Ariel Katen of H-E-B: Product Managers Are Not The Smartest In The Room

Find people that are smarter that you can learn from and collaborate with, shared Ariel Katen, Senior Product Manager at H-E-B, for my interview series Austin Voice Of Product. Our interview has been edited for clarity.

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Austin VOP #97

What was your path to product management?

I have a different story than a lot of other product managers, especially if you have been in the game for as long as I have. I graduated college a year early with an English Lit degree. All I knew I could do was read, write and think critically. With student loans coming in, I got a job as an office coordinator. It could have been at a dentist’s office, but it was at IAC. IAC owned, and still owns, very successful and popular internet properties like Match.com and Vimeo.com. I was twenty-one and I thought it was the coolest thing. But being an ambitious person, soon enough, I realized I didn’t really love ordering bagels. I wanted to do something bigger. And so who are the busiest people who were happy for some help? — product managers. They saw this twenty-one year old who wanted to do anything and the next thing I knew, I was performing tasks like building out a competitive analysis. After about two years, an assistant product manager role opened up and they asked me if I wanted to apply. I remember telling the hiring manager during the interview that I don’t know how to do this job, but I know how to make friends and talk to people. I know how to Google things and I’ll figure it out if you give me the chance. This has been my whole career since.

Thinking about it now, I know that it is so hard to get into this job today. There is no chance you can go from an office coordinator to an assistant product manager. And I am so grateful for the people around me who saw that I was smart and that I would do what it takes if I had the chance. Everyone needs a break to get their first PM job. The bar is much higher now. So I consider myself fortunate.

What advice do you give to aspiring product leaders?

A constant goal throughout my career has been to not be the smartest person in the room. You want to fill the room with people smarter than you. If you want to grow in this role you have to be curious and humble.

Seek out people you want to learn from even if they are in completely different roles or industries.

The way a developer thinks is different from a designer; be open to learning from them.

Your other goal is to get other people to shine. This is really important to me. I have been in this industry for over ten years now and there was a wave where the ego of the product manager reigned supreme. It never quite made sense to me because our job is actually very collaborative. I had a lot of imposter syndrome during this time. I thought I was not smart enough for this job, but I realized that there are so many flavors of us. I know how to think, empathize, collaborate, and deliver. I had to remember to be true to myself versus trying to be something that I was not.

Possessing awesome soft skills is critical. And soft skills is not a fair thing to call them — you have to have great communication, problem solving, and collaboration skills. You spend all day interacting with other people. You are not designing the product. You are not engineering the product. You have to work with others to do so.

When I was around PMs that wanted to own everything and just add their name, I couldn’t understand it. Do I have to do that to succeed? It didn’t feel good.

The job is not impressing someone in a room for ten minutes. The job is what can you deliver that is valuable for customers.

I decided that I wanted to work with great people, I wanted to have fun, and did not want to worry so much about fitting a mold.

So my advice to younger PMs is to seek out community. It does not have to be other PMs. It could be others you want to learn from. Seek other people out because there is nothing better for your support and growth.

What have you read/watched/listened to that has inspired you lately?

I had a really interesting summer. I was heavily involved in the pandemic response and I need a brain break. I ended up reading a lot in the past six months. From that reading, I have two favorites. The first is Escaping the Build Trap by Melissa Perri. It was an inspiring book because I am in an industry with so much competition. This book walks through how to set a strategic vision without feeling like it needs to include what your competitors are doing. It is important to focus on solving problems for my company and my customers, first and foremost. The industry I’m in now, grocery, is about to break. Someone is going to figure out how to do it great — better than the rest, why not H-E-B? I believe we can do that, but not by just looking at our competitors, but by talking to our customers and focusing on what they want and need. The author gives a great example in the book about Netflix and their transition from DVDs to making a big investment in streaming. They weren’t worried about Blockbuster.

Reading books like this absolutely inspires me. I have these faux Steve Jobs moments and say to my team, “You know what? Let’s call this Operation Blue Sky and let’s figure out what is interesting in other industries and how we can do it in ours.” This book reminded me how important it is to create value, not just tasks — to think about what’s next and not be afraid if it has not been already done somewhere else.

