Diana Alt [00:00:04]:
Hey, Diana Alt here. And this is Work Should Feel Good, the podcast where your career growth meets your real life. Each week I share stories, strategies, and mindset shifts to help you build a work life that works for you on your terms. Hey there, everybody, and welcome to Work Should Feel Good, the show where your career growth meets your real life. I'm your host, Diana Alt, and today my guest Michael Hirsch and I are going to talk a lot about product leadership, the future of work and AI and how all that stuff mashes together. Michael has a long history in product leadership, spanning over two decades at brands such as Sony, Qualcomm, and HERE Technologies. He is the founder of Break A Pencil Consulting, which is. Is a fun name if I've ever heard one, for our technology consulting firm, where he does two hugely important things.

Diana Alt [00:01:00]:
He helps leaders build the judgment and confidence necessary for their teams to effectively leverage AI in product development. And he helps individual contributors through transitions into people management. Michael also serves as a strategy professor at University of Washington, Foster School of Business and Seattle University. So he's a smarty in the classroom and at work. Welcome to the party.

Michael Hirsch [00:01:25]:
Thanks for having me. I'm excited, really excited to be here.

Diana Alt [00:01:29]:
You're one of a few people like I. I have had the podcast for a year now. I think I've done, like, close to, I don't know, 35 interviews or something like that.

Michael Hirsch [00:01:38]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:01:39]:
And a lot of the people I knew, because I'm just a chatty kind of person, and so I haven't taken very many pitches. I. I have invited people that I knew or that were friends of friends, but one of my old bosses just pointed me to your profile, and we discussed before we hit record that you didn't. You don't even know the guy. So he's just somebody that's been following your work on LinkedIn, and that's how we're here. But I think that there's a little bit of me trying to be a bit voyeuristic back into the world of product, because I work with people on career and leadership development as well as job searches. And I've been out of corporate for a few years before the whole generally available AI stuff took hold. So I've been interviewing people to find out what's really going on, and in your case, how to do it right, because so many people are doing it, not strategically.

Diana Alt [00:02:33]:
So I'm excited my little DM on LinkedIn was accepted by the guy that had never heard of me before.

Michael Hirsch [00:02:40]:
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Diana Alt [00:02:42]:
So I want to talk about this Break a pencil name. Because this is an incredibly analog name for a person that's working in an incredibly digital and technological world. Where did that name come from?

Michael Hirsch [00:02:57]:
Yeah, there's a story behind it, actually. When I was starting my practice, you know, I was focused on okay, what am I doing and getting the business set up and all that kind of stuff. But I was like, okay, I got to come up with a name. And you know, I was, is it M. Hersh consulting or whatever, things like that. But then I remembered something my dad used to say all the time. So he, he, he, Whenever I or my sisters growing up were about to take a test, he would say, break a pencil. And it was his version of break a leg.

Michael Hirsch [00:03:27]:
Right. Break a leg in the theater is what you say because it's bad luck to say good luck. Yeah, so it's a break a leg, but. Well, not break a leg. You're taking a test. Break a pencil. So, so I, I thought it was catchy and, and, and different. And it's kind of, it serves dual purpose.

Michael Hirsch [00:03:44]:
One, it's sort of a nice like honor or tribute to my dad, who was my first boss and had an enormous influence on how I show up in the world.

Diana Alt [00:03:56]:
Got to talk about working for your boss here in a minute.

Michael Hirsch [00:03:58]:
So, yeah, and, and, and it's also kind of my way of sort of wishing luck on all the teams and the people I get to work with.

Diana Alt [00:04:06]:
So I love that. That's very cool. And I especially think, you know, my very first thought that popped in my head was, wow, that's very analog. Which is a nerdy thing to think. I recognize that. But I actually have been paying a lot of attention to people in my orbit and how drawn they are to the analog and to the human connection. Like the more that people are pushing cloud, cowork and code and do all the things and make all the agents and all the robots are going to do everything or what the hell ever story we're telling ourselves. The more I think we just need to analog, you know, flip charts and index cards and that kind of stuff are becoming more desirable than they were five years ago.

Diana Alt [00:04:51]:
What do you think?

Michael Hirsch [00:04:52]:
Yeah, I totally agree. I spent a few years shortly after Kindle came out, for example, reading on a Kindle. But then I quickly went back to paperback hardback, physical books. Yeah, everything I read is, is a physical book. I like the tactile feel. I also mark them up right. I take notes, I highlight. I, I do things like that in the books that I read.

Michael Hirsch [00:05:14]:
So I do that and then I, I typically afterwards I'll kind of go back through and I'll sort of take some notes and ideas on the index cards and then I keep those. And those are what give me inspiration later on for ideas or blog posts or things like that. So I'm. I think this whole return to analog is, is great. I love it and I think it's, it's a backlash to God. Everything's just turned digital in our lives. So it's nice to be off the device sometimes.

Diana Alt [00:05:41]:
I signed up a new client last week and she and I are doing kind of a. She's interested in launching a solo business which I sometimes help people with because at this in the year of our 2026, like 1099 versus WT versus LLC is largely a payment arrangement. And so you have to figure out which style of life you want. And she actually lives locally. I'm in the Kansas City area and I was like, let's meet at the library. Like, let's do a longer kickoff call at the library. And I was tootling into the Leawood library with my flip charts and my dry erase markers and the whole nine yards. It was great.

Michael Hirsch [00:06:17]:
So I love that.

Diana Alt [00:06:19]:
And there's the hour after.

Michael Hirsch [00:06:21]:
I love. And I love the library, right. Like libraries, there's such a. I don't know, there's something about libraries that is amazing to me. I've.

Diana Alt [00:06:30]:
I love.

Michael Hirsch [00:06:31]:
One of my roles was I love

Diana Alt [00:06:32]:
them, but like the libraries are just far enough away from me that I don't go that often, but I use them all the time for stuff like meeting with people. I think it's great. And they're. The one that I'm talking about is right next to a place with like a whole bunch of restaurants and shopping and stuff. So working there, picking where you're gonna have a cocktail, it's perfect. So tell me about this working for your. Your dad first. Your dad being your first boss.

