Todd Blaquiere (06:56):
How does a product manager avoid being [00:07:00] perceived as a negative politicker? So what Ryan just said is it's intent, right? It's indefinitely intent. Yeah. Okay. Let me share a couple quick things. I think it's fair to say that not everyone in this country has the same view of every president that we've had.
Ryan Cantwell (07:16):
No, fair.
Todd Blaquiere (07:17):
I'm going to guess that they differ.
Ryan Cantwell (07:19):
Yeah.
Todd Blaquiere (07:20):
The presidents, regardless of which one you're talking about, doesn't even matter, makes a decision and half of the country says, "Wow, smart." [00:07:30] That person loves America. The other half says, evil, destroying America. Now let me take it home to the business world. So I had a boss one time, should not think much of me. She wasn't a big fan of the Todd. I posted one time to announce to the company. I posted to announce about new personas we had made to define a certain user base. I shouted [00:08:00] out the fact that this was a cross collaborative effort between, and I call it shout out different teams and things that it went through. And then I said, "Hey, this is a living document that will breathe and change and as we learn, we'll update it. " And then I showed everyone, told everyone where they could find the document.
(08:15):
The next time I met with that manager, who was not a big fan of the Todd, told me that that was an example of how I'm all about me and I'm not about the team. I'm all about I and not we. I had to go back and [00:08:30] reread it. I'm like, "I don't even say I in here." But her belief behind the intent of that posting was for me to elevate my own status and position, for me to say, "Look at how amazing I am." So I'm challenging you all in that Ryan said it's intent. How does a product manager behave with those good politician skills without giving the intent of a negative politician?
Joe Ghali (08:59):
I mean, I think it comes [00:09:00] down to trust, right? It's how do you build trust with people that don't agree with you? How are you vulnerable? How do you show that vulnerability? I mean, I'm just thinking off the top of my head, I think it has to ... And Todd, I mean, the reality, and tell me if you think I'm wrong on this, not everyone's going to always be on your side. Sometimes there are just some ... As a product manager, you're not going to make everyone happy. And that there's some things that are out of our control and we can't [00:09:30] let those things weigh us down. At least that's the way I look at it. I think this is where the negative, we start going into the negative again, we start becoming people pleasers. This is where the people pleaser part of product management becomes really delicate because if we spend more of our time people pleasing, then that's at our unhappiness.
(09:51):
Then long term, that's going to have a negative impact in terms of your reputation. As a product leader, sometimes you just have to make tough decisions. And if you can [00:10:00] back it up with data and justify it, then so be it. And you guys know me better than anyone, as well as anyone that's ever worked with me. I'm super sensitive. I can admit it. If I hear the slightest thing, it takes me a while sometimes to kind of recover from it. And that's something that's in my journey as a product leader. But sometimes we just can't make everyone happy. Try to make everyone happy is a bad thing. And I learned that the hard way.
Ryan Cantwell (10:27):
I think a step in that direction is transparency. [00:10:30] I mean, I will make declarations, whether it's right, wrong, or indifferent where I ... And I recognize this is a shortcoming gift for me. I always put qualifiers on things that I say, and this is the way I do that, where I say, "This may be very selfish for me, but I am going to ask for this. " So people know my intent. It's more explicit and overt as I go about it. But I think having some self-awareness around how you're approaching different [00:11:00] subjects and helping others kind of see where you're coming from can help overcome that a little bit. Now, Todd, in your example, that's like a really good case study, but what's missing there is, and you kind of teed it up this way, she didn't like you. So is there some fabrication? I mean, if you look back on it, honestly speaking, if the unbiased third party walked in, would they said, "Nope, Todd, you did it wrong."
Todd Blaquiere (11:29):
I mean, [00:11:30] I asked for some feedback on that just to see if I missed something, but others said no, but it looked
Ryan Cantwell (11:36):
Fine. Yeah.
Todd Blaquiere (11:37):
But to that point though, that's what I was just trying to say is intent. Well, what could you do? And I think you started with the right thing there just generally, and that's transparency. Bad politicians want to be in the dark in secret. That's where secret deals get done.
Ryan Cantwell (11:54):
In the shadows.
Todd Blaquiere (11:55):
In the room where it happens, right? Yeah.
