After I graduated college I landed a marketing role at a gaming startup. I quickly gravitated toward Product, even though just 6 months prior, I had no clue what a Product Manager was. I was fortunate to have an amazing boss and mentor who quickly threw me into the fire as a PM.
Lately I’ve been thinking about what I’ve learned since then and where I need to improve. Product is one of the most ill-defined roles and often varies across companies.
In my mind, it’s Product’s responsibility to:
- Empower others. People need recognition. Allow the builders to show off their work. Recognize others’ feature suggestions and ideas. Be humble.
- Communicate. Effective communication of new features to the entire team, beyond engineering, is necessary to support everyone’s job. Sales needs to sell it, support needs to troubleshoot consumer issues, marketing needs to understand how to position in the market.
- Say no. Feedback is Product’s best friend but often it doesn’t fit with corporate strategy or simply not impactful enough to prioritize. Like any good writer, heavy edits and focus is what creates great product.
- Shepherd. The product needs a Shepherd as it passes from conception to design to engineering to consumers. Unable to prioritize a needed feature? Defend with data and supporting evidence. Development stalled? Find out what’s blocking.
- Shield. Stand between engineering and the business team’s requests or questions. Although it may seem less efficient, productivity will ultimately benefit.
- Empathize. Understand customers and internal stakeholders. Their pain and needs may not be obvious. They are different people.
- Decisive. Product must lead. Leaders must be decisive. Quick decisions, even when imperfect, are better than stagnant ones.
- Kill their baby. Some features won’t work out. Sunk costs and ego shouldn’t get in the way of what’s right for the product and business.
- Be naive. Never limit the vision or product based on assumptions or perceived limitations. Challenge engineering and push limits at the cost of sounding stupid.
- Set the vision. Vision drives motivation which leads to transformative product, business success, and happy teams.
At the risk of sounding conceited, the execution and tone that’s set by Product has a huge impact on everyone’s success. Ultimately it’s their responsibility to carry each deliverable from start to finish with the help of the team. It all starts with Product.