Diana Alt [00:06:56]:
What is the deal with that?

Michael Hirsch [00:06:58]:
Yeah, so when I was growing up, my dad had his own company, had started his own business. Gosh, it was right around when I was born, I think a year or two maybe after I was born. And it was a commercial air conditioning. So he did construction and service and engineering. He was an engineer. And I grew up working in the business, right. So I'd work summers in the office doing things. You know, initially it would be like, you know, making copies and things like that.

Michael Hirsch [00:07:25]:
But eventually I, I learned how to do some drafting from his draftsman. And then Once I turned 16 and got older and could drive. I, I, I would work summers in construction or in service and, and it was sort of understood that it would be, that was kind of my path, that was going to be my career path. So I went to engineering school. I went and got my bachelor's and master's in mechanical engineering, initially at ucla. And then the day after I graduated, I went to work full time for dad. And I did that for about eight years and I enjoyed it. I learned a ton.

Michael Hirsch [00:08:03]:
But kind of two things happened, I think around the sort of at the same time. One was in, this was like 2000, 2001, we were going through a massive technology wave that really caught my eye and attention. And I was simultaneously part time getting my business degree, getting my mba. So I suddenly had my eyes open to all the things outside of the little world I was living in. And my dad wasn't the easiest boss to work for. So kind of all three of those things. I decided right around the year 2000 that I was going to leave the family business and try to get out there and figure out my way forward in the world of technology.

Diana Alt [00:08:48]:
And that I did because there's, you know, there's so much expectation. Like one of the things I am constantly reminding people of is that just because someone has an expectation of you doesn't mean that you have to meet that expectation. Yeah, but the family business thing is particularly loaded, especially when you actually went and studied the thing that is related to the family business. What was that process like for you to explain to your family that you were not going to do that anymore? How did that go? Kind of. What were the repercussions of that? If you don't mind sharing.

Michael Hirsch [00:09:24]:
No, I don't mind. It was tough. It was very, very difficult. I mean, for a long time I couldn't even sort of visualize it. To me it felt like it was something that's just completely from outer space. Like of course I was gonna, I couldn't leave the family business and, and then I started, you know, doing some real thinking, some real soul searching. Credit to my wife at the time, who still my wife, but who at that time though was every time I would be like, I, I can't think about this. She'd be like, just stay in it.

Michael Hirsch [00:09:57]:
Like think about it. Like keep me, keep me grounded there. And, and how did it go? I mean, went, I think as good as it could. It was tough. There were some feelings and emotions that were really hurt. Mine, my dad's certainly. I mean, it's just you know, like you said, when expectations don't pan out, it's difficult. But my dad and I worked on it and you know, within about six months or so after that we were good.

Michael Hirsch [00:10:28]:
We were good and our relationship was great and sort of evolved from there up until his last days. So.

Diana Alt [00:10:36]:
Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that. When you think about the process of leaving, was it harder to make the decision to leave or harder to tell your dad and do the exit, the actual exiting?

Michael Hirsch [00:10:51]:
I've never been asked that question.

Diana Alt [00:10:54]:
Welcome to the show.

Michael Hirsch [00:10:56]:
Yeah, I think the answer is yes. They were both extremely difficult. Making the decision was difficult because it was agonizing, because it was long, it was drawn out. It was, I, you know, I was talking to various different people about it, trying to get my head wrapped around it. So it was hard in that sense. Once I made the decision, telling my dad, who already had inclinations and sort of, he could smell it a little bit. Right. But telling him was extremely difficult because, you know, we grow up wanting to, you know, be who our parents see us to be and to basically look at him and say, yeah, I'm not going to do that was, was really, really difficult.

Michael Hirsch [00:11:40]:
So they were both. That was difficult just because it was a letting my dad down conversation. But the other was difficult because it was a long process to figure it all out.

Diana Alt [00:11:50]:
Yeah. What kind of factors were you weighing? Like when you, when you think about that, there's many things to consider, especially because a lot of people think about an eight year job that's already hard enough to leave. Like if you just took that job at 23 years old after you got your bachelor's degree, that is hard enough. But you grew up in it. It was basically part of your life from the time that you were, could remember. So what were you weighing when you were making the decision? What were you thinking through during that arduous process? Well, this is fantastic.

Michael Hirsch [00:12:23]:
I was, I mean a lot of things. So one was, you know, my happiness, right. Is, you know, and my future and what my future could look like in an uncertain world, whereas my future was at least clearly drawn out. In family business. I was, I thought about what impact this would have on the business and on him.

Diana Alt [00:12:49]:
Right.

Michael Hirsch [00:12:49]:
As, you know, when a company that's been founded, you know, and it was probably about 50 employees, I mean it wasn't a tiny, but it wasn't a huge company. And suddenly like the founder, boss's son, who was sort of being groomed to take it over leaves, like where does that leave the business? And where does that leave continuity and things like that? So I worried about that. I worried about what it would do to my family. Right. In terms of relationships and. Yeah, just kind of all those things. And so, you know, because I didn't. So I did not allow myself to look for a job until I told him I'm leaving.

Michael Hirsch [00:13:28]:
Because I felt that looking for work while working for him, which is, of course, what you do in the real world, it felt wrong. It felt disingenuous to me to basically be lying to my dad every day, you know, by doing that. So when I left, I was. I had nothing. I was like, okay, now what do I do? So that was a big leap of faith as well.

Diana Alt [00:13:50]:
Was there a moment when you really knew that it was right? Do you remember that?

Michael Hirsch [00:13:56]:
Not before. After, but not before. I mean, I still had my doubts and reservations. I was scared. You know, I was basically. I mean, I was. I was making a bet on myself and that I would find something and a future and a career and all of that. And I'd never really had to do that.

Michael Hirsch [00:14:13]:
And so I don't think. I think when I made the decision, I mean, I still had. There were still voices being like, are you sure you're doing the right thing? And. But I would say, you know, gosh. And of course, my timing was awful.

Diana Alt [00:14:30]:
There's no good time to tell your dad that you're leaving the family business.

