I Have A Definition…
While Matt LeMay, in his book Product Management in Practice, explicitly warns that “product management is best understood not by a single ‘correct’ definition but rather by the very impossibility of such a definition,” I will still try to channel my inner eager student (a feeling LeMay surely finds relatable) and attempt to create one anyway. Based on my work this summer in what can best be described as a product role, attending a bootcamp by Stanford Product Pathways in the spring, and the first few lectures of CS 177, I would say:
A Product Manager’s job is to decrease entropy for everyone around them. This is both in the information-theory sense of the word — reducing uncertainty, clarifying goals, setting clear next steps to make concrete progress — and the thermodynamic sense — generally decreasing chaos and disorder by energizing team members and channeling them towards an exciting vision.
What makes the work equal parts thrilling and terrifying is its ever-changing nature. The universe tends towards disorder in so many different ways that a PM cannot be picky about how to undo that entropy.
… And Many Questions
Perhaps this is evocative of the very role of a product manager, but reading the chapter honestly left me with more questions than answers. Here are my top three:
- LeMay asks PMs not to “become upset if your day-to-day work is not visionary and important seeming.” But I’m sure many people enjoy building delightful products™ which would surely require some vision and excitement beyond the dull clockwork of stand-ups and feature requests and tickets. How does that big-picture goal of delighting users emerge from the more banal daily grind? Or is incremental improvement the domain of PMs at large companies while 0→1 development is best accomplished in a startup setting?
- If PM is such a do-whatever-needs-to-be-done job that’s full of ambiguity and unexpected challenges, is it still possible to learn best practices or frameworks (not from a jargon standpoint but a utility standpoint) before starting a PM role? Or does the learning happen on the job?
- I get the sense that PM is one of those roles where successes are shared team wins while failures are specifically your responsibility. In that context, what’s the best way for individual PMs to gain recognition for their work and advance their career? Is it just about having a track record of successful products/features? Is great public speaking and presenting well in front of the C-Suite more important?
