The Pitfalls of an Ownership Mindset
And why stepping back may be the ultimate way to step forward.
One of my mentors sent the following email (this is just a snippet) on my behalf as a part of a referral to a job: Zoia embodies an owner’s mindset in all her work. Anyone who gets to work with this unicorn will be incredibly lucky!
While I do not share this note to boast and feel incredibly humbled to get such generous feedback, I wanted to draw your attention to her articulation of my strengths and precisely what she referred to as an “owner's mindset.” Personally, I hadn’t heard of the term before and resonated with it as soon as I did. After a few quick Google searches, I found a definition of what I believed she meant (and what I saw in myself, too): “An ownership mindset means taking responsibility for outcomes and being empowered to make the decisions that will lead to those outcomes.”
Ever since her testimony, I have always discussed my owner’s mindset as a strength because, in a professional setting, that means that I will ensure that the job gets done as if it was my own company and my own name on the line. In practice, I feel responsible for the gaps in a strategy and aim to develop solutions or paths forward. I consistently think about organizational design and efficiencies that can be scaled, providing a point of view to move things along. Is there a defect in production? I’ll stay up with the tech team until we fix it. Are we waiting on wireframes? I’ll mock some up myself. Is there outstanding copy for a marketing campaign? I’ll put my writing hat on.
In my previous (very first) post, I not-so-subtly called out SoulCycle, a spin studio I frequent 3-4 times a week. If you haven’t been to or haven’t heard of SoulCycle, it is a rhythm-based spinning/cycling workout. The class ‘quality’ is largely driven by the instructor and their ability to command a room. Anyone can tell you how fast to go on a stationary bike, yet it takes a real superstar to cultivate the right playlist, vibe, and rider base and replicate it over and over again (some instructors teach as many as 21-25 classes a week with waitlisted rooms!).
As of this post, I have taken 786 classes, which approximates to about 550+ hours of spinning. And whether I am riding at 7 am on a Tuesday or 5 pm on a Sunday, I sit in the front row, wave my towel in the air, and ‘woo’ every time an instructor asks the room to make some noise. I love spinning, and I love the experience, but I have found myself wondering why I feel the need to be 110% committed (and even responsible) to ensure the success of an exercise class that I pay for as a customer. I am sure I can trace my logic to some moment in my childhood, but for now, I’ll stop the analysis here. “What does all of this have to do with product management?” you may be wondering in this very moment. I am getting there, I promise.
While I am proud to have an ownership mindset (not just in SoulCycle, but in every element of my life), you may have noticed that the title of this post is about the pitfalls of it rather than the glorious moments.
As a product manager, you don’t actually “own” the product - it is a shared ownership, that all ladders up to the CEO of the company, who is the real owner. At the same time, you’re still held accountable for its delivery and its success. This dichotomy is different from other roles in an organization (and in some ways, why I love being a PM).
As an engineer, your deliverable is the infrastructure and the code, the building blocks of the product. As a designer, your output is UX and UI, which is what the customer actually sees/experiences. A product manager, on the other hand, is focused on documenting the “what” and influencing everyone else to get everyone to the point of delivery so the product can get in the hands of the customer and bring them value.
So while you are held responsible for the product, you aren’t actually producing the product, you’re not the CEO of the company, and (depending on your company) neither the engineering teams nor the design teams actually report to you, so you have to influence people to want to get the job done, versus doing it for them or just telling them to do it. Therefore, even in moments where I had the best intentions, my owner’s mindset and desperate desire to get things done came off as:
Exclusionary: For the purposes of moving faster, I have sometimes taken it upon myself (or myself and a very small group of people) to make decisions without consulting and getting buy-in from across stakeholders. While my goal was clarity and progress, it has not come across that way. At best, it can be demotivating to others, and at worst, it can make someone feel unvalued. I’ve also realized that it can be harmful to the end-customer or the product itself, as I have inherent biases and limitations, and including more people and sharing the ownership will shed light on key opportunities for improvement.
Prescriptive/encroaching: Product works with multiple stakeholders who are the experts in their areas, to get the job done. As a PM, your biggest contribution is working with those stakeholders to communicate the “why” and the “what” of the product, while highlighting the ultimate objectives and target state. The stakeholders are the ones who will figure out the “how,” whether that is through designing the experience or choosing the best way to build solutions. In the past, I’ve overstepped on providing inputs on the “how” and it has come across as prescriptive and encroaching on others’ roles and responsibilities. There’s a reason why doing the how isn’t your job — and that’s okay!
Disempowering: Sometimes, telling people what you want and being direct can be an incredible way to set the vision and the objectives. In other times, I’ve seen my messaging, tone, or communication style come off as inflexible or combative. This can have negative implications on morale and can make someone feel like their voice or input isn’t valued, and therefore disempower them. Sometimes, you have to make quick decisions and assume responsibility for those decisions. However, if this is happening on a regular basis, you’ll either be left with a team that won’t be thinking about the bigger picture or no team at all (since they’ll quit after feeling disempowered).