Ryan Cantwell (11:57):
So
Todd Blaquiere (11:58):
That's where they want to get things done. [00:12:00] So to your point, transparency is one great way of saying it. Show people this is how we make decisions. This is our process. This is how we gather information. This is what we do and then be consistent. You can't treat any case differently than another.
Ryan Cantwell (12:16):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Consistency is a good
Todd Blaquiere (12:18):
One. When you bring to us a new concept or idea, we go through the same process to validate it. We observe it in the same way. We create the same data where we don't pick and choose [00:12:30] our winners.
Joe Ghali (12:32):
I want to add to that and then I want to move on, but you talked about how do we avoid the negative intent? And what I had written down was anchor everything to a problem, anchoring it to a problem, not a position.
Todd Blaquiere (12:50):
Interesting. Say more about that.
Joe Ghali (12:52):
Well, it's like bad intent starts when we defend our idea instead [00:13:00] of the customer problem. So it's like, okay, why are we here? Why do I feel this way? Let's go back. Let's make sure we can anchor on what problem are we trying to solve for? Because then you're showing it's not, I'm trying to justify or defend my idea. I'm like, "Hey, let's remember why we're here. We're here to solve this. Here's how we're going to solve it. " Or, "Here's why I think this is the right way to solve it. " It's like, why are we here? It's not because Joe wants to look good. [00:13:30] It's because we're trying to address a need. We're trying to address a pain point. And we've done that because we've empathized with them. We've talked to them. We understood, we understand the current state and we want to make it better for them.
(13:42):
Yeah. All right. So let me ask you this guys. Instead of politician, is it better to reframe it that it's more about stakeholder management? Because we've talked about a lot of the same elements. So politician, maybe it's the wrong phrase, [00:14:00] maybe it's a really good product manager has to be really good at managing the expectations of stakeholders. Is that an oversimplification?
Todd Blaquiere (14:09):
For the third time in this episode, I'm going to take this ranch and I'll throw it right in the spokes. It's okay. I think you have to behave like a politician sometimes in product management. I don't think it's purely stakeholder management. Okay.
Ryan Cantwell (14:25):
So the analogy I use is I say, you're the mayor of your product, you're shaking hands, [00:14:30] you're kissing babies. Oh,
Joe Ghali (14:33):
I love that.
Ryan Cantwell (14:35):
Being the mayor of your product.
Joe Ghali (14:38):
I love that.
Ryan Cantwell (14:40):
And I think what I'm trying to say very flippantly is you got to make people here heard. Go listen to them.
Todd Blaquiere (14:49):
Yeah.
Ryan Cantwell (14:50):
I don't know. Did I unclug the wrench?
Todd Blaquiere (14:54):
No, I think that's only part of it. Look, I was watching the show, TV show Scrubs the other [00:15:00] day.
Ryan Cantwell (15:00):
Yeah. Great show.
Todd Blaquiere (15:01):
And he's a resident and he has a bunch of new interns and he's talking about how they're all buddies. They all love him. And every time he makes a joke, they all laugh and he just thinks he's so funny and someone points out they're only laughing because you're the boss. So then he tries to joke on a couple other people and no one laughs and he forces his team to stop laughing at fake jokes. And then he tells a joke and no one laughs. Just stop laughing at unfunny jokes. So then he tells a joke, nobody laughs at the joke. [00:15:30] So I turned to my wife, I said, "That is real." That right there is a real thing. I find it in meetings with my team. I find it, I make some innocuous dad joke and there's just a little too much laughter. You know what I mean?
(15:46):
It's like not enough eye rolls to that funny. It's like, not that funny, but I get it. Why I have power. That's
Ryan Cantwell (15:53):
Why.
Todd Blaquiere (15:54):
It's the same with my boss. Leadership in the team room and you think leadership team in the room, you think, oh, well, at this [00:16:00] level now we're all, no one's going to behave that way. No, we all behave the same way. He tells a joke. I'm sure it's funny. We laugh just a little bit more than we should, little harder than you should at the dad joke. That to me is a little bit of politics because you recognize power and want to find favor with that power.