Michael Hirsch [00:14:34]:
Well, that's one thing. But also, I mean, literally, I left, like, as the dot com bubble burst and as technology just imploded.

Diana Alt [00:14:44]:
So.

Michael Hirsch [00:14:45]:
So it took me like six or more months, I think, to find a job. And so, you know, I'm now six months. I'm unemployed. I'm like, oh, my God, what did I do? But I think once I found Rule, and then I kind of found the next one after that, and I sort of got my momentum. I realized, okay, this was the right move for me. But it took a little while to get that confidence.

Diana Alt [00:15:09]:
That was a rough time. I'm a few years younger than you, I think, if I'm doing the math right. And I was about two years into my big girl career whenever the dot com bubble burst. And I had gone into consulting, so I got degrees in. And I went to engineering school too. I got a chemistry degree, an engineering management degree from University of Missouri Rolla, which is now Missouri S&T. It was almost all engineering school. And it was.

Diana Alt [00:15:35]:
That was wild. And my parents were educators, so they had never known the idea of. The idea of a layoff was not something that happened to them. I mean, like, they. And they worked at the junior college level, so they weren't even in, like, the organization where you don't get tenure, so you have to walk out with your head between your legs. Like, that's just. You know, they got a contract every year and they did good work, so they kept getting their contracts. It was never on the radar.

Diana Alt [00:16:02]:
I got laid off twice within just like six or seven months apart. And I could tell the second one, my dad is like, what did we do wrong? What is. What is wrong? We got. She has a master's degree. What is happening here? So anyway, yeah,

Michael Hirsch [00:16:22]:
three. Three times, I think maybe miscounting, but three times.

Diana Alt [00:16:26]:
I was laid off three times. Two really early in my career. So that was like 99 and 2000 and then not. Not that 2000 and 2001. I mean.

Michael Hirsch [00:16:36]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:16:37]:
And then again in 2012. And the one in 2012 was amazing because I was already plotting my exit and I was going to leave with no job. I'd been, like, solidly working with never more than 10 days off for over a decade. And I was just. My company had been acquired, and it was just not what I wanted anymore. So that was great because I basically got told, you don't have to come back, and here's some money and some health insurance. Okay.

Michael Hirsch [00:17:08]:
Yeah. I got laid off in 2013.

Diana Alt [00:17:12]:
That was in 2012.

Michael Hirsch [00:17:13]:
And a couple people on my team who were not laid off at that time were like, can I get added into the list?

Diana Alt [00:17:21]:
Sorry, please. When I got laid off the last time, it was really funny because I had actually told my boss that I was tired. This is somebody I held in high regard. I'm friends with him to this day. And I had told him, you know, if something. There was rumors and murmurings that something might happen. And I was. I was looking around at my team and, like, there's the lady that has three kids in college, the guy that just had a new baby, and like.

Diana Alt [00:17:47]:
Like, I don't need this as much as they do.

Michael Hirsch [00:17:50]:
Right.

Diana Alt [00:17:50]:
So I told my boss that if they were going to ask for volunteers, that I would be open to that conversation. And then that didn't happen, and I got laid off. And it was funny because they tried. They basically tried to act like something was wrong with me. Really. It was a. It was a situation where they were trying to peel off people that had worked for the founder. The company that had been purchased and I had been hired by the founder was one of the later people hired by the founder.

Diana Alt [00:18:20]:
And every single time they did a layoff, like 80% of it that were people that work for the founder. So it was pretty obvious. Yeah, yeah. He's like, I didn't want them to lay you off. I'm like, well, I'm okay with it, but I don't like being told that it's because I don't fit the new skills needed. He's like, what, what is that?

Michael Hirsch [00:18:38]:
What is that unfortunate reality of the industry in the world today?

Diana Alt [00:18:43]:
I know. Well, I have no problem, like, whatever. I'm fine with that. Like, I feel like at this point, any day they don't take your badge and your computer as a for positive performance review. So that's. That's kind of how I introduce a little.

Michael Hirsch [00:18:57]:
There you go.

Diana Alt [00:18:58]:
So we're going to get into some product management stuff. But you're a co. One of the things you do in your business now is actually coaching. So you're coaching individuals on some things. And I'm a coach, too, p.m. turn coach. So tell me what led you into the coaching arm of your business and then we'll get into some of your product stuff.

Michael Hirsch [00:19:19]:
Yeah. So after that, the reason I started my practice was I started looking around and I realized that there were a lot of people out there who were talking about product management. A lot of people, but almost nobody was talking about product leadership. And my story is at four different times in my career, at four different companies, I was hired as an individual contributor and then eventually promoted to manage product managers. And the assumption always was, he's good at product managing, so he'll be good at managing product managers.

Diana Alt [00:19:53]:
When are they going to learn?

Michael Hirsch [00:19:56]:
And not once did anybody sit me down and say, here's some things you need to do now or some new things you need to think about, or different things you need to do. And so I started focusing on how do I help managers become leaders? And not even just in the product world. But of course, that's where my background and where most of my experience and my understanding comes from. But that's where I really kind of started to focus. And, you know, there's a couple different ways that I can help. And mainly, you know, it's been around in that realm. It's been around coaching. And it's coaching either new leaders or individual contributors who are trying to get to a leadership role, who are trying to either get that next job or get promoted.

Michael Hirsch [00:20:40]:
Um, and of course, you know, in that you got to start acting like it before you get the job. And because there's, you know, nobody tells you that. There's all these different things you have to do as a leader. Right. You've got to, you know, you've got to coach and mentor your team, you've got to navigate politics, you've got to try to translate strategy, you have to, you know, all these different things and, and, and nobody tells you that. And most people, myself included, fumble through it, making mistakes.

Diana Alt [00:21:08]:
Yep, yep. And it's product is actually one of the most unusual areas to try to make the jump because a lot of times people are fairly senior. Like it's not like in customer service or something where you can end up in management when you're just a few years into that career. Most of the time in product you had to script, you had to scramble to get in product to begin with because other than people coming out of MBA programs into APM programs, which I think has a lot of problematic, that path to me is not great anyway, a lot of companies, but other than that, nobody starts as a PM that early in their career even with those programs starting. Most people are coming through engineering, they're coming through operations, they're coming through marketing, something else. And so you've got multidisciplinary multiple years in, you're usually managing a small team and usually product is super under resourced. So it's insane. It's absolutely insane.

