Product Management 301 — Managing Agency
By: Craig Mcluckie
Tags: Product Management, Management, Leadership Coaching, Management And Leadership, Organizational Culture

You may have read the post that I put together in collaboration with my team on effective product management. It received a surprisingly positive response from the community. While it covers ‘what an effective product manager’ looks like it doesn’t give a lot of insight into how to become one, or how to build an effective team of product managers.

I thought it would be fun to partner with different leaders and individual contributors in my organization to share deeper insights into that second element: how to build a better team.

Episode 1: Managing agency

Graham Siener is a product leader I work with every day. This post reflects a continued conversation we have around agency in product management. How to identify it, how to foster it, but most importantly how to manage it. It may be useful to individuals in other disciplines too.

We wrote this as a way to both help managers in our team think about this, but hope it helps folks that are struggling with agency in their jobs talk about the challenges.

The seed of the conversation was this post from Shreyas Doshi (well worth following if you don’t follow him). We will borrow liberally from his original thought (using much of his original framing), but put our own spin on it and then extrapolate a bit.

For what it is worth neither of us (Graham or Craig) attempt to put people in our org in buckets or assign labels to individuals. We see this as a useful coaching tool, and a way to drive a conversation.

A framework for discussion

On the x axis is ‘acuity’ — this is mostly about figuring out what to do in a given situation. Being presented with data and then making a decision to drive an outcome. It covers a lot of ground — technical, strategic, business, organizational, design centricity, etc. Different roles/problems will require different types of acuity. It isn’t something you can measure, but some people seem to ‘get it’ and come up with a practical solution to a problem. The highest levels of acuity require versatility — an awareness across the business, the technology domain and the team.

On the y axis is ‘agency’ — this is about having the ability to turn acuity into action. Being able to secure the support needed and to motivate a team to deliver the goods. Some people are imbued with high levels of natural agency, some people learn to act with agency.

We also talk about ‘authority’ — this is the level of agency the organization confers on an individual based on their role/title/seniority.

We like this framing because it highlights the importance of separating agency and acuity as separate things that they can and should be separately developed. It also lets us talk about the gaps (positive and negative) that can emerge between the agency a person acts with and the authority an organization offers them.

Defining the quadrants

The ‘versatile leader’ is someone that embodies both the ability to map vision to strategy to tactics (roadmap) with the ability to bring people along in executing on that journey. These are the people that shape the future of your organization, define your culture and ultimately drive your company. They see opportunity, have the courage to pursue that opportunity, and have the tools they need to drive the outcome. They have the versatility to operate across a cross section of areas.

The ‘frustrated genius’ is the individual that knows what to do, but lacks either the hard or soft skills to turn that into action, or most often the support to do so. They can be a force for positive change if supported, but can also manifest as a ‘poison pill’ if not because they know they know better, but don’t understand why they aren’t listened to.

The ‘driver’ represents an individual with strong acuity in their primary domain that allows them to produce good outcomes. They operate with levels of agency that allow them to deliver the goods. They may have overwhelming acuity in one area (e.g. the genius architect), or may have solid versatility across multiple domains but no obvious super power.

The ‘apprentice’ is an individual that has strong acuity in their function and can support the mission of the team, but needs active support at times to achieve impact.

The ‘hustler’ acts with high agency and exudes authority, but doesn’t have the acuity to succeed in many situations. These are the individuals you occasionally run into in big companies that somehow magically ‘fail up’. They are often perilous to have in your team because they don’t leave enough oxygen in the system for individuals with more acuity to lead. They can be an agency drain on others. The deeper pathology is that they may well have acuity in one or more areas, but see authority as a currency unto itself and invest a lot of their time in securing more authority, vs delivering the goods.

The ‘lawn mower’ is someone who isn’t able to muster acuity in their area to operate autonomously and has to be ‘constantly pushed to do work’. The absence of acuity creates an obvious problem, that ironically is somewhat mitigated by a lack of agency per Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord.

A manager’s perspective on the quadrants

When you have a ‘versatile leader’ in your organization, count yourself blessed and work to clear the runway for them.

Folks in this group should be challenged constantly to see their role through the lens of the broader system. Make sure they don’t end up wallpapering over other gaps you might have in your organization, or walking over talented people that just don’t have their level of intrinsic agency.

