The Importance of Product Managers & What to Look For

R5 Labs
2 min readFeb 23, 2023

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Increasingly, product managers are responsible for an expanding range of responsibilities, including the direction of design and development initiatives, data analysis, market research, and oversight of daily team operations.

At its core, talented product managers must be masterful communicators, gaining clear consensus and action plans that can be realistically deployed. This means exhibiting strong leadership skills, thinking strategically, and being able to communicate ideas across teams. Weak product management can have significant and severe repercussions across an entire organization, just as bold, strategic product management can position a company to thrive. Therefore, this role isn’t one to take lightly. It’s a highly engaged tactical leadership position.

Some key skills and abilities great product managers must exhibit:

  • Organizing tasks clearly, as well as understanding how to prioritize tasks.
  • Understanding and identifying necessary criteria for critical tasks.
  • Knowing how to conduct meaningful market research.
  • Analyzing data, risk, and being able to reduce the uncertainty of outcomes while increasing the likelihood of success.
  • Understanding the differences between OKR (Objectives and Key Results) and KPI (Key Performance Indicator) frameworks.
  • Deciphering the key convergence points between various disciplines: development, marketing, design, strategy, and deployment. Every component of the product launch lifecycle.
  • Understanding the dynamics of coding and certain technical skills may be applicable. This is not necessarily the case, as a well-oriented leader can often delegate and direct teams to produce, but in certain industries, the lack of technical expertise could create a communications chasm and misunderstandings throughout projects.

Finally, the key is to be able to take these skills and envision a final outcome. The ability to have a clear direction and pursuit of a goal makes the difference between successful and unsuccessful product managers. This equates to defined, quantifiable actions across the teams that aim to reach a certain objective.

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R5 Labs
R5 Labs

Written by R5 Labs

Product development. Reimagined.

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