Key Takeaways to Be a Top-Performing and Great Product Manager: Skills, Competencies, and Levelling
After spending dedicated time to accelerate my early career in product management, I decided to list down every lesson learned in a note. Through this article, I would like to expand the note to share my experience about discovering and delivering products in Evermos (and Takwa by HijrahFest) as the product manager. I hope this article may help you to understand the key takeaways to be a top-performing and great product manager as well, at least at Evermos or Takwa. It is because I do know that product management is different in every company, at least depending on the company stages and types.
The ultimate main lesson I got is, as product managers, we must ensure that we build products, or maybe solutions, after proper discovery, that are valuable and viable (not to mention that they shouldn’t be usable as for designer’s responsibility and feasible as for engineer’s responsibility as well). Product management is not about adding new features. It is rather about adding value to our products so that they become viable. Both terms are manifested to have user value and business impact. So, It means that valuable products are those that trigger users/customers to buy them proudly because of the value they got and/or use them easily (usable, especially in the critical path). It also means that viable products are those that work within the many constraints of the business mainly and engineers have the skills and technology to implement within the desired roadmap planning.
Unfortunately, that ultimate lesson sometimes blurs us not to stand in the right position between other teams. Commonly, we are told, not to mention always, that product management should act as the intersection among UX, Tech, and business teams. I am sure that you have seen this classic Venn diagram below, proposed by Martin Eriksson. In the same way, Marty Cagan similarly describes in his book Inspired and Empowered that the job of the product manager is “to discover a product that is valuable and viable, and in extend of empowered product teams, considering the product to be usable and feasible as well.”
Unfortunately, this diagram is not quite precise or misleading, if I can say. Product managers are not only in the intersection of UX, tech, and business teams. They are also, including those 3 teams, standing between products and customers. Let’s see the proper perspective in the Venn diagram below.
Later, Martin Eriksson revised his first product manager’s Venn diagram to be added with products and customers. He once later said,
As Product Managers we must always remember that our role is to look outwards at least as much as we look inwards.
Although the product delivery process is noisier and demands a lot of attention, let’s keep in mind that our job is to create value for our customers and consequently, for the business.
Even Marty Cagan in his book Empowered explained that the job of product managers with the entire product, engineering, business, marketing and other teams should be empowered with the skills necessary to come up with effective solutions that are valuable (our customers choose to buy or use), viable (the solution works within the many constraints of the business), usable (the user can figure out how to use) and feasible (our engineers have the skills and technology to implement).
So, the next question is “How can we implement this first ultimate lesson in the Evermos product development lifecycle?”
Evermos VP of Product Growth, Adi Purwanto Sujarwadi, has spoken to answer the question. In order to strengthen his product teams, he defined six roles to be taken by the product managers (PS. some additional context has been added).
- Identify and prioritize the needs of the business team. Deliver the details from the business request and give the decision after all.
- Conduct the product discovery for new initiatives that should be potentially impactful, both valued by the customers/users and profitable from the business perspective.
- Make sure the roadmap planning is maintainable. From the early product brief or initiative to the pre-development process. Product requirement detailing must be clearly delivered after receiving inputs from the Engineering Manager and other tech teams (if any).
- Measure the stated success metrics from the problem identified or defined at first.
- Be a partner, continuously work and align with stakeholders, engineering designers, researchers, and data teams as well.
- As a bridge between the business user and the engineering team. Deep knowledge of the products and current business flow. Act as a filter from business users before going to the engineering team.
Additionally, he also compiles necessary traits for product managers based on their competencies. The product manager career level is also based on each of the competencies defined below
- Excel in the execution of product delivery including prioritization, decisiveness, writing requirements, and product quality.
- Able to be an effective leader. Must be a team leader who is collaborative, communicative and has stakeholder management skills.
- Good empathy for users and understanding of the competitive landscape. These traits could be inherited if the PM is user-centric, fluent in data, and aware of the competitive areas and trends of the industry.
- Lastly, a PM must be a strategic person. It covers ownership, strategic initiative, product vision, and road mapping as well.
Those 4 traits above are derived into the PM Competencies and Levelling. You may find the details in the table below.
Hence, after almost two years of being involved in Evermos product teams, I realised that being a PM is a challenging job. There are a lot of competency ladders to master and some necessary knowledge takes time to learn. So, there must be a learning curve for every new product manager in each industry. PMs are also expected to lead without authority and usually be a punching bag for everyone in any misses. Yet everyone depends on us and many people are riding on our shoulders. Devs may have sprints, story points, and limits. But PM? As I was told, no one teaches PMs to limit their work. Even, one of the Evermos company cultures is the overachieved mentality. So, PMs at Evermos are expected to maximize, not to mention optimize, their efforts in doing their roles (I will explain this in more detail in the next paragraphs below).