Ryan Cantwell (16:22):
Now,
Todd Blaquiere (16:23):
I just, in my head, thought of two different examples from recent American [00:16:30] history, but I won't share either of them because someone might be offended just because I share a historical example. So I'm not going to share one. But the reality is this is a bit of politicking. You want to have favor with the person that has power. Now I'm going to say you got to do a little bit of that. You got to do a little bit of that. I don't think you serves you well to completely ... And I've tried to go the [00:17:00] other way. I've tried to go the other way. I won't even give my boss a compliment because I'm so worried that they're going to think I'm a brown noser. That doesn't help anyone. That doesn't help me. That doesn't help my team. So anyway, so that's what I'm saying.
(17:14):
There's my wrench in the spokes. I actually think sometimes you got to laugh a little louder at a joke. So this talks about the soft skills. No. Call
Ryan Cantwell (17:22):
It social dynamics.
Joe Ghali (17:24):
I mean, you got to be able to ... Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. Here we go. I just channeled my lethal [00:17:30] weapon to Jill Pesci. Anybody get that reference? Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Great movie. Maybe a little vulgar, but I digress. You've got to be able to read the room. When we talk about a product manager, you got to be able to read the room. You got to know when to press the buttons and you got to know when to pull back. It's a delicate line though. I think it's a delicate line.
Todd Blaquiere (17:51):
Well, to do a quick recap. Let's do a quick recap on the hard things, like the hard line rules that I think we can all agree to. And then let's talk about [00:18:00] the soft fuzzy area where it gets uncomfortable. So you're transparent about your process, you're consistent, you are using data and you're doing that to build trust and orient people around outcomes and problems. All that to me is like the hard shell.That's all the like, yes, we all have to do that. Those are the boundaries. That's a very safe place to play. Then the fuzzy, uncomfortable gray area is how often do you have to go to dinner with the boss when he invites you to dinner? [00:18:30] How much of that is real? How many laughs and giggles is too many laughs and giggles? When do you agree to a point of view, even though it's not perfectly aligned with what you actually think is right?
Joe Ghali (18:45):
I don't know that there's an exact answer to that. I think you have to understand the audience in order to determine what the fine line is on that.
Todd Blaquiere (18:55):
How do you begin building that sense though? You talk about reading the room. How do you begin building that sense? [00:19:00] If I'm brand new, I mean, look, I'll tell another story. We had a new intern on one of our teams. Oh my goodness. This intern showed up in a tank top drinking out of a big gulp the first time he met with me and I was the boss of his boss. The first time I met him sucking on the straw, wearing his tank top, and I'm going, [00:19:30] "What the heck is this? " When I asked him what he brings to the role, what he thinks he's bringing and experiences, skills we could leverage. He talked about his ability to speak another language and how much he plays guitar. I'm like, "Okay. We don't have bilingual dance offs here or anything, so I don't know that it's going to be useful." He just had no sense of how to behave.
(19:58):
Now, I'm giving the most extreme example [00:20:00] of someone you would say like, "Well, that kid just needs help. Needs some drastic help." But I'm saying some people come into the world, they come into the world. They come into the world of business. They come in the world of products manager, their first time products manager or a business analyst. How do they know to strike this balance? What could they be looking for to avoid being the brown noser, but at the same time, make sure that they demonstrate their integrity, but at the same time, play the game enough [00:20:30] that they don't get looked over and pass by.
Joe Ghali (20:33):
This is where you're an active listener. You have to be a really good active listener. You have to listen with intent.
(20:41):
I had a leader tell me one of the skills he wanted me to work on earlier in my career was leading with inquiry, asking questions, but doing so in a subtle way. I mean, I don't know that there's a textbook. And this is where we talk [00:21:00] about with product managers, we talk about certifications and we talk about courses and it's like some of these things you just have to experience over time.This is where experience, maybe making a mistake and realizing how you would do it differently again is how you learn from it. But I think it really comes from just sitting and listening, watching other people in the room, watching reactions, seeing who speaks, how people react. That's how you [00:21:30] learn it. That's how I learned it.
Todd Blaquiere (21:32):
Could you share an example, Joe? What is a mistake you learned in this space? Where you went
Joe Ghali (21:40):
Too
Todd Blaquiere (21:40):
Far, one direction or the other direction
Joe Ghali (21:42):
Taught
Todd Blaquiere (21:43):
You how to behave better the next time?
