Product managers appear to encapsulate the idea of a chameleon. Often changing in order to reflect their current environment, PM’s take on whatever work is needed at that current moment and time. As Matt Lemay describes, it’s a position of ambiguity where the responsibility to authority ratio is not quite balanced. Rather I find it to perhaps be a precarious role, where your lack of authority over the huge amount of responsibility you have can be rather unsettling. This, alongside a lack of clearly defined roles is bound to breed insecurity as Lemay mentions. However, reading through the qualities that successful PM’s possess and the general archetypes of bad PM’s, I’ve concluded that Product Management is a misleading name. It’s perhaps more to do with People Management. Being the connective tissue amongst many different teams, you’re most likely dealing more with the facilitation of your different departments. For example, the technical team and design team have to be clearly be on the same page in order for a fully realized product. Analysts also are utilized to inform various decisions throughout the stage of creating a product. Along with a plethora of other roles, product managers appear to be more involved with the people in order to realize the product.
Another interesting point is that responsibilities (and titles) not only differ company from company, but they also vary depending on the type of company. Lemay makes clear distinctions between start-ups where perhaps you’re a lot more involved in the technical aspects or are conducting more market research or doing user interviews. This most likely differs from mid-sized companies and huge fortune-500 companies. The skills to complete these tasks also probably don’t translate that well between each type of company that will be hiring Product Managers. In this sense, PM’s need to possess a certain level of adaptability and variety in useful skills.
My final questions for Matt Lemay are what makes Product Managing ‘worth it’ and how did these roles originate?
