10 Rules for Effective Product Management
We strive to get a little better each day!
With this objective in mind, I have put together 10 must-do’s for every Product Manager who wishes to build Super Products!
1. Take your job seriously
Most of the time, engineers, sales force and designers are not completely in sync with the role and responsibilities of a Product Manager. To them, the Product Manager is more of a figurative head with hardly any real contribution to make to the development of the product. To top that, Product Managers are often themselves unaware of their roles and prefer to stay in the shadows. So how do you suppose to lead a team and build a successful product when nobody in your company, including yourself, takes you seriously? Now don’t take me wrong, I am not saying you must always have a straight face around your colleagues and preside over meetings in a dictator-like fashion. However, it is highly imperative that you make an honest effort to ensure that your team knows what your contribution in development of their beloved product is, so they can take you seriously and follow through on the deliverables in a timely manner.
2. Be Quick to Adapt to Change
Dan Schmidt in The Product Management Triangle had said “The ambiguity of the product management role is near to its essence. Within one company, the duties of a Product Manager can change drastically and quickly.” Thus, in a highly volatile environment where one second you are building in customer feedback and another you are completely revamping your product’s design because of a technical hold back- it is very important for you as a Product Manager to be able to quickly adapt to change in order to efficiently mentor and lead the team. This is to say, as a Product Manager you have no time to hold grudges because that’s what your whole team is already doing! Instead you must learn to immediately take charge and help your team transition smoothly into building a great product.
3. Do not idealise your product
I will be crass here and tell you straight away- there is no perfect product. A product will keep evolving throughout its life cycle and feedback will keep pouring in from your customers, the sales and marketing forces, industry analysts, your own company executives and even your competitor’s customers. However, as a Product Manager, it is your job to keep the morale of your team high through this unending process. To this end, you must first and foremost dispel any “myths of a perfect product” they might be harbouring. This will go a long way in ensuring that the lows they face during their product building journey are taken as learnings than as defeats or failures. Additionally, it will also help you in retaining your team and in turn ensure sustainability of the product in the future.
4. Do not make excuses
It is basic human tendency to make lots of excuses. Product Managers are no different. We often blame the funding, the idiot engineer and the clueless sales force for the product not being up to the mark. Not only this, we are buzzing with complaints- ‘I am overworked, underpaid and don’t get enough direction’. It’s time to leave all that behind. If you want to become a Super Product Manager, then you must start owning up to your product’s failure. Ben Horowitz in his groundbreaking memo had said “A good Product Manager is the CEO of the product.” A good Product Manager must assess his market, familiarise himself with his product line, anticipate the product flaws, build real solutions and strategise to beat the competition. As a Product Manager you must take full responsibility and measure yourself in terms of the success of the product.
5. Master the art of decision making
As I had mentioned earlier, there is no perfect product. Your product will always keep evolving weather it is in terms of user experience, revenue generation or design. However, not every feedback you receive can be or should be incorporated. This puts ‘good’ decision making skills at the very core of product building. For example, may be your product needs a bug fix- but since the system is being replaced the next month anyway, is it really worth the time and effort of your engineers? To build a successful product, you must get into a habit of doing continuous cost-benefit analysis and undertake improvements that give you most bang for your buck!
New to Product Management? SIGN UP with us and we will help you find your direction!
6. Be omnipresent
Sitting in office, collecting feedback and suggesting improvements is not where your job should ideally end. To create a path breaking product you must participate in each activity of product building from time to time- whether it is sales, billing, content generation, customer service or data collection. Slightly delayed billing might not seem like a huge issue at the onset but may lead to loss in customer’s faith in the long term. Similarly, data collection can be a tricky process. Hiring investigators and training them does not suffice to ensure quality data collection. For example, your investigators may not actually collect the data and fake most of it or may repeatedly make mistakes in data entry. To make sure your analysis model accounts for these discrepancies, you must have at least fair idea of what majority of your customers feel about your product and what improvements they desire. This ground-up approach will help you get a first hand idea of the needs and expectations of every organ of your system as well as understand how the success of one is codependent on the success of other. This practice of being everywhere will go a long way in helping you build integrated solutions for a sustainable product.
7. Maintain Balance
All aspects of product building are equally important. Often, concentrating on one aspect of the product can lead to severe deficits in other aspects of the products. For example, turning off an auto-rebill reminder might work in your favour in the short term but you might end up negatively impacting user retention and brand loyalty in the long term. Or focussing on building a vibrant community may help you boost your usage in the short term but might have an adverse impact on the overall profitability of the product. To avoid focusing too much on a particular aspect and risking the overall performance of the product, a good Product Manager must always pay equal attention to all aspects of product building- whether it is user experience or marketability of the product or brand loyalty. Building a balanced strategy in order to customise the product to the needs of your product’s audience should take utmost priority if you wish to build a super product.
8. Stay Unbiased
All feedback is important feedback. It is very important as a Product Manager is to collect as much feedback as humanly possible and have all your bases covered. Your next step should be analysing this feedback with respect to improvements in user retention and revenue generation to optimise your product. This will help you predict the desirability of incorporating a particular feedback and whether it is worth the effort and time of your team to incorporate a particular feedback.
9. Be Unique
Have you ever stopped to question why we keep using Facebook every time they introduce a new BS user interface when the myspace type of format was working just fine for us? It’s the unique platform that Facebook provides to its users worldwide- whether business or individuals- the interactive platform they have built is unparalleled in the communication world. As a Product Manager, it is your job to find that x-factor of your product that will accelerate your product to it’s escape velocity and give it the push it needed to get out of the beginner (startup) atmosphere and fly high among the stars!
10. Communicate Better
This can make or break your product. To be a good Product Manager, it is not only important to voice your opinions or hurl directions at your team. It is important to distinguish between that is obvious and that is not. More often than not, it’s the obvious that gets left out, because hey, your team was just following instructions! You must communicate every aspect of your product plan ‘with utmost clarity’ to your team. This essentially means, as a Product Manager you must learn to communicate the ‘how of it’ than just the ‘what of it’. Presenting a fuller, clearer picture of your desired product to your team will help you build a better, stronger and sustainable product.
Want to know how Pragmatic Product Leaders Program is different from any other Product Management Course out there? Click here to know more about the Program.
Thank You for reading my article :) ! Do not forget to follow me to stay updated on everything new that happens in our small, yet dynamic Product Management Community!