Also try to balance your level of sponsorship. Provide enough sponsorship that they are not limited by the organizations perception of what they can accomplish and there is room for them to positively surprise, but also be careful not to play favorites and inadvertently kill the agency of others in your organization. Also keep tabs on them to make sure that they don’t get out over their skis, everyone has their limits after all.

When you encounter a ‘frustrated genius’ in your organization, the first question should be how to address their agency deficit. The instinctive reaction is to pair them with a ‘driver’ and offer them a role that is focused on strategy vs direct execution. This may be tactically smart, but might also be selling them and your org short. First understand why they aren’t able to act with agency and address that if you can.

You may often find yourself tempted to just say ‘disagree but commit’ to these individuals. That also tends to be a bad idea. It needs to be more nuanced: ‘“the plan is the plan till the plan changes” and we need to make progress within our current strategy, but let’s identify the triggers for relitigation to change the plan’. The organization needs to be a learning machine and create a mechanism to engage these individuals. It also needs a way to recognize their perspective over time when they prove to be consistently right.

Much of the success of your organization will be delivered by ‘drivers’. The biggest challenge when working with a high agency driver is that they will at times find a local optima, vs a global optima. They will optimize around their area of specific acuity and focus on what they can see. Being explicit around the boundaries and expectations of their work, and working constantly to help them see the bigger picture matters. The challenge is sometimes keeping them in their lane while making sure they don’t run over other high value individuals as they pursue their goals.

Most folks will start their careers as ‘apprentices’. There is clear value in supporting their development from both an acuity and agency perspective. A good manager will help them understand the boundaries of their authority, and nurture both their versatility and ability to operate with agency within the boundary of their authority.

‘Hustlers’ can be dangerous. In general try not to hire them for strategic roles and figure out ways to identify them in groups you work with. When they are in your team work to set up guardrails around them and focus on outcomes based performance management. Perhaps the most important thing as a manager is to know one when you see one during interviewing.

Look for patterns of failed outcomes without a clear understanding of the root of failure and a sense of personal accountability and a clear articulation growth from failure.

Be skeptical of individuals that have risen in their career at a rate that significantly outstrips the level of success of the projects they have worked on. We don’t generally like to focus on career trajectory as a primary guide in hiring. It is great to see and is clearly a signal signal of high potential individuals but there are many ways to get promoted, and more significantly even more ways to get not promoted.

Scrutinize success. Focus on areas that a candidate identifies as a successful outcome and work through several levels of detail to understand their specific role in driving the outcome. What work product did they produce that led to the outcome? What was in that work product? What key decisions were made? How did they make those decisions? What was hard about them? What went wrong? How did they deal with it? Who were the other parties? At some point when you really get into the details you can figure out what actually happened. Shifting course during discussions from one acuity area to another often helps here. I love to start discussions around technology, then drop into deep business questioning or go the other way. It takes people off their scripted responses and gets into the root of what they have accomplished and tests their mastery of the details.

Watch for name dropping. An emphasis on who they know vs what they have accomplished is a yellow flag. We really don’t care whether you know Pat Gelsinger. Getting Pat to agree to a strategic partnership that wasn’t obvious but ended up being great for both companies is more interesting. Results matter more than names. Name dropping isn’t a disqualifier, it is human — people want to impress. It is however a warning sign, especially when it comes with a tacit threat ‘I am well connected, so you had better do what I want’.

There are a lot of different reasons why someone in your organization may manifest as a ‘lawn mower’. It is worth focusing on understanding their environment to get a sense of whether there is something challenging in their world (work or personal) that can be addressed. It is also possible they are in the wrong role and would be better off doing something else.

Managing agency in others

Perhaps the single biggest mistake made is assuming that (all) agency is intrinsic. You are also doing a disservice to your team to just let them work it out — Game of Thrones style. Agency can be created, and it can be damped (for good or ill). It takes work and attention.

It is hopefully obvious to anyone reading this that some individuals tend to demonstrate natural agency because they are taught they have agency, or because people just assume they have agency because of their basic attributes. It is demonstrably easier for tall, slim, white, middle aged men to act with agency than for folks that are under-represented in tech. Case in point: both of the authors of this post benefit from being in a demographic that makes acting with agency easy. This isn’t lost on us.

Coming from a privileged background and going to ‘the right’ schools and colleges also trains individuals to act with agency and the whole system becomes self reinforcing.

Stepping back there is a fine line between acting with agency and acting with entitlement that needs to be carefully walked, and carefully managed.

It is the manager’s job to walk this line, and even at the individual contributor level the product manager must watch for this. The best product managers are able to act with agency and should see their role not only in building their own agency, but that of the team that they support.

