Playing defense

Eric Schmitt from Google is one of my favorite mentors. And Eric would always say this very humbling thing that's really true, which is he would say good executive confuse themselves when they convince themselves that they actually do things.  And he was like, look, it's your job as leadership to be defense, not offense, right.  The team decides we're running in this direction and it's your job to clear the path, get things out of the way, get the obstacles out of the way, make it fast to make decisions, and let them run as far and fast as you possibly can.

Marissa Mayer at Fortune MPW discussing her management style at Yahoo!

As a product manager, this is one of the things I've been working hard at: making sure the ground is prepared and that the team has what they need to get the job done; making sure I'm not the bottleneck. Sometimes if you're not careful, it's far too easy to become the obstacle, rather than the one who is removing them.