People then product. That is how I now see a product manager’s job. This may be counterintuitive if the appeal about the job is building valuable products but what it does do is stress the importance of building a great team. The book says it nicely: one’s success as a product manager can “only be realized through the shared efforts of the people around them– people who each carry their own complex and often inscrutable needs, ambitions, doubts, and limitations.”
1. Responsibility without rank
I found the descriptions of product managers interesting in that they outlined what being a (good) product manager requires. For the first one– having a lot of responsibility but little authority– my question for the author is what they recommend doing when the problems arise over having to manage a team that you do not necessarily have the organizational authority to boss around. What do they recommend from their personal experience? How do they recommend approaching setting expectations/guidelines/deadlines for people who don’t have to (or don’t want to) listen?
2. Taking initiative without taking over
“Not my job!” Can’t say that. “I’ll just do it myself.” Can’t say that either. The author writes that product managers often have to take on jobs they wouldn’t think fits in their job description, even going the lengths to learn skills themselves, asking others for help. The author also writes that product managers can’t just take on work when there may be other people tasked with doing that work. This conundrum of defining the scope of a product manager’s work is what the author writes leads to bad product managers that are insecure, hiding behind jargon, big questions, self-praise, excess work, or self-inflicted martyrdom. The author recommends communication– talking to the team, senior leadership, other managers, etc to ask and figure out what you are responsible for. I want to ask the author how product managers can give input about design/technical decisions without seeming like they are micromanaging? To what extent should product managers have a say in those decisions? And, most of all, what should product managers do when they feel like they’re doing nothing?
3. Backgrounds without boundaries
Finally, if good product managers can come from anywhere, then where does someone even start? If one company looks for business people with some tech abilities and another looks for tech people with some business abilities, it seems like everything goes. So if specific backgrounds don’t necessarily matter, I want to ask the author what they recommend to gain universal hard/soft skills that can be useful at any company.
