Product Management and Movie Making
I just bought 2 Kevin Smith DVDs. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but his humor kills me.
He brought up a funny point that I’ll paraphrase.
Essentially, he said he has the easy job as a writer / director. He gets to define the dialog, write out what people will do. In the director’s chair, he is able to say things like, “I want more from Actor A, and I think we need coverage over in spot B.”
He then essentially relies entirely on his producer to make it all happen. Under / within budget, and on time. A producer is essentially responsible for taking his vision, executing and delivering, or “shipping” the film.
Does anyone else see a relationship between a PM and CEO here? The CEO says, “we are going to do A, B, C.” Those points could be attacking a new market, creating a new product, or if they are an awful CEO, “we’re going to make money by getting 1 billion people to give us $1. We’ll be CRAZY RICH!” But, I digress.
I’ve posted before about being cautious as a PM with slipping in to thinking you are the CEO. You are not. There are just plain a lot of calls you don’t get to make. But, on the flip side, there are plenty of cool decisions, which are 100% critical, that you do get to make.
A director complete depends on his producer(s) to make sure that his vision comes to life, and what he sees in his mind’s eye is possible to get in the can.
PMs are the same way for CEOs. Delivering on their vision and making it happen.
Some people like sports analogies, I prefer movie-making. Maybe I’ve been living out in LA for too long already…hmm….
July 21st, 2007 at 5:59 am
One of the only two surviving “desk icons” I’ve kept over the last year is a Silent Bob “inaction figure”. The other one is a small status of the Buddha. That tells you just about everything you need to know about how I regard the two of them.
Any more movie analogies? Rosebud?