My understanding of what a product manager, more specifically an effective productive manager, through the thoughts of Lemay, is a well-rounded person that enjoys finding problems and solving them. A product manager needs to not only be aware of everything happening around them like what is going on with design, marketing, and engineering, but understand the needs of the project and more importantly the people working on it. A product manager should be excited about the challenge of taking on new interesting problems and taking upon themselves to find out what needs to be done from all members of a team. Beyond this, an effective product manager should have vision. It is their responsibility to see where the project is going and what needs to be done to keep in control. As Lemay says, they should be constantly evolving, changing, and adapting. A product manager in my eyes should be someone who can sort of do it all. They are a jack of all trades that if they were required to, they could step into any role and fill any gaps to the best of their abilities. To me, an important trait of a good leader and good product manager is understanding and valuing the time of those around you. It is a difficult task to balance the time and effort requirement of a whole team around you, and to be an effective manager, you have to be aware of everything around you.
One thing I would ask the author is what the best way for a person within a specific skill, like software engineering or design, to step into the role of a product manager? How can you best prepare yourself to switch from being an executer to a manager and what are the most important things to understand about this change?
