Building a Product Management Flywheel
Establishing a product management flywheel is a non-trivial task and requires overcoming organizational, structural and philosophical challenges. I took a crack at it by establishing a set of principles to build alignment and guidelines to hire great PMs. (This is part of a series. Check out part II and part III as well!)
A flywheel is a “heavy revolving wheel in a machine that is used to increase the machine’s momentum and provide greater stability in the delivery of power to the machine.”
Product Management plays the role of a flywheel thrusting greater momentum in product delivery and sales in an organization. Building a high performing product management flywheel from the word go or at any later point in time is a non-trivial task and requires greater alignment with Sales and Engineering functions.
The effort required to build alignment can be daunting due to diverse set of opinions related to structuring and process (tools, frameworks, programs) to maximize product leverage. When done right, organizations achieve sustainable product-market fit and respond effectively to shift in market forces therefore avoiding costly product mistakes to increase their chances of survival.
I had the good fortune of building product management flywheel few times now comprising of Product Managers, Designers and Data Analytics. I developed a set of guidelines to help scale the PM org and also leverage it to seek a broader alignment with various cross functional teams. I have had my fair share of failures but learnings drawn were immensely beneficial in recalibrating my approach.
Now, before I review these guidelines here, let’s get a simple definition of product management out of the way. Product management is fundamentally about:
- cutting through the layers of ambiguity to separate customer needs from wants and anticipating future needs,
- thinking on feet (including macro and micro level design understanding and problem structuring) and contextualizing requirements for the entire customer base,
- being able to project yourself into the minds of your colleagues and your customers,
- staying one-step ahead of your competitors.
Good product managers separate needs from wants but great product managers, in addition, anticipate future needs and inspire the entire organization to stake to the puck before customers and competition do.
Let’s review guidelines that helped me and my team identify and assess the traits found in great PMs and PM leaders:
Trait # 1 — Intellectually Curious & Customer Presence / Empathy
Great PM candidates demonstrate hunger, passion, drive and intellectual curiosity and employ user science & empathy skills to carry out qualitative and quantitative user research to pinpoint pain and its intensity. They are passionate advocates of a point of view and will back it up with data.
Trait # 2 — Visionary — Anticipate Change
Great PM candidates have built product/features for customers before customer even know they want/need them. They don’t react to market forces instead they front run and become that market / category defining force.
Trait # 3 — Strong Product Instincts — “Spidey-Sense”
Assessing the product sense is highly subjective and difficult to evaluate, but extraordinarily important. Great PM candidates carry the “spidey-sense” product instinct when they suggest approaches that nobody on the team has thought of, but immediately strike everyone as obvious when they hear them.
Trait # 4 — Strong Technical Background
A solid engineering background gives a PM two critical tools — the ability to relate to engineers and a grasp of the technical details driving the product. Great PM candidates with technical backgrounds will have more success conveying product requirements to engineers and relaying complicated details to non-technical colleagues and customers.
Trait # 5 — Wear Multiple Hats
Great PM candidates are the advocate for customers, engineering, sales, executives, marketing and can channel different points-of-view equally effectively. They have a canny ability to think through a problem from multiple angles. They are especially effective at tending to diverse viewpoints to manage conflict and inspire. They are detail-oriented and can perform the best quality and usability audits.
Trait # 6 — Comfortable with Decisions
PM role, especially in dynamic environments, requires making lots of small decisions. It’s these little decisions where a great PM distances him or herself from a decent one. Great PMs don’t loose sight of the forest for the trees and feel equally comfortable in dealing with the ambiguity to establish clarity and drive strategic decisions.
Using the guidelines listed above, I have assessed PM candidates across the following dimensions:
- Conviction (backed by data / research and growth mindset)
- Communication / Collaboration
- Decisive (comfortable with making decision — both popular and unpopular)
- Customer Empathy
In part II of this blog, I share a set of questions and case-studies that I have compiled over the years to tease out just the right information to assess PM skills. In part III of this blog, I share a list of principles that, in hindisght, could have helped me in achieving greater momentum for developing the product flywheel.
If you liked this blog, please comment and share your thoughts allowing me and others to learn from your leadership experiences.