We don’t claim mastery here, but some things that we try to do to actively manage this in ourselves and our teams.

Don’t confuse authority and agency. Authority is given, agency happens when that authority is taken. In the absence of intrinsic agency in an individual, they may need to be coached to exercise the authority they have been given. This is especially tough in newly formed organizations where everyone is tip toeing around each other. People with intrinsic agency will tend to assume control, individuals with role based authority may need to be supported until they understand the boundaries of their authority.

Engage in constant self policing. Read ‘thinking fast and slow’ and develop cognitive habits to watch yourself. Work very hard to understand system 1 biases. This isn’t easy. We won’t explain it here, just go read it if you haven’t. :) This relates back to this topic because it is critical to objectively detangle internal biases and separate the axes — agency and acuity. It is all too easy to assume that someone with natural agency also has acuity. Figure out how to separate the two and assess them independently. Then figure out how to manage for each separately.

Work on active humility. A leader’s job isn’t to be the smartest person in the room. It is to get the smartest person to be in the room, and make sure their voice is heard.

Guard against ‘power dopamine hits’. The thrill of the fight, getting the blood up, scoring points, whatever. If you find conflict gratifying you are likely limiting yourself significantly, and your team more so. The business world suffered mightily when during the 80s traditional war texts (Book of 5 Rings, The Art of War, etc) became lionized in the business world. Those types of texts encouraged cold minded conflict (which to be fair does have its merits, when confrontation occurs it is best handled with a cold mindset and meticulously). They unfortunately conflated business conflict with war which is a false dichotomy. Try to substitute a conflict mindset (one party wins, one party loses) for a negotiating mindset. Negotiation isn’t a zero sum game, it isn’t as trivial as understanding your BATNA and working from there. There is little value in ‘beating the heart out of your enemy’ per Musashi because you will have to work with them tomorrow. They may fear you but they certainly won’t go out of their way to help you. Progress is usually made in small increments over time, upping your batting average one at-bat at a time. It is also about recognizing the caustic impact hot conflict has on people that aren’t congenitally geared to deal with confrontation at a level that might be comfortable to you. Be as kind as you can while still getting the job done. Warm by default, cold by necessity, never hot.

Remember the Pareto Principle and apply it to teams. The original principle is that 80% of the consequences come from 20% of the interactions. This is well worth understanding from an agency management perspective. Agency can be built up with care, but it can be torn down almost instantaneously. A few careless interactions from an empowered or high agency individual can significantly and durably impact the sense of agency in others. Have hard conversations sooner rather than later when this happens. Have the courage to call out your manager when they talk over someone in your team privately after the meeting. If you feel that would be unsafe or career limiting, you might want to find a new manager if you can.

Track your ‘positivity balance of trade’ in interactions around you. Humans are social creatures and require varying levels of positivity and acknowledgement to function in group settings. Take the time to acknowledge a position before providing constructive criticism. Take the time to say ‘yes, that is right’ when you have common ground. This doesn’t mean pandering to a team or avoiding having a challenging conversation, the conversation is easier when you have established a positivity credit and you are less likely to erode the sense of agency in others.

Focus on paying agency forward. Create space for people with obvious acuity to speak in places where you have agency and they don’t. Don’t talk over people, it is terribly rude. And try to watch the room during discussions, watch for cues that people want to speak but don’t know how to interject.

Engage in constant positive reinforcement. Recognize and reward high agency individuals for creating agency in others, and constantly encourage and reward individuals that struggle with agency when they demonstrate it.

Beware hustlers. Know them when you see them, and police yourself so you don’t follow them.

Make occasional leaps of faith with people. Change requires discomfort. It isn’t fair to tell someone with high acuity but low demonstrated agency to ‘just step up’. It is safe to assume that given their acuity if they could have they would have already. The discomfort in creating agency has to be born by the person with agency and authority. The leap of faith is in offering a high acuity individual authority that they can grow into, and providing their authority. Provide the title, clear the runway, make space and see what they can accomplish. You will sometimes get this wrong, but that has not been our general experience.

Putting agency into action

No matter where your report lands in these quadrants, it’s unlikely they’re fully confident in their place. As a manager, it’s your job to help someone see the signals that support your assessment. Work with your report to agree on the management support they need from you and use this framework to ensure they can see the world through your eyes. Pushing high acuity people to higher agency will yield great returns for both of you.