Moreover, I personally experienced some moments when I eventually realized the characteristics of bad PMs. But, we need to note that there are a lot of things that define bad PMs. So, maybe these below characteristics are irrelevant for some PMs in particular industries. However, these characteristics are all related to the Core PM skills and competencies defined by the company product leaders. If you cannot cover them enough correspondingly to your career level, maybe your probation will not pass or you will be assigned a performance improvement plan, or even you cannot be promoted to the next level role.
- Blind of users
Acting like they know the user's needs. Building a product without value.
- Stubborn
As time flies, good PMs should be aware that they know they do not understand everything. Not behaving know it all.
- Reliant to others, not taking ownership
Whenever issues arise, they rely on other teams, particularly the engineering team. Even blaming occurred.
- Always say ‘Yes’
If stakeholders request something, they always deliver it without question. Eventually, the team will lose trust and will be burned out. Critical thinking is their enemy.
- Unresponsive
Hard to be reached. Even if something is urgent, no one knows how to get a hold of them.
- Getting things undone
Bad time management. They can’t plan their own work and time, not to mention their team.
- Treat data, documentation, and tracking as not critical path
This leads to unclear communication and bad decisions. It also produces an inappropriate measurement of the product release's success.
So, if we can identify who the bad PM is, then who is the good PM? What are the differences between bad and good PMs? How about the great PM? Is it different to a good PM or a top-performing PM? How can we become a top-performing and great PM simultaneously?
Those questions above are answered firmly by the Evermos CEO, Ghufron Mustaqim, and the Fasset ex-Director of Product, Brian Arfi Faridhi. Brian said that good PMs are those who do their jobs properly, I don’t say that though 😆. He said similarly to Martin Eriksson and Marty Cagan as well that good PMs lead their team to deliver values for the users, not just deliver the features. Well, we can conclude that good PMs must have well-rounded skills then. They need to empower the team to do their jobs while covering gaps no one can handle. Ups! That must be a hard learning curve for everyone. 👀
Please be calm. I know you are a little annoyed by reading the above paragraph. Let me tell you-or maybe sharing is a more proper-the quality that must be learnt for those who want to be a good PM.
- Wallet Sharing/Value Creation Mindset
The ability to sense what others are feeling and thinking. Both users/customers and the entire teams/stakeholders they are involved in. They state their north star metric as value creation. Does the product answer the ‘Job-to-be-done’ framework and deliver value for users? Is the wallet increased? Do we make a value creation within this product?
- Critical Thinking and Feedback
Having curiosity and always asking a lot of questions, hypotheses, and feedback. They always bring other perspectives when jumping into the discussion. They don’t surprise and absolutely make no surprise to users or stakeholders, in a negative way. As they used to map every possible use case and risk further.
- Overachieved Mentality
They are responsible for end-to-end product perfection — research, and development. All the way to release and ensure users are aware, understand, use, and love the products. They also expect the highest level of initiative for themselves and their team as well.
- Always Trying to Give a Favor
The team will feel safe as they can rely on them if something goes wrong.
- Decent Communicator
They know how to make a discussion comfortable but impactful.
- Decisive with Understanding Users
Good PMs try to always look at the bigger picture when delivering value for the users.
- Good Time Management
They know how to execute the plan for work and their work time allocation is not burning them out.
- Proper Documentation and Tracking of Important Things
It helps with time management and async working. Most PMs will be busy, so having good documentation helps save time and clear decision-making.
- Able to Say No
They can give accepted reasonings to reject certain requests when it is needed. They know when to say ‘No’ to requests delivered to them.
That’s all, guys. I hope you all understand practically all the above good PM characteristics. Why practical? This is because they are directly relevant to day-to-day product management activities. Oh yes, sometimes, we may get confused about the differences between bad and good PMs in certain conditions/criteria. The below table may be helpful for you.
Wait a moment, previously, I have asked. If we currently know how to distinguish the bad PMs from the good PMs, then are good PMs different to great PMs? Let us take a look at the difference table below to take one another step to be a great PM. But, please remember that it is always a spectrum when we talk about bad, good, and great PMs. Sometimes you may identify yourself as good in certain conditions/criteria, but in other criteria, you are identified by your team as a bad PM. So, be careful to always take a broad vision.
Let us then take a look at the complete table below. Kudos and high credit to Brian Arfi Faridhi who shares his long experience in his product career. It is because of him I can create this resourceful benchmarking. I hope this benchmarking will be meaningful for PMs who want to come out from bad PMs criteria and advance their reputation as great PMs.
Well, I think you all need to take a break after reading those tiny words at the above tables 😜. Pardon me for that, sincerely. Please help me to give a piece of advice to Medium. It is because of this platform, writers cannot add or create a table within their writings 😁. Or maybe I do not know how to create the table in Medium(?) 👀 as this link is not useful for me though 😦.
To make you feel better after reading those tables. I will help you to understand deeply the traits of great PMs that make them stand out. I believe that these characteristics will make you reconsider again to advance your career ladder in product management🎃.
- Communication
Great PMs don’t stumble over their words. They express themselves clearly and concisely in every type of conversation. They understand the art of tailoring their communication style to different stakeholders. It’s all about how things are perceived, and exceptional PMs shape perception by employing diverse communication strategies.
