I used to consider the product manager’s role as one of a problem solver, someone who picks up the slack and has to be a lot more technical than I think after the reading. However, I now see a product manager as more of a navigator within the team. They are someone who supports the team by being willing to work with anyone within and outside the team. They are proactive and display a great degree of flexibility in their work. And most importantly, they are not necessarily an authoritative figure on the team. Their job is to support the team, not micromanage to the point of causing more issues than there already are.
While these are my initial perceptions of what a product manager now looks like in my head, it is important to note that the nitty gritty and day-to-day of product managers is a fluid and ever-changing concept. And this is not isolated to varying only between start-ups, mid-size, and enterprise organizations. With that, product managers are faced with a lot of pressing challenges that they end up being held responsible for. As such, I view it as a product manager’s job to manage their own insecurities as well when such challenges can pressure them to adopt the caricatures of bad product managers.
With that, my question would be how would those starting out in the PM role manage these pressures and insecurities, so that they don’t adopt the bad PM caricatures as often? Also, it is inevitable that we adopt these caricatures once in a while, as mentioned in the reading, so how do we make peace with that inevitability and develop a mindset/plan to get out of that?
