Authenticism
I was talking with a friend recently, who described to me his desire to someday live on a farm. The core of this desire is undoubtedly a desire for authenticity - to live life in an authentic manner, to perform labor in its most fundamental form.
Having grown up with equal parts Stephen Ambrose and History Channel, I was exposed early on to the difference between strategy and tactics. As is the case for most military concepts, businesses have co-opted the idea of strategy and tactics to differentiate between certain forms of thinking. In the tech world, this might be the difference between thinking about market fit and optimizing the design of a particular button. Good product managers, like generals, strike a balance between strategic and tactical considerations. However, this dichotomy leaves out certain higher-order questions, the kind of questions that usually get answered by a good company mission, like why develop a product (or fight a war) in the first place?1
Consider this video that bemoans the impact of mobile technology on interpersonal interactions. Though the phenomena that get called out, like having an obsessive desire to record every waking moment or to always stay informed on social network updates, err on the extreme side, they nonetheless are tangible, (presumably) unintended consequences of product development. This critique isn’t a novel one, but it’s one that has gotten louder over the years. Embodied within the video’s argument is the assumption that traditional, authentic interaction is preferable to its technologically-influenced form. I generally don’t buy into this line of thought, but there is certainly something alluring about preserving authentic human activity.2
If one values authenticity, it becomes possible to more deeply indict products like Snapchat; no longer is Snapchat stupid, its distortion of communication is thoroughly deleterious to human interaction. This is hyperbole, but as the desire for authenticity grows3, product development will need to take this into account. Perhaps we aren’t there yet; in the case of Snapchat, its founders would’ve had to have the courage to kill their product, despite the fame and wealth they would receive, if they truly wanted to take into account authenticity as I’ve arbitrarily defined it. Nevertheless, it won’t be surprising to me if profitability and authenticity soon align in ways more than Whole Foods' marketing strategy, such that authenticity will necessarily be included as a concrete strategic consideration.4
-
Beyond making money of course. I like the parallel between general and PM (or CEO) because both war and business can be perceived as distasteful (one is objectively more so than the other) and both successful generals and CEOs can be faulted for liking what they do too much. I think, however, the greatest among them succeed because they look beyond mere strategy and tactics: they know precisely why it is they do what they do, and it’s typically not just for glory or money.↩
-
So much so that entire marketing strategies are built around this - consider the rustic feel of Whole Foods. Venkatesh Rao has a very long (and slightly pretentious but thoughtful) article that touches upon this and more generally the “interconnected Hamiltonian cathedrals, artfully concealed behind a Jeffersonian bazaar.”↩
-
I once had a conversation with my high school English teacher about what would come after postmodernism. He predicted that we would either enter some sort of technological hyperdrive, with rapid adoption and a sort of glorification of technology, or completely reject such change and revert instead to a more Transcendental, individualistic philosophy centered on authenticity. Here’s an article that pretty much chose the latter.↩
-
The tech industry used to not have privacy PMs, until privacy became a very real consideration for companies and individuals alike.↩