No Instant Gratification in Product Management

We've all seen this play out in the movies:

Villain: We need to break this super secure mainframe with 15 layers of airtight protocols that even aliens can't penetrate.

Hacker: Give me 10 minutes.

* Villain points gun at hacker *

Villain : You have 5. Bwahaha.

Hacker:

* ferociously types on the keyboard for 4 minutes straight without blinking and even waiting for a server response *

And then there's always this lethargic progress bar.

Inching it's way to completion.

Clock is at 4 min 59. Gun cocks.

* dramatic score *

Hacker: I'm in.

Now, we all know it doesn't work that way in real life.

The art of hacking is actually a discovery process with a lot of informed guessing, creative problem solving and hit and trial to stumble upon loopholes.

There's no magic bash command that unlocks the vault.

So, if you're looking to deliver massive growth to your product, you need to acknowledge that you can't just copy a playbook verbatim to score big. Every product is unique.

You certainly might be able to borrow a few ideas and get inspiration. You can also employ & customize proven product management processes to set yourself up for success.

But be ready to iterate and persist.

Instant gratification is something PMs rarely experience.