Michael Hirsch [00:22:19]:
Yeah. And you're usually, you know, just.

Diana Alt [00:22:22]:
And everybody expects product whether you're in a product led company or not, which is a whole other topic. Everybody expects the most professionalism, the most output, the most out of product. So now you've taken the group that's under resourced is expected the most turn people into managers and don't teach them anything about how to manage the arguably most political organization in any tech company.

Michael Hirsch [00:22:49]:
So yeah, that about sums it up really quite nicely.

Diana Alt [00:22:52]:
Hi everyone. Hire Michael to help you figure out how to navigate that. Do you like the one on one? Are you enjoying that or do you like what are what to you are like the pros and cons of one on one individual coaching versus maybe the consulting type work that you do.

Michael Hirsch [00:23:12]:
Yeah. So the two main types of work I do right now, one is this, as you mentioned, one on one coaching with either new leaders or aspiring leaders in production. I love it because one of the most fulfilling aspects when I was in the corporate world leading product teams was coaching, mentoring and making the product managers on my team the best they could possibly be. Of course, it took me most of my career to learn that that was

Diana Alt [00:23:39]:
how to do that. Yeah.

Michael Hirsch [00:23:40]:
Arguably the most important role I had. And so I love that. Coaching one on one still gives me that ability. And I love when I see somebody go, oh, I see like synapses click together, ideas spark and then when they see results, right when they now are given different opportunities or invited to different meetings or things like that because they're showing up in a different way, I love that. And then the other work that I do is I work with teams primarily, primarily product teams, but teams to help them adopt AI in a, in a, in a systematic and a structured way rather than the individual chaotic ways that teams are doing today. And I love that work because the dynamic of a team is just so

Diana Alt [00:24:32]:
different, special, especially when you actually are in a team because there's groups of individuals that happen to be working on the same thing and then there's teams and those two things are not the same.

Michael Hirsch [00:24:42]:
Correct.

Diana Alt [00:24:43]:
Like, so my agile coach vibes are

Michael Hirsch [00:24:47]:
showing well and product management's one of the most difficult places there because something I've always said is product managers don't work with other product managers.

Diana Alt [00:24:56]:
It's rare. Like everybody else. Yeah, I worked in reporting and data analytics most of the time that I was doing product management work or on platforms. So like I worked, if you think about, I worked for a company called Archer and they had a platform that you can build applications and solutions on top of. Kind of like, kind of like Salesforce has CRM stuff layered on top of it. I was a PM for the platform and then there were other PMs for the actual solutions that they went to market with. So we would sometimes collaborate. But anybody doing data analytics and platform is always like the redheaded stepchild that usually can't attribute revenue because they sell the CRM solution into market, not the platform into market.

Diana Alt [00:25:42]:
So very unusual. But yeah, I talk to product managers less than anybody else.

Michael Hirsch [00:25:46]:
Yeah, exactly. I mean other functions work mostly with their function. Right. Accounting works mostly within accounting, Marketing mostly in marketing. Engineers always with engineers. The product managers typically are working with all of those people. And so you're right, who I work with on a day to day basis and who my team is, two totally different things.

Diana Alt [00:26:05]:
Yeah. What do you think about when you think about developing the individual leaders? So I think one of the perks actually to being a manager in product management has got to be that you're already used to working with those peer relationships. What are some of the advantages you see to a product manager getting promoted up as compared to maybe an engineer that gets promoted into engineering? Management. Are there aspects in which the product background makes it easier for the new product leader, or am I? Is that a pipe dream that I'm thinking of?

Michael Hirsch [00:26:47]:
So I'm going to give you kind of a nuanced answer here. Please podcast I think that when a product manager gets promoted to manage product managers, they are at a larger disadvantage than when an engineer gets promoted to become an engineering manager.

Diana Alt [00:27:06]:
Let's talk about that because I think I agree with you and I want to know. I never thought of that before, but I. I could see that. Say more.

Michael Hirsch [00:27:15]:
The path for engineers typically in these organizations is quite clear, right? You either go into management or you go into stay as an IC and you become a tech technical fellow or whatever. Angelus and because of what we just talked about, you've been in a team with a manager, so you've got some sense of what's involved in it. So that I think that you have at least, hopefully you've had a good manager. You have at least some sort of maybe a role model to emulate. Unfortunately, because product managers don't work together, the idea of team is not there as it is with engineering.

Diana Alt [00:27:54]:
That makes sense.

Michael Hirsch [00:27:55]:
It's this loosely coupled. I mean, that was one thing I

Diana Alt [00:27:57]:
always you're a manager managing a bunch of individuals, not a product management team. Whereas the engineering leader is managing a product management or an engineering team. That makes so much sense.

Michael Hirsch [00:28:11]:
And so as a product leader, it's your job to figure out how to make them a team in, you know, sort of in spite of the work that they have to do, which is not as a team. So I think it tends to. So I think you're at a greater disadvantage. In addition, I think that the role of product manager, as you mentioned earlier, is arguably the most politically charged role in the organization. And so as a product leader, you are under way more pressure to provide air cover and protect your team from the noise and the thrash at the senior levels. And that's a lot less of a role or responsibility, I think, for an engineering manager. So I think there's just a lot more expectations around politics and communication and strategic thinking, which is a whole other thing. Now, the nuanced answer, though, is I think that product managers who become product leaders who move up the organization because of that complexity are best equipped for really senior executive roles that look across the organization.

Michael Hirsch [00:29:16]:
But it's a tough path.

Diana Alt [00:29:18]:
Yeah, I agree with that. And there are some things that I feel about org charts and granted there's nuance and it depends, you know, it depends on company. But like for example, I've always said that if I ever went back into corporate and I went into product, a hill I will die on is that I will not work in an organization where the CPO does not report to the CEO. I don't know product reporting to the cto. Nope. Pass. Not. Nope.

Diana Alt [00:29:47]:
Not doing it. Because if try to tell me that you are a product led company and you organize yourself that way.