- Prioritization
They have ruthless prioritization. It is better to find something we don’t know to do than work on something we are sure we don’t need now. They set a clear strategy and then set plans for short, mid, and long terms. If something is burning, they don’t know a panic word. They will be asking themselves instead. What can we do immediately to stop or reduce? What can we do after the initial step to recover? How can we turn this in our favour?
- Time Management
Outstanding PMs possess a clear mindset and a keen sense of responsibility. They don’t operate in haste, yet they can assert urgency when needed. This clarity comes from their ability to maintain a balanced life, allowing them to focus entirely on their work without distractions. While many PMs might find themselves swamped with tasks, the exceptional ones are occupied with endeavours that benefit others — be it users, customers, or their own team.
- Results Brought
Whatever the results can inspire confidence and lift the spirits of their team. Their sincerity shows, they drive the talks. Great PMs always live in 3 different times. In the past, they are analyzing. In the present, they are deciding. In the future, they are preparing.
- A LOVER
They love something deeply and passionately. They are happy to be working on it. In this case, product management, of course.
- Smart Person
You know someone smart if people who interact with him agree that he is smart. So, they have potentially inherited traits to be great PMs.
- True Empathy
Not just feeling sorry. It can only be born from a smart mind. The smarter you are, the more likely you are to have high empathy.
Moreover, let us answer the last question that we asked before. How can we become a top-performing and great PM simultaneously? Or to be precise, how to hone our skills to become a great and top-performing PM?
First of all, we need to set our expectations correctly. Basically, great PMs are different from top-performing PMs. Why? As top-performing PMs are judged by their performance, they get the performance appraisal measurably. Becoming a top-performing PM means getting the best we can get for what we have contributed. So, it is not hard indeed as we can imply that we can “cheat’” it properly 😎. Especially if we have individual OKRs or KPIs reflecting the OKRs company-wide to measure our personal employee performance.
However, what are the fundamental differences between great and top-performing PMs? The answer is their different mindset.
Great PMs always ask themselves, “Why should it matter if I am a top-performing PM or not, as I am compared to my peers?” They focus on solving users’ problems and creating business impact, rather than opposing their peers. They will be rewarded fairly sooner or later, by the company or others, so they should just focus on improving themselves.
On the contrary, top-performing PMs focus on their performance. “What can I do to get promoted fast? I want to be a stellar performer so I will only work on things that can contribute to this.” Those are some statements that usually being said by them. They also focus solely on metrics and only work on something if they can make sense of how to measure and make a good narrative out of it. Even they care more about their personal success than their company’s. Sometimes they also just focus on work. “Personal life is damn!”, they said.
Nevertheless, it is not a shame to become a top-performing PM with those characteristics above after all. But still, growing yourselves as a great and top-performing PM simultaneously is much better. So, what do you prefer? I think we all agree to be the top-performing PMs who have such recognition as the great PMs too. Other than that, we also have to be aware not to be trapped as a top-performing PM, but we think that we are also a great PM. So, please remember that great PMs are notably different from top-performing PMs.
Therefore, we must ensure we have all the required fundamental skills in product management. Sometimes we need to take a break and evaluate our work related to them like project management, prioritization, decision-making, or even communication (Please refer to characteristics and differences of bad, good, and great PMs I have explained earlier).
Firstly, stay curious by setting our growth path as obvious as much. Make sure the plan is acknowledged by our leaders so that they can give us a favour to achieve our growth. After that, we requisite ourselves the lead measures (see. The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals) to monitor our growth as well as find and have a good mentor for our career advancement. Better seek a mentor outside our company to broaden our perspectives.
Secondly, please live a life of service excellence. Always finding a way to help others after assuring ourselves are self-capable. It is because we cannot be generous and give away what we do not have. As the Law of Circulation states, “You can’t give what you don’t have, you can’t keep what you don’t give, and you can’t sustain what you don’t receive.” So, to be a proper “servant” PM, we need to grow our skillsets as T-shaped professionals. We are both generalists and specialists.
Thirdly, be patient and trustworthy. Good trees take their time to grow. We believe in our God and ourselves that we will be finding the place. While reaching it, expand our influence by serving others. Have you not considered how Allah presents an example, [making] a good word like a good tree, whose root is firmly fixed and its branches [high] in the sky? It produces its fruit all the time, by permission of its Lord. And Allah presents examples for the people that perhaps they will be reminded of. [Quran, 14:24–25]
Last but not least, we must understand our company and adapt to it. Why? Each team has their own dynamics. So, discussion with our leaders is clearly helpful in setting our expectations distinctively. Then, maintaining communication with our boss’s boss and leaders of other functions is a must. Talk also to everyone and find ways where we can help. After that, Deciding where we want to be as I said about the growth path before. But, realize that whatever we know may not be valid. Each place may have different approaches or solutions. There is no magic wand.
I think that’s my last paragraph. I hope this article may be helpful for everyone who wants to advance their career ladder in product management. Regards! 🙌