The second book is The Assertiveness Workbook. As someone who would like to avoid conflict like the plague, I absolutely enjoyed it and it gave me a new perspective. We don’t have to be confrontational all the time in order to resolve conflict. Every couple of pages there are questions you can think about. And it made me realize that I do not dislike conflict — I do not like aggression. My favorite days are when my teammates and I are working together and having fun. How do we create more of those days? The book does a really good job of giving you different tools and is much less about dealing with others, but how to handle yourself.

What is exciting about the product you are working on now?

My focus is on Curbside and Home Deliver at H-E-B, more specifically, the bottom of the funnel. My team is affectionately called cart to home. We are responsible for the experience from the moment you add something to your cart until it shows up at its final destination; whether that is outside your front door or in your trunk. There are a lot of interesting and unique things to think about in this space. So for example, unlike typical e-commerce products, our warehouses are the stores and the products are not all shelf-stable. There are a lot of real world complexities to work through. What I love about my piece of the puzzle is that we get to work closely with our operations team and get to know all the intricacies of our stores. I will give you an example to show why this is complex. Say that customers really want to use reusable bags instead of plastic for the Curbside order. I could add a radio button for customers to select that option when they checkout. Sounds easy enough, right? When you communicate with operations, they will say, “we totally want to offer reusable bags but we are in a pandemic. How can we reasonably expect that the bags are sanitary?” You immediately stop in your tracks. It humbles me every day especially as a product manager who has spent her career mostly in software.

In the next year we are focused on giving our customers more control of the groceries they purchase online. So far we have released the ability to select a particular preference on a handful of products. Do you want a green or yellow bunch of bananas? How would you like your deli meat sliced?

The team and I did a lot of research and user testing, not only with our customers. We collaborated with our deli Partners and asked “how do people talk about meats and cheeses?” We wanted to build a common language. We want customers to feel like they are in the store picking items for themselves.

Also, our store Partners do not live and breathe tech every day. They are really relying on us to come up with the right solutions, not only for our customers but also for them so that they are empowered to do their jobs well. So the right thickness of sliced cheese not only helps our customers, but also helps the store Partner because they know exactly what the customer wants and don’t have to guess.

How might we build a stronger product community in Austin?

I think we are getting there. I believe there are still some big tech companies that have ego driven product managers and that can be really intimidating to others. I jokingly said recently that we should not give a twenty-two year old PM the book Inspired. Who would sign up for this job? A stronger community is built by an honest community. I think that what you are doing is beautiful because we are being transparent about our job — it’s hard and pretty weird. Acknowledging that is important. Every company that you go to is going to expect different things from their product managers and what good looks like is going to change.

I think how we build community and get stronger is not just sharing our successes, but also the war stories. For a long time I thought that to be a great product manager meant you had to have a computer science degree or have been an engineer. That used to flip me out a lot. I worried that I was never going to grow in my role. And over time I realized that your team does not want a product manager with a ten year old CS degree on their team that hasn’t touched a line of code since. They do not need a shitty engineer to deal with containers or build APIs with them. They’re there for the ‘how’ — you’re responsible for the ‘why’. What they need from you is strategy and to know what will be valuable to build. I always tell younger PMs to lean into what our job is actually supposed to be and don’t feel so intimidated that you have to be everything that others want from you at all times.

These stories are what I would look for when I was at my lowest. Reading about other people’s journeys and missteps was what really helped me through. And sometimes it is not about you because maybe the company is evolving — and maybe your flavor of PM is not the flavor of the day or the flavor they prefer. And that is okay because there are plenty of other places that would appreciate you whatever your flavor is.

I think there are a lot of PMs that have imposter syndrome and hearing others stories helps them and makes our community stronger.

Last question, what is your favorite product?

There are two apps that I have used for many, many years every single day and they are not the latest and greatest. It is the Apple Podcast app and YouTube. And I thought why are these my two favorite products? It’s because they create community. They help you feel close to people. You hear people’s stories on podcasts or learn about people’s worlds by watching their YouTube channel. I really love the sense of community and learning. One of my biggest goals at H-E-B is: how can I make the feeling of being in an H-E-B store come through on the H-E-B app or website? How can we build that sense of belonging? It’s even more important during a pandemic where we cannot be connected to our communities in the same way. It is groceries, but it is so much more than that.

Thank you, Ariel!

Austin VOP is an interview series with current and future product leaders to build a stronger product community in Austin. Please like, share and tweet this article if you enjoyed it.

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