Throughout my career (not just in product, but across the board), I have done my best to listen to the feedback in relation to the above, and gathered a few ways to remediate some of the not-so-positive side effects of having an owner’s mindset here:
Ask the right questions instead of handing off solutions. When I started PMing, I thought that asking questions made it seem like I didn’t know what I was talking about or created room for someone to undermine my expertise or hard work. In reality, given how many stakeholders there are and how many diverse, thoughtful, and creative ideas and contributions there can be from others, leaving room for others to ask questions or for yourself to question an area of what you’ve put forward can be invaluable. Next time you present your requirements or go through a product review, think about the questions that you have about your own work and make sure to leave time to pose those questions to the group. That way, the solution that will ultimately be formed will feel more co-created and will enable your partners to have an ownership mindset of the work too. Additionally, when you present something as a hypothesis worth exploring, you’re leaving room for error and exploration. You can still launch something without being sure if it is perfect or entirely right for your customers. However, you can de-risk by launching it as an A/B test or to a smaller group, while pairing it with additional customer or market research, once you call out the potential gaps.
Figure out the inherent ‘winnable’ battles. Deb Liu, who is CEO of Ancestry.com, writer of Take Back Your Power and “Perspectives” newsletter is one of the inspirations behind my Substack and overall role models. She once told a story about how when she worked for Sheryl Sandberg, after a meeting, Sheryl pulled her over to the side and said, “You can stop fighting now.” That anectode really stuck with me, as sometimes, being a product manager feels like your job is all about battles, and getting a bunch of “no’s.” Think about the nature of your company - is it a start-up? A large corporation? Based on the environment, stage, and industry you’re in, your company will have inherent goals, strengths, and weaknesses. For example, when I was at Yup, my role felt like it was all about shipping features, launching experimental projects, and proving product-market fit. Slowing down for the purpose of process-building was not a battle that was going to be won, and with good reason. We were fighting for more runway, time in market, and raising capital! In my current role, I am working at a large corporation, so the battle for speed isn’t the sword to die on. Here, it is about protecting our customers, the reputational risk of the firm, and responding to the needs of the market. Don’t fight a battle in vain. Find the right cause and it won’t be a fight in the first place.
Disagree & commit. You could have all of the data points in the world, the passion, and the customer-driven reason to push for a feature, a release, or solving X problem over Y problem. Building products is a team sport, and ultimately, your team may not agree that your solution or approach is right. This is okay. I repeat, it is okay! As long as you have the room to make your case, have a thoughtful, psychologically-safe discussion, make sure that you’re at peace to accept someone else’s approach and give it your all. Sometimes, I felt that if we didn’t go with what I suggested, the future of the product would be in jeopardy (can you tell that I am slightly dramatic?). For the record, I’ve also been right. However, despite feeling and acting like an owner, when I’ve let go of what I can and cannot control and committed to someone else’s vision, it has made room for us to experiment and forge ahead as a unit. I can even name more than one instance where after a few months, the team had pivoted back to my originally proposed approach after trying a different one. Despite it feeling like an “I told you so” moment, the ultimate lesson is that I chose to be a team player and commit to something for the larger purpose and in good faith, which has yielded success.
Create value where your value is sought. One of my core strengths is my ability to execute while seeing a larger vision. I can step out of the minutia of solving a problem, see the next phase, and get right back to the day-to-day and doing the work. In my moments of “zooming out,” I can see where there are needs to fix something that may not be deemed as “product” or in the scope of my own responsibilities. My tendency is to run and fix it. Sometimes, I am welcomed with open arms because most teams are understaffed and people see value with someone coming in and helping them fight fires. Other times, I’ve come across feeling rejected as there is sensitivity about calling out the problems with someone’s team or their work. Working on additional scope can also take away from my ‘main’ job and can come off as unfocused or quantity-oriented (vs. quality). I have landed on a framework that’s quite simple, yet still driven by intuition: double down on the opportunities where you’re valued, and pivot away from spending time in areas/places where you are not wanted. As a product manager, there are always more things for you to do or problems to solve. While something may seem very impactful, given how rooted your job is in influencing others, focus on the places that naturally make space for you, as you can push the work along in a more meaningful way in those areas.
For the record, I will not shy away from my ownership mindset or being proud of having one and I do not encourage others to let go of this quality. I am a big believer of leaning into our strengths versus spending all our time on maximizing our weaknesses, as those have a threshold (whereas our strengths have no limits!). The goal of sharing this post is to hopefully help you avoid some of the struggles and downsides of an ownership mindset I have seen through out my career. Let me know if I missed any - feel free to email me or directly comment on this post.
Fabulous post Zoia