Joe Ghali (21:45):
Early in my career, I was trying to prove myself. When I was working in Las Vegas, I'm sitting in a room with the VP of leisure sales for the Bellagio, the MGM Grand, the Mirage, [00:22:00] the Mandalay Bay. And I had my leader, Ray. Ray was from Las Vegas, but he came out here and he knew all those guys, but I thought I had to just keep talking. I had to prove myself. Early in your career as a product manager, you feel like you have to just keep talking and show that you know the product, that you know the customers. And they just all looked at me like, "Will this kid ever stop talking?" I didn't read the room. I was so fixated on trying to prove myself [00:22:30] and prove my worth and prove my value that I completely ignored everyone's reaction.
Todd Blaquiere (22:37):
So if you were more politically savvy, what would you have done differently?
Joe Ghali (22:41):
I think I would've asked more questions. I would've asked them what's happening today in their hotel. I think I would've displayed a little bit more empathy. I think I would've let them talk. Most of the conversations were me talking and I [00:23:00] needed to change that and have them be the ones doing the most of the talking. That's the one that at least comes to mind. I remember on the flight back and it's like a four hour flight back to Vegas from Milwaukee. Ray was like, "Joe, you talk way too much, dude." I mean, he knew I was young. It was my first product management job. He got it. I'm eager, but he's like, "There's so much knowledge between those five individuals we're meeting with. " [00:23:30] So it would've behooved you to stop talking and just listen to what they had to say, look at their reaction.
(23:37):
He's like, "You've got to learn how to read the room." And sometimes it just comes with people noticing it and then making you aware of it. And then I changed the way that I interacted with them moving forward.
Todd Blaquiere (23:50):
Yeah. There was a woman once, I asked her the question about, she was given a talk on psychological safety and high performing teams. I wish I had her [00:24:00] name here so I could credit her. I asked a question about politics. How do you avoid politics in your organization? She said this, "Politics is just the unspoken rules. Make politics work for the good by asking what are our unstated norms?" So she was saying that politics is just the unspoken rules. There's these things, the ways that you get business done that no one's saying. And so if you can bring those to the surface and saying, "What are our [00:24:30] norms that are unstated?" I talk about politics. I was at a company once where it was never stated, but people just expected you to work on the weekend, to work, show up at meetings when you're sick or when you're on vacation, that that was just and everyone would do it.
(24:50):
You felt like you had to, because if you didn't do it, then you were on the outs of the culture. And so in that way, attending a meeting during [00:25:00] a vacation was politics. It was playing politics. So it's an unstated norm that you bring that to the surface and you say, "Hey, this is how we're behaving. Is this how we want to behave?" And now you're taking the politics out of it because you're all agreeing to the norm.
Ryan Cantwell (25:16):
I think there's some truth to that. I think that does depower or demystify the idea of politics if you make it more overt.
Joe Ghali (25:28):
So can [00:25:30] we talk about, before we get to takeaways, can we talk about the lines we don't cross when we talk about applying politics in our role? What are the lines maybe in healthy
Todd Blaquiere (25:43):
Politics? It's one of the lines you don't cross. You don't take information people give you in confidence and use it somewhere else to gain favor or move something forward.
Ryan Cantwell (25:54):
I love that. I love it. The significant risk there is damaging trust and [00:26:00] you're treating people as tools for your own gain, their selfish intent again.
Joe Ghali (26:09):
I had written down something along the lines of don't trade long-term trust for short-term wins. I think one of the lines is the omission piece of it. You don't lie with omission. You're purposely leaving information out. That's a great way to politic. I [00:26:30] think that's the line you don't want to cross is where you're purposely leaving and you're not like, "Well, I didn't lie." No, you didn't give the full story. I've seen some leaders live by omission, and I think that's a line you don't ever want to cross.
Ryan Cantwell (26:47):
Mine is don't make promises you know you can't keep.
Joe Ghali (26:52):
Yeah.
Ryan Cantwell (26:52):
There's just no point. Don't do that.
Todd Blaquiere (26:56):
Yeah. I got another one.
