Bad, Good, and Great Product Managers Revisited in 2021
I truly realized the importance of great product managers, when I took my first General Management job back in the 2000s, coming from the business and marketing side.
The task of leading a patchwork team and a variety of functions felt daunting. It ranged from program management, product development, product design, product management to marketing, across very different product and business lines.
I quickly understood that product management would be pivotal in the success of our business unit. With this in mind, I used a brilliant essay from Ben Horowitz as the absolute reference on what product management should and, as importantly, shouldn’t do. Its title: “Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager” (check the original post here). The content must be 20-year-old now, yet it’s still valid, and I can only thank Horrowitz for his guidance back then.
Both product management and product development have evolved a lot since Horowitz wrote this piece. But, here’s my humble 2021 edited version leveraging Horrowitz’s masterpiece, based on lessons I’ve sometimes learned the hard way.
Enablement and teamwork
In his essay, Horowitz highlighted the importance of accountability, focus, and discipline. These still hold, but I’d consider that great product managers are first and foremost great enablers. They continually gather information about customer problems, market conditions, trends, and business priorities. As such, they enable all relevant teams (not only product teams) to work on the most impactful problems to be solved and maximize their impact on both customers’ goals and business outcomes.
Great product managers know how to distill and prioritize the problems their customers face, using the lens of what the business priorities are.
Great product managers do it with an ultimate sense of teamwork across all functions. There has been debate around product management being the CEO of a product. I won’t belabor the point, but what’s clear is that product managers don’t have direct authority on any team. They manage a product, not a team.
That’s what makes product management even more interesting, as they have to lead through influence, not direct authority.
I would argue that modern CEOs also need to focus on leading through influence. The classic “leading by authority” is quickly losing steam and credibility in our world of highly skilled knowledge workers, so there are similarities here!
The notion of teamwork doesn’t stop there. As leaders, great product managers are ready to take the hit and full responsibility when things don’t go as planned. They’ll also praise the best contributors when wonders hit. Along these lines, great product managers understand teams’ constraints or capabilities. They will keep this in mind when the time comes to prioritize what to build.
Great product managers relentlessly communicate the WHY
It’s probably where Horowitz’s essay shows its age. He was making the point that Product Management is more about what needs to be built, not how. As we’ve grown with lean product development, we now know product management has to first pay attention to why we should build the product in the first place. What customer problems, which business outcome should we address, and why. From there, the product team can focus on what to build and how they’ll do it.
I’d also argue that great product managers are an integral part of the product team, like product designers, product developers, product marketers. But they focus on that why in the first place.
Great product managers know how to align with the business strategy as they establish the product vision. It’s a two-way street, so they also regularly feed executives with market dynamics and customer problems that their company is uniquely positioned to solve. They’re not a victim of the desires of senior executives on what to build. Great product managers know how to influence and convince product teams and executives of all relevant functions. They keep evangelizing on specific customer and market problems and what it will imply for the business.
Like a chameleon, they know how to adapt to different perspectives and lenses.
Great product managers focus on outcomes
Great product managers think in terms of outcomes, not in terms of output. It means that when the time comes to execute a product strategy and design the right plan, great product managers don’t get hung up on what features will be delivered by when. They focus on the customer problems to address and the business goals to achieve. It doesn’t matter how many great features are built or will stand out.
A great example is how companies like Amazon keep pushing their product managers to start backward and focus on outcomes. They even write a hypothetical press release for their product team and select executives to help them envision success. This technique evolved, and some companies are now using a letter from a hypothetical delighted customer to the CEO. It explains how the product helped them achieve their goals or wants. Next, they also write another speculative note from the CEO to the product team congratulating them on the specific business outcomes.
Great product managers are disciplined and powerful thinkers
Being a product manager can quickly become quite overwhelming. Great product managers know which lens to apply to make relevant decisions and have built solid mental models. Hence the importance to stay focused on why we care about specific problems and business outcomes. Exploring and sorting this out, evangelizing, and influencing are probably the most important aspects of great product management.
Great product managers take the time to step back and think.
They make time on their calendar for meetings with themselves, customers, partners, influencers, analysts, executives… That’s another way to illustrate how important discipline is for product managers. If you don’t have the utmost discipline, you don’t belong to “great” product management.
Along these lines, great product managers keep a solid pulse on how things are progressing, which variables – customer, market, business – might change, and how to adapt if need be. Change is constant, and great product managers know how to build different scenarios and anticipate such shifts.
How would you rate your own product management?
I only scratched the surface on what makes “great” product management in 2021. If you are in product management or work with product management, feel free to add to these principles in the context of your own business.
Mapping your reality to these few principles will help you assess how “great” your product management truly is. And if you need some help in evaluating it, The Product Sherpa can help. Reach out, and let’s see together how to take your product management to the next level of excellence.