Michael Hirsch [00:29:56]:
If, if product doesn't have a seat at the table next to the CEO, I agree.

Diana Alt [00:30:00]:
Then I feel the same way about hr. If you, if your chief people officer is not in your cabinet, I'm not interested.

Michael Hirsch [00:30:09]:
Agree.

Diana Alt [00:30:10]:
It's an insane red flag because chief people officer is one of your most valuable business partners. And especially if you have anywhere on your website that our people are our most important resources. Nope, Pass. Not interested.

Michael Hirsch [00:30:25]:
Yeah, I totally agree.

Diana Alt [00:30:27]:
You want to hear the hill that I said I would die on? The one that I alluded to before? Okay. So I have a friend, her name is Sarah Gallagher. She is the president of a boutique strategy and project management consulting firm out of Tulsa. I've known her for several years. I met her years ago when she was a keynote at a PMI conference here in Kansas City. And I said the hill I was going to die on is that you should never expect the same person to be the project manager and the project product manager for anything for like at the same time that that one human should not have to serve both of those roles. I want your take. What do you think?

Michael Hirsch [00:31:11]:
I completely agree. They're totally different roles. They have incredibly different skill sets that make them, you know, a great project manager has a lot of different skills than a great product manager has. They're very different. And the only like slight nuance I would put on that is lots of places don't necessarily if you're working in a small, either a small company or in a small team on a part of a product and it's a smaller piece, sometimes you won't see project managers in there. You won't see them even have them within the company. And so there has to be some like a little bit of project management.

Diana Alt [00:32:00]:
But like if I'm in my argument for that is if I'm dealing with a technical, technical initiative in an organization like that, they probably have a product somebody doing project manager esque things whether no matter what the titles are, I don't care what the titles are, but there's probably like four people doing tech, implementation, engineering things. Yeah. Why would you take the thing that you only have one of yes and load that person with project management. And the answer usually is, well, we need the coders to code. My answer is if you don't have a strategy, then they're barking up the wrong tree to begin with. Like a strategy and a road map for the thing that you're building. You're barking up the wrong tree. The other thing though, for me with the PM and P that like the pro, don't put product and pro product in the same human.

Diana Alt [00:32:53]:
Project manager and product manager in the same human. Too many P's. We need some new names. Is actually related to decision making because when you are a product manager, you are fundamentally responsible to make decisions about your product. There's all the levels and you know, people, stakeholders, you got to keep happy and all that kind of stuff. But you're making decisions. And when you're a project manager your job is largely to facilitate good decision making and facilitate good governance. And they're naturally supposed to be a push pull to that.

Diana Alt [00:33:33]:
So that's, that's kind of my take. Like you can't mix. No sense.

Michael Hirsch [00:33:37]:
Yeah, I think we see it a lot. Unfortunately, I don't think there's enough, I think, I don't think there's enough understanding of the difference between product and project. I don't know why that is. We've been shouting it for 20 plus years, or at least I am.

Diana Alt [00:33:53]:
Most people still don't know what the hell product management is.

Michael Hirsch [00:33:56]:
Well, yeah, and I think that. So most people are like, well, product projects, the same thing.

Diana Alt [00:34:00]:
Right.

Michael Hirsch [00:34:00]:
And so it's easy to merge them when you think they're the same thing, but they're not. And they, they don't belong together. I agree.

Diana Alt [00:34:07]:
They don't belong together. And like one of the things that I observed and I was eagle eye on this because I was already full time in my coaching business and I work with a lot of product people. There was the thing that happened where we had the spike in 20. It kind of started at the end of 2020, definitely all of 20, 21 into 22, where anybody like there was so much demand for product managers that suddenly we have this big spike of people that are getting product manager jobs during that time. And when you dig under the covers, a whole lot of them really aren't product managers. The way I think about them and I expect probably you think about them. A lot of them were project managers that thought it sounded cool. A whole bunch of them are BAs.

Diana Alt [00:34:50]:
And to me again, the difference between a BA, which I was for years. And a product manager is again, bas are facilitating decisions. Product people are making decisions. So all these people that had no acumen and no appetite to place bets and nothing, no basis for even knowing what bets to make, suddenly are product managers. And now today, they all have five years of experience, and they think they should be senior or principal product managers because of the time they have in seats. Like, it is a messy time in product, in part because of that, from what I see in my seat. How are you seeing that, especially in the teams that you're working?

Michael Hirsch [00:35:29]:
Yeah. So there's kind of two issues I. I see in this one is you're absolutely right. For a very long time, companies have been magically waving a wand and turning project managers into product managers just by changing their title.

Diana Alt [00:35:47]:
Managers. Yeah.

Michael Hirsch [00:35:49]:
And I think it's because everybody said, well, you need product management. It's become an important thing. And that's, you know, all these great companies have product managers. We need product managers. What's. Product management isn't the same as product. Okay. Those people can do that.

Michael Hirsch [00:36:03]:
It's a similar role they can do. It Sounds the same. And so you get these people who, like you said, have five years of experience as a product manager that haven't really done any real product management. That to me, that's a failure of leadership.

Diana Alt [00:36:15]:
Right.

Michael Hirsch [00:36:16]:
That's a failure of the product leader not emphasizing or focusing on team growth. So one of the mistakes I made every time I became a product leader was I always focused on my highest performers, my rock stars, because that's what I thought was going to make my team and me look the best and be the most effective in the company. And it took me many years to realize that I was actually being measured by the performance of my worst performers. And it's them. My job as a leader wasn't necessarily to harness and direct the top performers. It was to take the underperformers and make them contributors. That's my role.

Diana Alt [00:37:04]:
And.

Michael Hirsch [00:37:04]:
And what I tell product leaders is your product that you have to focus and worry about every single day. Now is your team.

Diana Alt [00:37:12]:
Yes.

Michael Hirsch [00:37:13]:
You need to wake up every morning thinking about, how do I make my team better? And you got to focus on the lower performers versus the higher performers. And so if we had been doing that, we could get past project managers being magically created as product managers because. Because product leaders could have trained them up and given them that experience and that. That education. But I don't think we've done a really good job of that.

