Fooled by Proxies

The Empty Pursuit of Proxies

When I was a kid, my parents, grandparents, and many others, instilled in me that high grades mattered.

Do well in school, do well in life.

A good report card meant much praise and sometimes even money. A bad one meant (silent) disapproval and having to answer a barrage of questions.

As a result, ever since a young age I was busy chasing and caring about proxies.

A proxy is something that serves to replace or substitute for another thing. ‘Do well in school, do well in life’ is a good example of such a proxy. “An apple a day keeps the doctor at bay” could be considered as a proxy if you’d take it literally.

Since a young age, we’re actively fooled by proxies:

• High grades are important. Proxy.

• Let’s finish primary school. A proxy again.

• I should graduate at a good high school to be set up for success. Yet another proxy.

• I should study at university and obtain a bachelor and master’s degree for getting a good job. Two proxies.

When I began working, it’s no surprise I once again continued to chase proxies. It’s what I’ve been doing since a young age and feel comfortable with. Get a good job at a good company. Get promoted. Switch jobs if I can’t get the promotion I wanted.

Then I reached the summit: the highest position I had wanted all along and I wondered: is this it? I was at the peak, yet it felt like I had hit rock bottom. I instantly wondered: what’s next?

What surprised me is how little I cared about reaching my goal. I immediately was longing for yet another goal. It didn’t really matter all that much to me. I want to stress, it’s not that these proxies don’t matter, they definitely do. But the proxies are never the point.

It’s attractive to climb this imaginary career ladder and believe we’re making progress. Our friends and family will cheer us on. But it’s important to keep in mind that a proxy is no substitute for the real thing you’re really looking for.

Doing well in school, or even in your career, does not mean you will do well in life. Bill Waterson, from Calvin and Hobbes fame, still has expressed it the best:

“Having an enviable career is one thing, and being a happy person is another.

Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it's to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.

You'll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you're doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you'll hear about them.

To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble.” - Bill Waterson, artist and writer of Calvin and Hobbes

You might be thinking: why am I writing about the danger of chasing proxies on a blog about Product Management?

We’re brought up since a young age to value and pursue proxies. So it’s absolutely no wonder we keep on doing that. Chasing proxies is often what Product Managers settle for:

• We try to score higher on Agile Maturity or Product Management maturity models.

• We believe that following the Product Operating Model will be the answer to all our problems.

• We believe that we must follow frameworks or recipes that worked for others to achieve success.

• A higher Velocity is better and delivering more features is better.

I’m writing this to remind you: chasing proxies will never get you where you really want to be, as a proxy is at best a diluted Fata Morgana version of the real thing it’s possible to care about.

Keep climbing. But the sooner you stop chasing proxies that are no substitute for the real thing, the more happy and successful you will be as a Product Manager.

Proxies are easy to see, observe and chase, like a Fata Morgana, but once you arrive, there’s nothing there but the feeling of emptiness and the zero calories of fake growth.

And then we lock our eyes with our next proxy… and so the proxy delusion continues.