After reading the assigned Product Management in Practice, I feel like I have gained some clarity into this role. Prior to this class, I had perceived product management to be a role of “tinkerers”– that you are essentially building a product from ground up and are heavily involved in the design and implementation of it. PMs are still vital to this process, but now I understand that there are several nuances to this role. For one, PMs have full responsibility of the product but little authority. We are not the product owners nor the ones in the weeds, figuring out the smaller details. We are rather the middle men, the ones influencing the way a product is conceived by persuasion, self-drive, and multi-tasking.
That being said, I find LaMay’s description of what makes a bad product manager quite helpful (and quite funny as well). Particularly, by understanding what not to do, for example, to use presumptuous jargon or victimize oneself, I can try to avoid the pitfalls. I also find the product manager checklist to be interesting, albeit a bit intimidating: how do you “align, motivate, and inspire” your team in a way that does not require formal organizational authority? How do I become a better communicator in order to avoid misalignments? Of course, an obvious answer to these questions is practice. But what about the strategies around this? The psychological tips that switch the “like” button in people’s minds? Are they innate or can you learn them? I think these are questions that I would love for the author to answer, and I’m excited to learn more about product management in these upcoming weeks.
