The role of a PM has always interested me. Most of the startups I had worked on or collaborated with before were too small to have a PM, so actually getting to work with a PM this summer was a very eye-opening experience. This book does a great job of describing what I saw very well. I see a PM’s role as the person who always knows who to talk to, and whose job it actually is to go out and discover what to build next. This means that, in many ways, PMs are trusted across the organization, and it was fascinating to see how much everyone enjoys working with a person who is curious and willing to find solutions that work. It is an interesting position; the role is not very well-defined a lot of the time, but your responsibilities feel like quite the opposite. As a result, it does feel like PMs can be role models for their team or the people they interact with on a day-to-day basis, adding to that pressure.
This is a tough burden to carry, so it makes sense that it is easy to fall into one (or multiple) of the bad habits. I would love to ask Matt what some good techniques are for identifying when you have fallen into a bad habit and how to correct it as quickly as possible.
Finding the motivation to keep doing this is also something I would love to learn more about. It’s great that other people may see a PM as someone who gets them excited to get to work every day, but for the PM, the reality is that it is likely difficult to get excited about “business goals,” if they even exist.
