Product managers learn and practice leadership every single day.
What makes a great CEO? What does it have to do with great product managers? Countless experts keep pondering the question. A great source on the topic is Mc Kinsey’s 2019 analysis on the mindsets and practices of excellent CEOs. Essentially, it’s a guide to how the best CEOs think and act. While reading it, I couldn’t help but draw a parallel with great product managers.
I’ve always enjoyed working with product managers! It’s started when I was their product marketing counterpart. Then, I’ve spent the last fifteen years nurturing product managers as a head of product and general manager.
I’ve learned to appreciate the quasi-impossible mission of product management. As my product managers grew into leadership roles, I also noticed an almost natural fit with the corner office.
I’m not alone. Just look at the nice trajectory of previous product managers turned CEOs at Google, Slack, Youtube, and many other companies.
One thing before you all get too excited about that royal path from product management to the corner office though! Remember the vast majority of product managers will never end up as CEOs of a company. Yet, product management is undeniably one of the best roles to learn and practice leadership. Here are the top three reasons why I think product managers are better positioned than anyone else to become future CEOs:
#1 - Obsession over customer problems
Any successful business starts and ends with the customer. From the beginning, great product managers know how to identify and translate customer problems. They’re not only relying on data and analytics. They also pick up the phone or the “webcam” to meet customers and future customers.
Great product managers know how to practice empathy. They listen intently, let customers articulate their problems in context and in their own words.
From there, product managers learn how to apply the right filters and prioritize what problems need to be solved. Then again, they apply their customer–centricity when the product teams work together on product discovery and execution. The best product managers keep driving decisions with both the customer’s and the company’s best interests in mind. It’s the only way you can build products that will delight your customers while making economic sense for the company.
Such customer orientation is an absolute must for any CEO to succeed. Of course, most CEOs focus on the customer, but the ones with a product management mindset go the extra mile. They build intimacy with what’s on their customers’ minds. They anticipate what will delight them once the right solution is there. One of the best quotes I’ve come across on this topic is from Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce:
“You need to get to the future, ahead of your customers, and be ready to greet them when they arrive”.
#2 - Knowing how to enable the vision
One of the most critical aspects of product management is to drive the efforts around the product vision. In essence, the product vision is the desired experience you want to build for your product. It acts as the “North Star” that will guide the product teams in all their efforts.
Product management rarely creates the product vision on their own. They participate to it with the rest of the product team and soon become its guardian.
Product managers seek deep insights from well-identified customer problems. Their role is about helping everyone else understand that product vision, constantly communicating it. They also act as the guardian of such vision when the time comes to execute and conflicting views unavoidably appear.
Along the same lines, one of the key responsibilities of a CEO is to shepherd – not necessarily define – a strong vision for their company. A company vision is essentially where the company is heading and what the timeframe to reach the destination looks like. Learning how to defend a product vision is the perfect path to learn how to do it for a company vision. You need to know how to facilitate and align different perspectives. It requires a deep understanding of your context to be credible. You need a strong sense of prioritization because you just cannot do it all. It also demands a true sense of collaboration and communication, as you can’t do it alone.
#3 - Learning how to make (a lot of) decisions
Product Management is one of the toughest jobs I’ve ever seen. The best product managers I’ve known worked an insane amount of hours. They would tirelessly align teams behind the product vision and ensure proper execution. Needless to say, they had to find more hours in their week to stay on top of always evolving customer and market problems. Product management really isn’t for the faint of heart!
Yet, thanks to the intensity, width, breadth of their role, product managers quickly learn how to optimize their decision-making processes. They have no choice, if they don’t, they’ll soon be overwhelmed and fail.
It involves building strong critical thinking and digging into the root causes. It’s about building the right systems to gain visibility into the markets, customer behaviors, and retrospective learning from executed projects. It’s about turning a lot of data and inputs into insights. Assessing what the right metrics for product success are and always being on top of their analysis.
Along the same lines, the best CEOs I’ve worked with would understand how critical the right data is for proper decision–making. Knowing what to measure and how is a critical skill that helps build scenarios, measure execution, and course-correct as needed. Great product managers and CEOs know how to turn data into a framework of solid insights and use it to make the right decisions.
Successful product managers have a bright future!
The DNA and the skillset required to succeed in product management are incredible leadership foundations. Great product managers are customer–obsessed. They know how to steward the product vision, and they’re wired to make a lot of high–quality decisions. These are all critical skills that will make them successful whether they land the corner office job or grow in different leadership directions.
So, if you are a product leader, make sure you nurture these three skills with your product managers. Show them the way so they can grow their positive impact on the organization. Keep digging, and if you come to a point where you feel stuck, don’t hesitate to reach out to tanguy@theproductsherpa.com. Let The Product Sherpa be your guide!