Diana Alt [00:37:37]:
And that's Also, because right on that. And there's, there's also like, there's a. So one of the, one of the communities I'm involved in online is women in product. There's a very large Facebook group that I've been part of for, I don't know, five or six years, something like that. And something that I observe a lot is a lot of people that are wanting to enter product or sharpen their product skills, they're all thinking that the most important thing for them to know about is the product. And my take is that if your product manager knows more about the product than anybody else in their company, you are in big trouble. Because who knows about the problems that the product is supposed to. And I'm a pragmatic girl.

Diana Alt [00:38:17]:
Like you're a pragmatic girl too. I, I, that was the very first training I took in product management. Like 2010 was, or maybe even earlier was in pragmatic. And it was market focused. And that's what, and I, I developed, I was able to develop business acumen by working on CRM systems. It was like doing five years on CRM systems as an analyst and a developer, and then ultimately a solution architect was kind of my way. It's like my mini mba. So I walked in with that.

Diana Alt [00:38:51]:
But most people are, what are the flips and switches and buttons that we need to do in a product? And that is not product management either.

Michael Hirsch [00:38:58]:
So let me, I get, I could tell you a story. When I was at Sony, one of my best bosses, when I was at Sony, I, I would go into my boss's office often, and I'd walk in and I'd often find him just sort of sitting there, like, kind of staring off into space, almost like he was daydreaming. And I never really quite understood it. I would expect him to be on a call or meeting with someone or on the computer, doing some email or something. And what I learned and realized was he was thinking. He was, he was actually. And what he was trying to figure out constantly was how does he position our team, his team, the best way, in a world where technology was completely changing things overnight and we were in this giant multinational company and sort of, it was always like, how do we navigate this? And to his credit, he would not only tell us what we were going to do or decisions he had made or conclusions he had come to, but he would tell us how he got to those.

Diana Alt [00:40:12]:
Thank you. That is literally the most important thing other than, like, to me, a product leader, the most important thing you can do is explain decision making rationale and explain how the politics of the organization that you're in work.

Michael Hirsch [00:40:27]:
And so he would, he would show us his work. Right? You know, show us his work. How did he get to this that's so valuable. That is realize it until many years later when I had to do the same thing for my team. But that was an incredible education I got in how to think strategically as a product leader.

Diana Alt [00:40:44]:
Yeah, that's. That's awesome. I have a client, an executive coaching client. He's not in product, but he's the GM of a chemical distribution company that is headquartered in Europe and he's the head guy in charge in the U.S. and we, we knew that his. He was basically. He came to me as part of a succession fan. So he knew he was the heir apparent.

Diana Alt [00:41:07]:
And I told him to spend all the time like that last year that he was going to be with the G old GM before he retired. You need to learn how he makes decisions. You don't have to make decisions the same way. But before you deviate, you need to understand how he made decisions. And the. So he spent a lot of his time on that. So let's talk about effective teams and AI because that's kind of your bread and butter when you think about what you see people doing well and not well in AI adoption, what comes to mind? And I mean teams not in like that's a team question, not an individual question.

Michael Hirsch [00:41:50]:
So the, the best teams that are figuring out how AI is transforming their work and their products are, are doing it as a team. They're. They're doing it in a, in a collaborative coordinated fashion. They're not all off on their own doing their own things. Not telling anybody. There. There's a tremendous amount of, of sharing and they're figuring out how to build it into their processes so that their processes can become less time consuming than they are today. Typically, product managers spend far too much time doing the tactical work and not enough time on the strategic work.

Diana Alt [00:42:43]:
And this is going to sound really silly, but I need you to differentiate between the two because there's a lot of people that do not actually understand what is strategic versus tactical. Tactical, that's tactical with fancier names is what a lot of people call strategy and that's not actually strategy. So break down what you feel like are some tactical things you feel like PMs were doing spending too much time on and some strategic things they're not doing enough of. And then once we get through that, let's talk a little bit about How AI helps flip that

Michael Hirsch [00:43:19]:
tactical work is writing requirements documents, writing user documentation, clarifying specs for engineering, providing stakeholder updates, providing updates to the roadmap, and informing the organization about kind of where things are and how things are going, which most

Diana Alt [00:43:44]:
people would say that is my whole job.

Michael Hirsch [00:43:47]:
Right.

Diana Alt [00:43:48]:
Especially they're like not a senior or principal yet.

Michael Hirsch [00:43:51]:
Yeah, but. But the strategic work that needs to be done often doesn't look like work.

Diana Alt [00:43:59]:
It's fun. Well, it's fun for me. I like it.

Michael Hirsch [00:44:02]:
It. Well, it might look like my boss daydreaming.

Diana Alt [00:44:06]:
Yes.

Michael Hirsch [00:44:07]:
It might look like somebody who's going to spend half a day pouring over customer call transcripts. It might look like someone who's going to spend a day shadowing a customer out in the field. It might look like someone who's going to spend time pouring over industry research reports, but not just sort of looking for, you know, great stats to use, but like trying to really dissect and understand what's happening. It's think work.

Diana Alt [00:44:37]:
It's like, it's basically a lot of it. With the research stuff, which I used to do for fun, it wasn't like part of my job, but I would like read Gartner, Magic Quadrant, whatever, whatever. Trying to understand where people were going. So it was like, I want to see. I don't care what it says this year. What's it gonna say next year.

Michael Hirsch [00:44:59]:
Yeah, that's strategic.

Diana Alt [00:45:01]:
Yeah. So. And I didn't get it right. But I was reading the report not to brag that my product or my company landed in the top quadrant, but because I just didn't understand that stuff. The whole investor research, that Gartner Forester stuff was a mystery to me, which it shouldn't be for any product manager. That stuff should not be.

Michael Hirsch [00:45:26]:
Yeah. And again, I go back to. That's part of coaching, training, mentoring. That's a leadership responsibility to help them figure out how to. What's the strategic work they need to do and how do they do it.

Diana Alt [00:45:37]:
Yeah.

Michael Hirsch [00:45:38]:
And it's.

