Why Product Managers Need To Act Like Short Order Cooks
Mastering the secret sauce of all-day service and organized chaos
Welcome to Frank Takeaways. I'm Frank, writing the notes worth keeping from decades at companies like Slack, Etsy, and Google. I run a coaching practice dedicated to guiding leaders through the tricky stuff of building products and high-performing teams.
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My formative diner years were in the low-country of Georgia, with more time spent in Waffle House than Barry Levinson's Diner. Smothered, covered, diced, and peppered — thank you for asking. Some might dismiss short-order cooks as jacks of all trades, masters of none. But watching them manage the controlled chaos of the all-day breakfast rush taught me what true mastery looks like: not perfecting a single dish in isolation, but orchestrating dozens of moving pieces under pressure.
Years later, as a product manager, I'd realize those shifts held the blueprint for modern product leadership: the ability to orchestrate complexity in real-time while maintaining quality under pressure. In an era of continuous deployment and rapid market shifts, product management isn't about perfect planning — it's about mastering the chaos of the line.
What About the Donuts?
Back in 2005, Ken Norton's "bring the donuts" essay captured an essential truth about product management: PMs succeed through influence, not authority. By doing whatever it takes to help their teams — including bringing those donuts — PMs earn the trust needed to lead without formal power.
That foundation of servant leadership remains crucial, but today's ever-evolving product landscape (hello AI, join us at the counter and we'll get to your order in a second) demands we add another layer: the orchestration skills of a veteran line cook.
Why I'll Choose a Short Order Cook Over a Culinary School Grad
In product management, like at a Waffle House at 2 AM, execution trumps theory every time. Your customers don't care about your perfect product vision any more than a hungry trucker cares about plate presentation. They want their order hot, correct, and preferably sometime this century.
When I'm hiring PMs, I look for short order cooks, not culinary school graduates. Like PMs, short-order cooks have full accountability for the customer's satisfaction but limited formal authority over the kitchen. They succeed not through org charts but through earned respect, practical skills, and relentless execution.
Understanding the science behind the perfect hash brown crust is valuable knowledge, but it's not enough. A culinary degree on your wall won't help when the morning rush hits, the new guy calls in sick, and the coffee maker's on the fritz. The only currency that matters is getting hot food to hungry customers, just like the only metric that matters in product is shipping valuable software to real users. That's product management in real life.
The best PMs I've worked with earned their chops the same way. They're former engineers who can jump in and debug when production's melting down. Former designers who can mock-up solutions while the design team's swamped with other orders. Former data analysts who can dive into the metrics when something smells off. Each "station" they've mastered makes them more valuable during the rush, similar to a cook who can work every spot on the line.
The Secret Ingredient: Versatility Under Pressure
Think about your best days in product. Were you spending them crafting the perfect PRD in isolation, or jumping between stations to help your team ship? These aren't just PM skills - they're fundamental leadership capabilities that translate across roles. Great PMs, like great short order cooks, earn their stripes by:
Knowing when to step in (and step back)
Having enough experience to be dangerous in multiple areas
Understanding how all the pieces fit together
Making real-time trade-offs that keep the kitchen moving
Actually helping their team ship better and faster
So how do you develop these capabilities in yourself or your team? Like any good kitchen, it starts with mastering the stations.
From Theory to the Line: Developing Your Kitchen Skills
Whether you're leading PMs or looking to grow yourself, here's how to build that short-order cook versatility:
For Individual Contributors: Keep Mastering New Stations
Whether you're just starting out or have years of experience, there's always another station to master. Every great cook knows this — even veteran line cooks pick up new techniques and expand their repertoire. Here are key stations to develop, wherever you are in your journey:
The Prep Station (Technical Foundation)
Get comfortable watching engineers debug (you'll learn more from their process than any course)
Pick up enough SQL to investigate issues without always asking for help
Learn your way around the dev tools (they're just another set of kitchen equipment)
Get familiar with APIs (they're like your kitchen's supply chain)
The Grill (Design & User Experience)
Learn the basics of design tools (like learning which knobs control which burners)
Sit in on design reviews (watch how the veterans plate their dishes)
Build quick mock-ups (practice your plating before the rush)
Get to know your customers' tastes (some like their hash browns crispy, some like them soft)
The Pass (Customer Interface)
Work the support queue during launches (every cook should spend time waiting tables)
Master the art of clear communication (like calling out orders so the whole kitchen can hear)
Talk to customers face-to-face (nothing beats the counter seat conversations)
Get comfortable with demos and sales calls (sometimes you gotta sell the daily special)
For Leaders: Create Learning Opportunities
If you're leading PM teams, think like a kitchen manager developing your crew. Just as a diner cross-trains their cooks across the line, here's how to create opportunities for growth:
Rotate PMs through different product areas (from eggs and hash browns to waffles and pancakes) - Google's legendary APM program built their reputation on this approach.
Pair junior PMs with technical leads (like having a new cook shadow the grill master)
Have PMs join design critiques (tasting dishes before they hit the menu)
Create "stretch assignments" where PMs can safely fail and learn (working the quiet shifts before tackling the rush)
Build Pattern Recognition
Do postmortems on both successes and failures.
Maintain a "cookbook" of common problems and solutions
Share war stories in team meetings (like cooks swapping stories after closing)
Practice scenario planning: "What would you do if...?"
Measure Progress
Instead of traditional PM metrics, track:
How often does your team ship without blockers?
Times you've unblocked others without escalation
Variety of problems you can handle independently
Team velocity improvements you've enabled
Remember: like learning to cook, this is a gradual process based on repetition. Start with basic prep work, master one station at a time, and slowly build up your heat tolerance. The goal isn't to replace the specialists—no one expects you to be the best at everything. It's about understanding each area well enough to help when needed, steadily increasing your surface area of value until you can be useful wherever the kitchen needs you most.
The New Kitchen Equipment
Even Waffle House has changed — from digital ordering systems to automated ticket tracking. But regulars don't care about the new equipment, they just want their hash browns scattered, smothered, and covered. Same goes for product management: AI isn't just another appliance, it's like a grill that changes temperature on its own. The fundamentals haven't changed, but the kitchen's gotten more complex.
The best cooks I knew were always tinkering during the slow hours — testing new methods, building better systems, finding faster ways to serve regulars. That's what modern PMs need to do with AI and other new tools. Don't wait for the manual — experiment, build something small, start a side project, learn by doing.
Your customers don't care if you're using AI or a abacus — they just want their order hot, fresh, and fast. Success still comes down to the basics: good judgment, solid execution, and the ability to handle the heat when the kitchen gets crazy.
The Bottom Line: Check Please
After all these years, the lessons from that Waffle House still ring true: if you're not helping your team ship better and faster, you're just creating process overhead. The best PMs, like the best short order cooks, are judged by one metric: did the customer get their order hot, fresh, and fast?
A cook's reputation isn't built on their knowledge of egg protein coagulation or their perfectly arranged mise en place. It's built on what happens during the rush, when everything's on fire (sometimes literally), and customers are waiting. That's when you discover who can really cook.
The same is true for product managers. Your team doesn't need a walking library of product frameworks or a wall of certifications—though they may help. What they really need is someone who can help them deliver value when the pressure's on. Someone who knows that shipping, like serving breakfast, isn't about perfection — it's about execution.