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Introducing: The Product Shepherd - A Blog
Welcome! Come on in!
Meet Tank and Rocket, the first two unofficial "employees" of H3ATHER Tech. They don't actually do any real work, but they do provide me with a good reason to actually get up from my desk during the day, walk around, stretch, and take a short mental break, which is important. I'm the type of person who can get so lost in work that I'll even put off getting up to pee until I absolutely can't stand it (which is a really bad habit, especially if you want to avoid wearing diapers in old age).
Tank and Rocket are Shiloh Shepherds. If you google "Shiloh Shepherd" Tank actually shows up as the first picture in an image search, and Rocket shows up in the top 10.
I won't bore you with the history of Shiloh Shepherds, but you can see that they are related to GSDs. Regardless, Tank's full name is Gen. Ulysses S Grant and Rocket's full name is Gen Don Carlos Buell, who are two of the Union generals who won the Battle of Shiloh. Yes I am a big dork.
Anyway, when I created my company logo I wanted to pay homage to Tank and Rocket, so I got the idea of incorporating a robo-shepherd in the logo, and so that's how the H3ATHER Tech logo was born. (As a side note, AI image creation tools are just "OK" these days. It took A LOT of tweaking and time to generate that robo-shepherd image.)
After all of that, I made it a personal challenge to incorporate Tank and Rocket anywhere I could on my site. It started with my 404 page. That's Tank looking sad and pitiful, probably because he wants to go outside.
And then when I got around to starting my blog, I needed to come up with a good name. Tying it into the Tank and Rocket theme didn't occur to me initially and I actually used ChatGPT at first and it came up with a bunch of craptastic suggestions.
The only passable suggestion was "The Product Whisperer" but I'm sure that was probably taken and it's also kind of trite.
But then it occurred to me that product management is a lot like herding cats. If you are unfamiliar with the origin of that term (or at least the origin of the term's mainstream popularity), it was from a Super Bowl XXXIV commercial in 2000 for EDS, which was an IT consulting company. This was back when tech companies were throwing money at everything and everyone and trying to outdo each other with the best Super Bowl ads. It was also the year I became a product manager for the first time (see my first blog post for more information on my journey into product management).
It was only after I considered naming my blog "The cat herder" that I realized that the perfect name was staring me right in the face, and so "The Product Shepherd" was born.
A lot of people will tell you that product managers are like the "CEO" of their product, but I don't think it's the most apt description. A product "GM" might be a better description, but the real role of a product manager is to gather everyone together and shepherd them to the same path so that everyone arrives at each waypoint along their journey at the same time. A product manager also has to set those waypoints, remove obstacles, and accommodate diversions along the way, all the while making sure everyone is doing this together and at the same pace, without leaving anyone behind.
If you really think about it, "Product Shepherd" is a much better term than "Product Manager" right? That term also illustrates the love most product managers have for their products and product teams. Shepherd dogs will risk their lives defending their flock. I can't say that I would ever risk my life for my product, but I have absolutely risked my job to protect my product and product team. A great product manager will internalize her product, lead with conviction, mitigate distractions, and fight to move forward and stay the course.