Diana Alt [00:45:40]:
When you think about there's. There's this time and I think PMs of every level, product managers of every level need to be doing at least some of the stuff that you're talking about, not being jockeys. So how does a. What is a before and after look like? If you can just take us down to maybe like a regular old senior product manager before and after, when they are doing too much tactically and then when you coach the team in general and. Or for embedding AI, what does it look like after for that person.

Michael Hirsch [00:46:15]:
Yeah. So what it looks like is we use AI to help make that tactical work really efficient and really fast. And then, and this is the catch, the time we free up isn't for more tactical work, isn't for more documents. It's for the think strategic work.

Diana Alt [00:46:37]:
Wait, you mean it's not so we can increase the velocity of the team by pushing more story points into the back? No.

Michael Hirsch [00:46:46]:
You know, there's enormous value in the features we don't build.

Diana Alt [00:46:52]:
No is the most important word for a product manager.

Michael Hirsch [00:46:55]:
It is, and I think many product managers maybe understand that, but they don't get the support of the organization on that. Yeah, right. It's like, well, why aren't we building that feature? You know, or it's, you know, you get the pet feature that this executive wants or that executive wants or that customer is asking for, but nobody else cares about. And, and so not only so, so what you do what, what you know, you, you, you help the team figure out how they're going to use AI as a team to accelerate the tactical work. And then you have to give the team and the leader the, the, you know, clear sort of direction as to what do I do with that time. Now, like, here are the things you should be doing. Here's, here's where you need to be investing that time. Because a lot of times you're like, well, okay, I don't know what to do because it's not natural because you haven't been doing it.

Diana Alt [00:47:45]:
How much time are you seeing people free up? So when you've worked with a team, you've done this, and you're kind of reducing the time spent on that tactical work. Realistically, let's say you've worked with a team for six months, 12 months, somewhere in there where it's really starting to stick. How much time is a PM freeing up?

Michael Hirsch [00:48:08]:
I mean, we can see, I've seen PMs freeing up 20, 25% of their time easily. Okay, that's a day a week.

Diana Alt [00:48:17]:
That is a day a week. That is Nahido day. In pragmatic land like that, that is your nothing. And Nahido, for anybody that doesn't know this, it's from pragmatic marketing, product training, and it stands for nothing interesting happens in the office. The idea being get out among your industry, among your customers, among the market people that are not your customers and learn from them so you can choose the right market problems to bet on with your product instead of just being jira jockey all day. So, so what are they doing with that day?

Michael Hirsch [00:48:52]:
What are they doing with it? They're doing these things. They're going to talk to customers. They're going to, you know, they're kicking off, you know, research projects. They're kicking, you know, they're, they're spending the time defining either quantitative or qualitative research projects. They're going and studying up on the competition. They're looking at, they're thinking strategically, like, what is the area of our industry where people aren't perform, you know, aren't, aren't, aren't doing things and how do we move there?

Diana Alt [00:49:19]:
Yeah. Where's the white space? What are you seeing happen in terms of. There's, there's two areas that come to mind. The first is product management retention. Like, it's a high burnout field tech can be high burnout and product can really be high burnout. Are you seeing that this is changing the game on that in some of your clients or hearing of that? Maybe you don't have enough data to

Michael Hirsch [00:49:44]:
make a. I don't, and I think it's. Any data that I've gotten, I feel is not very indicative because we're in such a really messed up job market right now that product managers who have jobs just want to hold on to them.

Diana Alt [00:50:04]:
Yeah.

Michael Hirsch [00:50:05]:
And so I think that, you know, the sort of burnout, they're just sort of tolerating it more than they would.

Diana Alt [00:50:13]:
Yeah. I would be really interesting to hear because it would be very interesting to be able to study how many, what is it doing for engagement and how many people are deciding that they don't like the new way. Because there are a lot of people especially think that from a more analytical background that take comfort in, oh, I'm, I'm, I'm ticking and tying on these PRDs and I'm doing this, that and the other. Whereas I'm like, can I talk to the people and turn on, like turn on whatever transcriber recorder tool I'm using and can we draw on whiteboards and can we really dig into it? Not everybody loves that. So. Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Hirsch [00:50:55]:
And so again, I think that's, that's a role of a leader to, to, to, to identify, okay, this is something that either the person doesn't enjoy or, or maybe just doesn't have the skills or ability or interest and, and, and help manage them into a role that's better for them.

Diana Alt [00:51:13]:
There's the one other wonderful thing about product management is how transferable it is. And I have been talking to a couple of people Lately that are really interested in product operations because they like execution and they love the idea of like let's create this pipeline that it makes the product manager's job easier, which didn't like, especially in the Midwest where I am. Product ops wasn't heard of. Yeah, you know, that's, it's really taken off in the last five years. The other thing I was interested in talking to you about is what are you seeing change in how product managers are being evaluated during the hiring process in this AI age? And are you actually advising the leaders of the orgs that you work with on how to shift that?

Michael Hirsch [00:52:03]:
So I've seen. So the first part, I can answer the second part, I haven't done much in the way of coaching or advising for hiring in this market. Market right now for leaders. But, but what I, what I have seen is, and this kind of goes to sort of, I think my philosophy when it comes to what should people be doing with AI today?

Diana Alt [00:52:25]:
Okay.

Michael Hirsch [00:52:26]:
I feel like we're interviewing a lot for ability to use tools and we're not interviewing for the understanding and the implication and the strategic thinking around what do these tools now mean for my product or for my business. And what I mean is you could be the best at using Claude code today. But, but, but that's going to be, that's going to, that value is going to deteriorate over the next few months

Diana Alt [00:52:59]:
because you acquire the skill.

Michael Hirsch [00:53:02]:
Yeah, because look, everything changes in the next week, two weeks, five weeks, months, whatever. So, so where are you going to invest your time? You're right. You want to invest in your time into the thing that's going to actually produce some returns and produce some value and be, and be durable. And to me, that's an understanding of, of where AI fits into all of this. Let me give you an example. So when I was, I was at Qualcomm many years ago when, when mobile was just taking off, right. This is when we went from, I mean mobile was everywhere but we mobile to really computing with mobile. Right.

