Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Melissa Rosenthal

Being the right CEO for your product

Credit: Jeffrey Betts, MMT

Next week I’m sitting on a panel for Women in Product here in Melbourne. We’ll be discussing what it takes to be a great product manager.

I used to be a product manager — but that was a long time ago. So I sat down to think about the insights I could share that would be of interest and value to the 4o people who have agreed to attend. I wondered whether my experience was still relevant for today’s product managers. I asked myself the question…

So, what does it take to be a great product manager?

A list began to formulate in my mind…

Unrelenting passion for solving customer problems. Don’t just build for the sake of it — know why you’re building.
Curiosity. A desire to truly understand the customer — what’s important to them and why. You’ll need to suspend your assumptions. Act like you know nothing and bring out your inner 5 y.o (“but why…”)
Commercial acumen. Do you understand what will make money and what won’t? It’s not always about the money — but you always need to know the pathway to commercial success.
Decision making. Can you make the trade off decisions that will inevitably be required with limited resources and commercial realities?
Flexibility. Know how and when to pivot when you find information that changes some or all of your preconceived notions.
Magnetism. Can you engage others, draw their interest in your journey and gain their commitment to your efforts? This is a combination of charisma and credibility.
Relationships. It’s impossible to take great products to market on your own. Investing time and effort in building relationships with your internal and external stakeholders will make a big difference.
Determination. There will always be people lining up to tell you it can’t be done. Not with your timeline/budget/resources/insert excuse here…conviction in the face of adversity is critical.
Methodology. Do you have a process? Does it suit your environment? For example, it’s tough to use agile if you’re the only internal department working that way – so tailor your process to suit your context.
Execution. Put simply — can you get it done?

Phew…It’s a long list — and I’m not quite done.

The product manager is the CEO of the product — so it’s important to get the right type of CEO for the job.

The best product managers I know have a very strong sense of whether they are a builder, a fixer or a driver.

A builder is someone who thrives in the early stages in the life of a product. They love a blank sheet of paper and the freedom to create something new.

A fixer loves to take something that is broken and make it better. That could be technically broken — but more likely relates to either operational processes, financial viability and/or customer proposition.

A driver loves to take an existing product and find way to improve it’s performance. They understand the top line and the bottom line of the business and how to improve both.

Understanding your passions, preferences and skills in this way will lead to an easier recruitment process and greater success in the role — so it’s worth thinking about what type of product manager you are.

If you’re a product manager or you lead a team of product managers I’d love to hear your thoughts on my ideas and even more importantly, what I’ve missed. I’ll be sure to credit you when I talk at the meetup next week!

Have you got what it takes to be a great Product Manager? was originally published in Prototyping: From UX to Front End on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Have you got what it takes to be a great Product Manager?

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