Product Managers sit in a very unique position in most companies — they have their hands in almost every cookie jar in the whole organization. From Sales to Marketing to Services to Development to Finance, at some point the Product Manager will directly impact each and every single function within the organization (assuming it’s being […]
Success is a Cultural Phenomenon
Of all the things that I’ve learned over the past 15 years of being a Product Manager, the one thing that sticks with me wherever I go, whatever I’m doing, is the simple fact that success is something that is enabled (or challenged) by the culture of the organization that is trying to achieve it. […]
Curiosity NEVER Killed the PM
One of the primary predictors of successful Product Managers that I’ve seen in my time is the amount of curiosity that they are willing to express in their work and in their lives. This makes a lot of sense when you think about it, given that Product Management is all about having a broad swath […]
Your Opinion is NOT Always Irrelevant
The folks at Pragmatic Marketing have a popular saying in their training and materials — “Your opinion, while interesting, is irrelevant.” For the most part, they’re absolutely right — the point that they’re making is that, while you as a Product Manager may have knowledge of the market and of the users, you yourself are […]
Building Your Product Management Toolkit
One of the challenges that we have as Product Managers is managing our own career trajectories while at the same time running the products that we are tasked with keeping alive and breathing. A wise mentor once told me that we’re all consultants in this day and age, and that we should be sure that […]
Saying No Without Saying No
One of the biggest challenges that many new product managers face is that they want to make sure that they’re making a good impression on their stakeholders, and they don’t want to say “no” to any request coming in. They don’t want to be viewed as a blocker of progress or as an unsympathetic ear […]
The Role of a Product Manager in Scrum
One of the sometimes-confusing aspects of the Scrum approach to Agile development is how a Product Manager fits into the system. It’s important to understand that Scrum was designed originally as set of development practices, and as such from the textbook perspective views everything through that lens. The crux of the confusion comes primarily because […]
Being an Agent of Change
One of the most important parts of being a Product Manager is becoming an agent of change in your organization. Unless by some absolute miracle you’re working for a company that has everything figured out, has no conflicts at all, and is able to go from theory to strategy to tactics to release smoothly every […]
Hey, You! Go Innovate!! (aka Five Myths of Innovation)
Ah yes, that word — “innovation” — all too often when I hear it spoken, I want to turn into Inigo Montoya and remind people that it probably doesn’t mean what they think it means (or perhaps Vizzini and just yell “INCONCEIVABLE!” at the top of my lungs and run away laughing). And, unfortunately, this […]
Are You a Leader or Just a Manager?
A very long time ago, I stumbled across a wonderful book entitled Getting Things Done When You Are Not in Charge by Geoffrey Bellman. While the entire book has great tips, tricks, and advice on how to lead and achieve through influence rather than position power (a challenge that all Product Managers face daily), one chart in […]
The Importance of Understanding the Whole Product
Product Management is often seen as a simple matter of inputs and outputs — we take information from the field, from the market, or from the users, and we create new products and features that meet their needs. If only it were that simple! Customers rarely know what they really want, although they can be […]
Leading Through Influence the Clever PM Way — Part 3: Trust & Respect
This is part 3 of a series of articles about leading through influence. The first article focused on the concept of social capital and how we earn the right to ask people to follow us; the second focused on how to use effective facilitation skills to establish yourself as a valuable resource for others to […]