(26:59):
So you [00:27:00] talked about campaigning. I think I've mentioned this on another podcast, but I feel like there's two different mindsets you have to be in as a product manager and sometimes you have to be in them at both at the same time. But the first one is, I want to understand, my CEO calls it fact-finding. I want to find the facts. I need to go get the facts and information. I need to figure this thing out. Investigate scientifically, rigorously. There's that mindset, but then there's another mindset which is, I need to cheerlead. [00:27:30] I believe in this thing. I believe it's the right direction. I believe I have the data and now I need to get buy-in and I need to become a cheerleader. I think you have to do both these things and it's good product management. Once you have the data and you have enough confidence, you're never going to have 100% confidence, but enough data to say it's a good idea and you believe in it, you need to sell that idea, share it, get people behind you, get the buy-ins so you can move forward, get people excited.
(27:53):
To me, what you don't do and where you lose trust is when you start doing that cheerleading part
(27:59):
Without doing [00:28:00] that data and fact-finding investigating part.
Joe Ghali (28:02):
Yeah.
Todd Blaquiere (28:03):
When you stop worrying about what the right answer is and you just worry about cheerleading, get people behind you, don't do that.
Joe Ghali (28:11):
And I get the reality is I think these are all lessons you can't just read in a book. These are things you just have to experience as you move up in your career. That's true. I don't know how one learns it. I think you just have to experience it, see it, be part of it and realize that's not how I want to be or that's [00:28:30] not how I want people to perceive me or how I want to be perceived by other people. You know what I mean? It's true. All right. So let's do this. Key takeaways. What's our key takeaway?
Ryan Cantwell (28:41):
So my key takeaway is you can't avoid it. It's something you kind of have to accept. Some of us are naturally better at it than others. Some of us use it for ill intent, but let's try to wield that because we're going to have to do it. Let's try to wield it in responsible ways is the word [00:29:00] I'll use.
Joe Ghali (29:01):
I had written this one down earlier. I said urgency must be real and explainable. That's product leader that applies politics in the right way. That's one of the techniques that they have. That's one of their superpowers, one of their spikes. If I can go back to a term we've used before. It's like, how do you anchor on a problem? How do you support it with facts? It's just reminding ourselves that we have to be able to explain [00:29:30] it and justify it in a way that is taking out bias.
Todd Blaquiere (29:34):
Yeah. I think my takeaway is, I don't care if I'm politicking or not. Let's just get rid of the term. Don't worry about it. It's irrelevant. I think what matters is, are you doing bringing the value that you're supposed to bring in your role? And are you doing that in an ethical way? If you do that and people call it politicking, so be it. If you can go home at night and [00:30:00] That I made the right decision with the right data to move things forward for our customers and our business. I'm proud of myself. Then you're good. If you feel like he inside, fix that. Call it politics, call it influence, call it stakeholder management. Who cares?
Joe Ghali (30:15):
Gentlemen, it's good catching up with the three of you. It's been a while since the three of us were together on the porch. I miss talking to you guys. This was good.
Ryan Cantwell (30:22):
I know. It feels like it's been a minute since the three of us have been all together. We've done ...
Joe Ghali (30:27):
Yeah. Life's moving pretty fast, [00:30:30] but it's good. Good stuff. Well, until next time, I'll see you guys on the porch. Stay warm. Todd, I don't know, have you dug out of the snow yet in Raleigh? Are you surviving out there in the Carolinas? It's beautiful
Todd Blaquiere (30:45):
Out here. We have nice white, fluffy snow that everyone is scared of, so we all stay in our houses. We have nothing to move the snow around, so it stays white. Anyway, so yes, we're enjoying staying in our house, looking out our windows at the nice white snow.
Joe Ghali (30:59):
Very good. [00:31:00] Nice. Very good. All right guys, stay warm until next time.
Ryan Cantwell (31:03):
All right. Thanks, fellas.
Todd Blaquiere (31:07):
Thank you for joining us on The Product Porch. We release new episodes every two weeks. You can also find us on LinkedIn for more content. We offer a special thank you to AJ and Jack Blaquiere for the music. The views and opinions expressed by the hosts of this podcast are their own and do not represent nor necessarily reflect those of their employees.