The essence of product management | Christian Idiodi (SVPG)

**Christian Idiodi** (0:00)
I tried to explain to people that the real essence of this job is that you wake up on behalf of someone else to solve a problem for them, and you have to do it well enough that they give you something back in return. That's kind of the real essence of it, and that's the, I always call it like a certificate of appreciation. You know, and it can be in the form of revenue, engagement, loyalty, you know, reference, all of those things. And that's the real essence of this job. You know, if it's not fun, you're probably not doing it right. If it's not hard, you're probably also not doing it right.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:35)
Today, my guest is Christian Idiodi. Christian is a partner at Silicon Valley Product Group alongside Marty Cagan, who, when he introduced us, called Christian the most interesting man in the world. After meeting him, I tend to agree. After a long career in product, Christian now spends his time working closely with companies big and small, implementing and improving their discipline of product management.
In our conversation, we discuss why the product management field is so often disliked, and what you can do to avoid becoming a product manager people don't want on their team. We spend a lot of time on coaching, how to get better at coaching your reports, how to get better coaching from your manager, and some really clever tactics for building trust with leaders within your company. Also Christian shares his one favorite go-to method out of all of the discovery methods out there, for figuring out what to build. Also, we spend some time on the great work that he's doing in Africa to help product builders and founders build great companies. That and so much more, Christian is awesome. With that, I bring you Christian Idiodi after a short word from our sponsors.
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Christian, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.

**Christian Idiodi** (4:03)
Thank you for having me Lenny. It's a joy to be here.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (4:06)
It's a joy to have you here.
So Marty Cagan introduced us, a colleague of yours at Silicon Valley Product Group and the way he described you is he considers you the most interesting man in the world. Did you know that that's how he thinks about you?

**Christian Idiodi** (4:17)
I didn't. I mean, I consider him one of the most interesting people in the world too.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (4:21)
You guys are so kind to each other. I wanted to start with this trend I've been noticing in product management and the perception of product management. It feels like, I don't know if this is new or if it's always been around, but it feels like there's this trend of people just not liking product managers. There's trend of founders feeling like they should wait a long time to hire their first product manager. There's a lot of teams that wish they didn't have a product manager in their team. They're like, we could just, we don't have this person telling us what to do.