Characteristics & Traits of Great PMs
Great PMs do whatever it takes to amplify their team’s impact on the customer experience and business.
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Characteristics of great product managers
1. Product taste. Product taste means having the insights and intuition to understand customer needs for a product in a given area. What product features will wow a customer or meet their core needs? If the PM is joining you from another industry they may not know the specific needs of your customers. However, they should have the skillset and tool kit to quickly learn about your customers and their needs.
2. Ability to prioritize. What is the value of a proposed product feature versus the engineering work needed to accomplish it? What is more important—a new product for the sales team or a feature for customers? Should pricing be optimized for consumers or small business owners? What is the 80% product that should be launched immediately and what singular customer problem does it solve?
3. Ability to execute. A big part of product management is convincing and cajoling teams and different resources to get the product to launch, and then to maintain the product and support the customer base. Product managers will partner with engineering, design, legal, customer support, and other functions to execute on the product road map.
4. Strategic sensibilities. How is the industry landscape evolving? How can the product be positioned to make an end-run around the competition? Intel’s famous pricing strategy in the 1970s is a good example of a bold strategic move. At the time Intel understood there was a strong reduction in their own costs as they scaled unit sales. Dropping unit sales would lead to increased demand and volume, causing a virtuous cycle. Intel smartly decided to launch a new silicon product at a cost below their COGs in order to scale market share faster. In response, their customers bought in volumes they had not projected until two years out, causing a massively lower cost structure for them and therefore profitability. In other words, their low pricing became self-fulfilling and sustainable through massive volumes years ahead of projections.
5. Top 10% communication skills. Much of the job of a product manager boils down to understanding and then communicating trade-offs to a diverse group of coworkers and external parties.
6. Metrics and data-driven approach. You build what you measure. Part of the role of a product manager is to work with engineering and the data science team to define the set of metrics the product team should track. Setting the right metrics can be hard, and even the right metrics can sometimes drive the wrong behavior.
Traits of Great PM
PMs have diverse backgrounds, murky responsibilities, and wildly varied expectations across companies. It’s nearly impossible to define what makes a PM great. With those caveats, here is an attempt at ten commonalities.
1. Great PMs live in the future and work backwards They immerse themselves in research, feedback, data, discussions, and the market. They craft thoughtful, inspiring narratives for where the product should go — and the best path to get there.
2. Great PMs amplify their teams They listen well. They infuse urgency. They foster collective creativity. They build consensus by default but can drive hard decisions when they have to. They take the blame and pass on praise.
3. Great PMs focus on the impact They constantly fine-tune product strategy to maximize business impact, so their teams never worry about whether their hard work will matter. They don’t care about accolades from peers, Apple design awards, or press write-ups.
4. Great PMs write well They are succinct, structured, thorough, and persuasive.
5. Great PMs drive a fast pace of high-quality decisions They make two-way door calls quickly and help the org make one-way calls judiciously. They care about getting to the right decision, not whether they are right. They are the ultimate facilitator.
PMs should lay out well-researched tradeoffs, set timetables, and structure great discussions. Only in rare situations should they actually “make the call.”
6. Great PMs optimize for learning They voraciously seek out insights about customer needs and pain points through research, experiments, and cross-functional partners. They course correct constantly.
7. Great PMs execute impeccably They say what they’ll do, and then do what they say. Their follow-through is impeccable, and they don’t let details slip. When they join a team, quality and pace seem to dramatically improve overnight.