The Way of Product Management

How to become great at the abstract job that is product management.

Product management is the job of managing and solving the abstract. There are a lot of beautiful anecdotes out there to simplify the definition but this is the most recent and interesting one that I’ve come across. It’s often the way of things, in time the subject becomes the critique of its definition. This happened to me a few weeks ago wherein, the meaning of PM-ship became an abstract question for me.

What does it mean to be a great PM? How could I become one, I asked myself. Everything worth doing is worth doing well, I thought. Every profession ought to be a pursuit of excellence, I read in the book: “The Book of Five Rings”.

In the past, I thought the following is what was needed to be a great PM:

1. Passion for creating products.
2. Ability to get things done.

I’ve now found that these are just the essential attributes to be a PM. Just a PM.

While passion for creating products may fuel you to create products, features, and PRDs; you can still make bad products and come out happy with your efforts.

Getting things done, or execution, makes you an operator. It is an important attribute of being a PM but it isn’t what makes one “great”.

Regular PMs, in my opinion, are passive. They wait for feature requests. Good PMs are active, they go out there to inquire about what problems they can solve. Great PMs, build hypotheses and then get them validated in the market. All of them get things done but the way is not the same.

Beyond the cult of “getting things done”, I’ve now realized these to be the more essential attributes to becoming a great PM – Ownership and Insights.

A product becomes successful when it solves its intended customer’s problems - known and unknown. Known problems are easy to solve. The customer requests a “feature” and an “operator” “gets it done” post discussing it with the engineers. The product moves a step ahead. If happy more customers use it; if lucky they pay for it too.

But what often kills products is what they don’t offer or the problems they never thought they had or cared to solve. Successful products are built on leaps of intuition and judgment by the creators of the product. Good intuition and sound judgment is earned by PMs with deeper insights into their product.

Ownership always comes first. Obsession with one’s work is critical for any job. But, it can’t be taught nor does every product/market trigger obsession from its workers. But a sense of ownership is a personality trait. It can be taught and often learned. It’s the discipline of serving your customer and showing up to your product every day. Ownership of the success of the product is what puts a good PM on the path of research, experiments, user interviews, bug fixes, and release cycles.

If ownership is a magnitude, insights are the directions. Every great product (business) vision is built on little unknown hunch-draped secrets or insights. Insights into the users, market, and industry help a product steer in the cloud of competition and bad market cycles.

While ownership can only be accepted and can be sufficed into a single piece of advice – take care of your users; building insights is hard.

I don’t know how to build insights. I’m still a learner, a fellow traveller, walker on the same path (hopefully as you) and here’s what I’m trying to build insights in my day job:

1. First Principles: Talk to your current and potential users. Listen only to understand their problems.

2. Analyze numbers generously.

3. Observe macro trends and read up on historical precedent on it.

4. Talk to veterans in your industry, their careers were built on their insights.

5. Go out, talk to people.

This is all I have. Abstract suggestions for an abstract job.

This post will evolve, there will be new lessons and I’ll be sure to add them here.

Owing to #5 On building insights I have to ask that you HMU if you found this to be helpful. My socials are mentioned on the left and I would love to understand the industry you work in and have deeper insights on.

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