Sprint 3 :: Ethical conflicts as a Product Manager
To be in a state of ethical conflict as a Product Manager is not an easy task, you might love what you do and the product you are helping to create but have an ethical conflict with what happens with the use of that product, even if the company you work for takes all measures for it not to happen.
Take a Product Manager or a Product Owner in a Gambling company, the idea that the product you help create can get people addicted or even destroy lives and families is something that can be looming over your mind throughout the day, and that is enough to take someone into a brain depletion not allowing you to complete your job or worse, take you to the dreaded Burn Out! 🔥
This is not an easy state of mind to live in, it drains you of energy and takes you down a rabbit hole that no one wants to be in, but, we all have bills to pay and so you endure it and make it work, but are you able to give it 100%? All products have dark sides, but some are easier for us to see than others.
I’m not here to say that you should quit or that these companies are evil, they are part of the capitalistic world we live in, and are necessary to make the economy move in some countries that survive on it! 💸
We know that as a product person you are “created” to see into the future, and have the macro vision of everything, and that sometimes leads us to be locked into a twirling negativity of what we can see, however, we seldom look also into the positivity of these ethical conflicts.
Because you have such a conflict, it allows you to make decisions someone without this conflict wouldn't make, it allows you to make the product better, and help get rid of the negativity aspect of it.
Take for example gambling (yes I know, again. but this one hits closer to home), some people might get addicted yes, but how can you stop that? How can your company help with that? Do YOU do enough?
On the flip side of the coin, how many people have jobs and are able to feed their families by having jobs connected to that industry? all thanks to the product you help create.
Not everything is as dark and gloomy as sometimes it seems, but we get stuck on the negativity with such ease that it seems that way. As a product person, always try to see the global, see both sides of the story, and never let yourself get caught in only one of them.
All this is not to say that product people that don’t have an ethical conflict are wrong, they are just able to see the bigger picture and are focusing on the good, instead of the bad.
What do you think about ethical conflicts in Product? How do you deal with them? 💬
The Product Land. ⛰️
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