Michael Hirsch [00:53:35]:
The iPhone and all of the smartphones. And the product managers who did the best, who succeeded and were the most effective, weren't the ones who understood the technology the best. They were the ones who understood what it meant. What was the implication, what it was going to change in consumers or business, people's lives. What was it going to change around strategy? What was it going to change around how we should be going to market it? So that's where I want to see people spending their time today, around AI. Because if I need to get really good at it and spend. I'm not saying don't spend time with it. I do it all the time.

Michael Hirsch [00:54:15]:
But, but the, the real time you want to invest is, is in understanding how it's going to impact and change the world as opposed to just being really, really good at being a tool practitioner. And that's what I try to train people.

Diana Alt [00:54:26]:
I love that so much because it is freeing. That is a really freeing statement to make because I'll, I'll be very honest. Like, I am not chasing all the bells and whistles with AI. I, I'm not. I work now. I've gotten to the point. You, I mean, you're a solo business owner. You know this too.

Diana Alt [00:54:46]:
You know that there's the point in your business, which for some people, they are always this way. Some people manage to make the shift, but we feel like even if we outsource something, we have to know exactly how to do it. Because what if that vendor goes away? What if something happens? So that's a thing. I'm finally letting go of the idea that I have to understand every step that is taken for every single thing in my business. And I'm at the point where maybe I will hire an automations expert to come in and build me agents or do whatever sometime in the future. But it's really freeing to me because so much. I call this AI Fear mongering. We talk AI slot, but I think there's AI fear mongering.

Diana Alt [00:55:28]:
And I'm not talking about there's not going to be any jobs left and Congress better pass Universal Basic Income. I'm talking about that feeling that this week Chat GPT is the best, and next week Gemini is the best, and next week Claude is the best. And if you haven't Learned the new 5.4model on ChatGPT, then you're behind and all that stuff. When really all that, a lot of those conversations are about is continuing to do the wrong thing faster instead of figuring out how to do the right thing. So that's my little AI rant. But I don't care. Like, I have a lot of stuff in ChatGPT. It knows me, I can do things.

Diana Alt [00:56:07]:
There's my brand voice and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, even I, knowing that I don't want to chase the tools will get that little feeling in my gut of like, oh, well now, now I'm hearing a critical mass of people say Claude is the best. Well, Claude ran a Super bowl ad. Of course, everyone's saying Claude is the best right now. So. But it's, that's just all distraction, I think, is the most important. So. Yeah, I really appreciate, I really appreciate your insights on this and, and how to, to do it correctly because I think you and I are both similarly focused on how do we enable strategy to be right, period.

Diana Alt [00:56:47]:
The story. Before we go, I have one question that I love to ask everyone.

Michael Hirsch [00:56:54]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:56:54]:
And that is, what is the worst career advice you've ever been given?

Michael Hirsch [00:57:02]:
Oh, gosh. Worst career advice I've ever been given. Let me give me a minute here. I'm thinking through this. A couple that are coming to mind.

Diana Alt [00:57:11]:
Fine. Take it all the way to this. They'll wait for your 30 seconds. Thinking.

Michael Hirsch [00:57:16]:
So, you know, I would say that the worst career advice I've been given, there's. There's maybe two pieces to it. One is, let's do it. One is, you know, when you're, when you're looking at opportunities, you know, go to the one that's going to pay you the most. All things being equal. Fine.

Diana Alt [00:57:38]:
Yeah.

Michael Hirsch [00:57:39]:
But things are rarely equal. And you gotta look at, you know, look past the shininess of a new role and look at what's it going to look like. Three months, six months, you know, because every place has its issues. If it was wonderful, they wouldn't have to pay you. You know, every place has its politics. Every place has its issues. You got to try to really look and imagine your role and your career there. Right.

Michael Hirsch [00:58:04]:
You're not necessarily taking that role, but you got to think about what's going to lead you to next. So that's kind of the flip side of one of the best bits of career advice I had, which was try to imagine where you're going to be ten years from now. So you can, you know, which is like four steps down the line. So then you. Helps you figure out what should the first and second step be and then the other bad advice. And I think this is a. I don't know if this is maybe just a product manager thing or if this is everything is to just. We know that's a bad idea or a bad feature, but just do it and get it done.

Michael Hirsch [00:58:42]:
Put it in and it'll be fine and we'll move on to more important things after that. It's never that simple. It always takes more time. You end up investing a ton of time, energy and political capital in doing something that you know isn't going to be successful.

Diana Alt [00:58:57]:
Yes.

Michael Hirsch [00:58:58]:
And it never, ever turns out the way you want.

Diana Alt [00:59:00]:
So that's the other bad advice in product management. I don't, I can't think of very many other roles where the pressure to just appease somebody, whether it's somebody far up on the food chain or whether it's that biggest client that we are really like the companies that are risking too much of their business because too much revenue comes from one client, that client, you're either trying to appease that person when really you should be fighting against appeasing the hardest in that role. So, Michael, this is great. Can you tell people where to find you?

Michael Hirsch [00:59:37]:
Yeah.

Diana Alt [00:59:38]:
In the show notes. For people that don't quite get to the show notes, what is the best way to reach out to you?

Michael Hirsch [00:59:43]:
The best way to find me is at breakuppencil.com b r e a k a pencil.com or on LinkedIn. Michael Hirsch. I'm pretty easy to find there, so LinkedIn or break a pencil.com and I'm always here.

Diana Alt [00:59:57]:
All right. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Michael. We'll talk to you all soon.

Michael Hirsch [01:00:02]:
This was amazing.

Diana Alt [01:00:03]:
Want some more career goodness between episodes? Head on over to DianaAlt.com and smash the big green let's Connect button to sign up for my newsletter. Let's make work feel good together. And that's it for this episode of Work should feel good. If something made you laugh, think, cry, or just want to yell yes at your phone, send it to a friend, hit follow, hit subscribe, do all the things. And even better, leave a review if you've got a sec. I'm not going to tell you to give it five stars. You get to decide if I earned them. Work should feel good.

Diana Alt [01:00:39]:
Let's make that your reality.