Audrey Warren of athenahealth: Product Managers Need Confidence And Humility
Product managers need to find a good balance between confidence and humility, shared Audrey Warren, senior manager of product at athenahealth, for my interview series Austin VOP. Our interview has been edited for clarity.
Austin VOP #44
What was your path to product management?
I had been working in non-profits for almost 10 years when I decided to make a deliberate move into tech. So I applied to a Craigslist ad for a small company in town called Bazaarvoice that was just 80 people at the time and I talked my way into a client success job. It was a pretty thrilling time to be at that company as we rocketed to IPO — we had to be scrappy and figure things out in an environment of constant change. I had some great managers and mentors who were very transparent with me about the business decisions that were being made and I was able to observe the impact those decisions had on the company growth. I call that time my DIY MBA.
Working in services taught me to empathize with my clients and get creative about how to help them solve their problems, but I never felt like I was making a big enough difference. So I moved over to an operations role where I was in charge of building programs and implementing technologies to help scale our teams. One day I woke up and realized that even though no one had given me the title, I was actually an agile product manager — developing a product vision, overseeing a scrum team and planning sprints. From there I started studying up on the discipline and learning the methodology. I took that experience to my next role at a very small company called Rallyhood as the only product person, which was a great way to round out my self-education.
How do you learn and grow in this field?
I am an idea connector, so I really grow by taking lessons from everywhere and being a lifelong learner. Of course, I read the product management blogs and listen to the podcasts, but I get the best ideas from studying other apps and online experiences in the wild — regardless of the function.
I was walking on Town Lake trail awhile back and there was a sign asking people to take an online survey on their phone of their emotional and physical experiences with waterscapes around Austin. I was fascinated by the concept of using technology in nature to inform land use planning and it made me think about ways that we could capture feedback from our users outside of our traditional avenues. I’m constantly looking for inspirational experiences like that. My photo roll is pretty much only filled with pictures of my kid and screenshots of other apps or interactive experiences.
What advice do you give to aspiring product leaders?
You have to learn a good balance between confidence and humility.
Too much of either one will prevent you from finding the best solution and being honest with yourself about when it’s time to pivot to a new idea. Product managers overuse one or the other. I worked with clients for several years and I saw the resistance to input from PMs: “we know what we are doing.”
You have to have confidence and fiercely defend what you are doing. You have to have real conviction in what you are doing with all the information that you have at the time. And at the same time, you have to have the humility that you might not be right the first time. You may learn something late in the game. You have to be able to look for inspiration outside yourself. What do you do to slow down and back up? How can you get your product out and see what happens — with a commitment to doing an earnest attempt at a v2?
What is exciting about the product you are working on now?
I love working in healthcare. It’s one of the most important issues impacting our generation and if we don’t fix what’s broken, it’s going to cripple our future. So I’m motivated. The product that I work on is called Epocrates — it’s a consumer reference app for doctors and healthcare professionals to bring deep clinical insights into the patient encounter. We’re like an auxiliary hard drive for doctors’ brains. The thing that excites me most about our product is that we have such a strong brand reputation that we could expand our product offering in any direction. We’re just starting a new phase of intensive generative research right now to learn about the jobs-to-be-done that our clinicians are struggling with in their practices. I can’t wait to dig into the data that we collect to start to build and test hypotheses around new product areas where we can expand into to help doctors be better doctors.
What is your biggest product challenge currently?
We’re a 20-year-old app — it was first written for the Palm Pilot in the late nineties and doctors absolutely loved it. In 2008 the team was summoned to Cupertino in secrecy to build Apple’s first health app and the Epocrates team was on stage with Steve Jobs for the App Store announcement. The product has a long and storied history, but product people know how that plays out behind the scenes. Our biggest challenge ahead is not sexy — it’s constantly figuring out how to evolve the product while making the most strategic investments in the core infrastructure. Our brand is so valuable and our users trust us to help them make the right clinical decisions so we have a great responsibility to get it right. Sometimes that means we have to grit our teeth and accept a less elegant solution so we can continue to deliver value to our users. Sometimes it means we have to “slow down to speed up” and spend some time fixing some legacy technologies. Finding the right balance and keeping your team motivated at the same time is tricky.
How might we build a stronger product and tech community in Austin?
Austin is a really great tech city because it’s got so much talent and creativity, and a vibrant entrepreneurial community. But when I walk into most tech companies, the faces I see don’t reflect the community as a whole.
I passionately believe that bringing racial, gender, and socioeconomic diversity into product management results in quantitatively better products.
I know from experience that teaching and mentoring is a fantastic way to build community. So it seems like a no-brainer that those of us working in tech should be investing more energy into mentoring students in Austin ISD and developing formal entry points for underrepresented minorities into tech jobs.
I’m inspired by local leaders like Rubin Cantú who is trying to develop a fast track to product management for first-generation college students through the Level Up institute. There’s a growing optimism that code academies might be a great democratizing force in technology, but I think that product would be an even more viable entry point for many talented people if we created a similar pathway, and our companies would benefit tremendously from a diversity of voices in the role. I spent a few years teaching in NYC public schools and I can tell you that students who are facing adversity are some of the most resilient and creative problem solvers I’ve ever met. To find out how you can get involved with the Level Up Institute you can reach out to Ruben Cantu.
Last question, what is your favorite product?
This one’s hard — I’m a terrible consumer! But I actually love doing my taxes every year because I have a big product crush on Intuit’s Turbo Tax and I get to do my annual heuristic evaluation on their user experience. I’m always floored by their product voice and UX — they’ve taken one of the most complicated and frustrating jobs that Americans face every year and built empathy into literally every single step in the process.
I’m also in love with the business models of Omada Health and Callisto. Both companies went so deep in defining their respective problem spaces that they were able to build highly effective digital tools for seemingly intractable real-world problems with mission statements like “to inspire and enable people everywhere to live free of chronic disease” and “end rape”. They remind me of why I got into technology in the first place.
Thank you, Audrey!
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