What product managers can learn from farmers

How to be a top 1% product manager by thinking more like a farmer and less like a CEO

The role of the product manager is nebulous to many people and many organizations. What is even more nebulous is how to be a top product manager rather than merely an average one. Even the expectations and responsibilities of the role can vary vastly across organizations.  I have mentored many aspiring product managers and the top thing people want more clarity on is what exactly a product manager does and how to be successful at it. Many folks have this false concept as the product manager making all the critical decisions and telling a team what to do (Kind of like a mini-CEO). However, I believe the better analogy for describing a top product manager is that they are more like a farmer than a CEO.

On the surface product management and farming couldn’t be more different- a product manager works at an organization typically building and improving new technologies for end users. A product manager needs to have a strong sense of the end user, the technical stack at their company, how to think about the design, and work well with a team of technologists. A farmer utilizes the land they have to grow crops- they must understand weather patterns, crop patterns, how best to care for and nurture a robust crop, and then how to sell that crop. It wouldn’t seem like these 2 professions have much in common.

However, I strongly believe the very best product managers behave and think like a farmer – it is about the mentality and will, not the specific tactical skills that each group has. So what can we learn from farmers as PMs?

As a side note if you haven’t watched the movie Minari, it is a great movie that really brings to life the resilience and determination of a farmer whose will to succeed and support his family motivate him.

Farmers have to get into the “weeds”

Farmers understand all aspects of their farm and crops; they are literally in the weeds on a daily basis trying to understand how their crop is performing. Because they understand every detail of the crop, the weather, and what is happening they are in the best position to make decisions on how to nurture their crops successfully. This intense focus and attention to detail allows farmers to execute flawlessly.

Great product managers also understand every detail of their product and do everything they can to make the best decisions for their product. A common misconception in product management is that you direct your team to do all the execution (ex. the actual architecture / coding, designing screens, etc). In reality the best product managers understand the technical tradeoffs in the system, understand all the rationale behind the design, and can help provide a unique product perspective to many decisions. If you want to go from good to great product manager you need to get into the weeds.

Farmers have an ownership mentality and do whatever it takes

Many farmers' livelihood depends on the success of their crops. This breeds an extreme ownership mentality- they do anything it takes. Could you even imagine a farmer saying “That’s not my job” when the crop needed to be harvested and 2 of his workers that typically help harvest the crop just quit? Of course not, the farmer gets in there and helps harvest or does everything he can to get more help quickly to harvest before he loses his crop.

I have heard many PM’s say “That’s not my job” for various gaps; for example I distinctly remember a PM colleague stating they didn’t have any direct user feedback for a new idea because they didn’t have any UXR resources allocated to the project. The best PMs would never let this happen- you do whatever it takes and step into whatever role you need to in order to make the product successful. In fact, I argue that a large part of the job of a PM is exactly that- you pick up all the loose ends and gaps on your team to ensure everything is successful. I remember countless times where I would directly send out surveys to users or talk to users directly and aggregate feedback when my project teams didn’t have UXR, plan team outings when the team really needed to take a break, or write my own queries to analyze data and glean insights when we didn’t have a data scientist.  There is no job that is not the job of a product manager- and it is your job to figure out the gaps on your team and help step in and get through them.  That is not to say you should just take over the jobs of cross-functional partners as that is a sure-fire way to burn bridges with your team and slow-down execution of the project.  It is simply understanding the various gaps and helping to fix those in a mutually beneficial way across the team.  

Overcome all obstacles

Farmers have one of the hardest jobs known to man as they are at the mercy of so many unknown obstacles that hit them every year. From storms and unfavorable weather conditions, to pests, logistics and transportation issues, fluctuating crop prices, and many others. In the face of these obstacles farmers always do everything they can to get past them. If a pest came through and wiped out half a farmers’ crop- you better believe they would be in the fields the next day doing everything to salvage what was left and eliminate the pests completely.

But when there is a major bug in the code 7 days before launch how many PMs do you see diving in deep to understand that bug, salvage as much of the product as possible, setting up a war-room and coming up with a plan to successfully launch vs just deferring to engineering on when the bug can be fixed and delaying the timeline? Many PMs I know would simply leave it in the hands of the engineering counterpart but the very best PMs are on the ground with their engineering counterpart doing everything they can to figure it out. You should absolutely trust your engineering counterparts and you should be there in the trenches with them solving the problem together.  In any major product release you will face many unexpected obstacles and driving through them all separates the best PMs from average PMs.  Interestingly I find that the number of deterrents and blockers in a project increases as you get closer and closer to the finish line and it is the best product managers that can drive through all of those to a successful launch.  

Farmers are always learning, taking a step back, and planning for the long-term

Farmers are constantly trying to learn about their land, the conditions, and taking a step back to figure out how to evolve the crops they grow in the long term.  They are successful through years, decades, and generations of experience and learning. Conditions change year to year, decade to decade and farmers evolve with the times to make sure they are nurturing and growing the best possible crops for their situations.  In fact farmers let fields lie fallow for one or many cycles to replenish the land and allow for long-term success at the cost of short-term profits.  

I see this in the very best PMs as well - they are constantly learning. They are learning about users, the product, and themselves to unlock the best possible product. They are applying their learnings and thinking longer term (on timescales of years and even decades) rather than the day to day projects. In fact this is one of the biggest differences I see between junior and senior PMs - when you first start out in product you are so engrossed in your immediate project that you can lose sight of the longer term goals and strategy.  One of my favorite quotes is from Wayne Gretzky, “Skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been” and I think it applies to the way the very best PMs think.  

Farmers must think about the end to end process from seeds to end consumers

The farmer can’t just focus on growing a crop if they want to be successful.  They must think about the full journey from getting high quality raw ingredients (seeds, fertilizer, etc) through growing the crop all the way through distribution and sales of the crop.  Farmers are much more than simply growers of crops.  

Product managers must think about all aspects as well to make their product successful; it is simply not enough to build a high quality product.  People must know your product exists, understand how to use your product, and become successful users of your product.  If you assume when you build it they will come, you will quickly learn that without some hard work, they never come.   

So the next time you are thinking about how you can be the very best product manager- just think a little bit harder about how you can be more like a farmer and less like a CEO.  Enjoy the journey ahead.     

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Nihar