What is a product manager?
I was a product manager at BT (British Telecom) for almost 20 years. But when I applied for the role as part of the graduate scheme back in 2002 (before everything was on Google), I wasn’t sure what a product manager was. At the time, I guessed it was being responsible for creating a product and taking it to market. I was right, but over the years, it was a whole lot more, too. I admit, that over time, the business’ idea of good product management changed quite a bit more than mine. But that doesn’t alter my idea of what makes a good product manager.
Is a product manager like being a small-scale CEO?
One of the prevailing metaphors I’ve heard over the years is that being a product manager is like being the CEO of a business. You, yourself don’t do a lot of the actual work, but you are accountable for getting the teams around you to make the product a success.
For me, that metaphor is a double-edged sword. On one side you have all the skills associated with leading and cajoling a team of people to accomplish what you envisage will meet the customer needs that your product is seeking to fulfil and at the scale that will make it worth doing. On the other side of the CEO metaphor is the personal accountability for its success.
And I must admit, that over the years, I took this metaphor to heart. But there were times, and people, who made the leading and cajoling so difficult that I ended up swinging across to the personal accountability side of the metaphor and burning myself out doing not only my job, but also taking on the responsibility for the roles that were not being done as well as I knew they could and should be. My own personal leadership weaknesses caused me to overuse my strength of being a “jack-of-all-trades” to pick up the slack, overcoming the symptoms, rather than working with my wider product team to fix the real root of problems.
A year or so ago, as I was supporting induction training for a new product manager into our team, it occurred to me that actually, a product manager is not like the CEO. Instead, a good product manager should be like a good parent.
Whether you’re a parent, or not, I hope you can start to imagine what I mean. A good parent is your fiercest champion and pushes you to be your very best, but ultimately stands by the wayside to allow you to take the credit for your accomplishments. And, a good parent disciplines to help you be your best; teaches and corrects, oversees… Enduring the detailed practice while you get good; giving coaching, praise and feedback as needed. A good parent attends parent-teacher conferences, hears how you’re doing, what you need to be your best self, and then gets you all the resources you need to be a success. A good parent is personally invested and is not only accountable for helping you thrive but is as responsible as you for making it happen.
A product manager is like a good parent. Personally invested and both accountable and responsible for ensuring the product thrives.
Being a product parent is very much the same. Sometimes, you get to “birth” your product into existence by identifying a customer need and creating your product to meet that need. Sometimes you get to “adopt” a product and teach it new skills to better meet the needs of the customers it serves.
And over the years, as your product lives its life and fulfils its purpose, you have to discipline it, cutting out features or functions that are not in its best interests and honing its processes to make it ever better.
And sometimes you as a product parent have the unenviable task of having to manage the “death” of a product and withdraw it from sale. I must admit, that as with human parenting, there is regret and grief that comes with the loss of a product. The UK telecoms industry right now has some big, important products that are being withdrawn. And customers are grieving the death (and fighting it fiercely) as if the products were people trying to be saved.
I also like the product parent metaphor for the personal accountability and passion that it provokes. In my 20 years, I hated my job when that personal responsibility and passion so necessary for good product parenting wasn’t respected or was taken away from me as the product manager. Like when I was told that the customer experience for my product wasn’t my responsibility anymore. Or when I was chided for speaking to our engineering department about a possible product improvement.
Discipline can be the hardest part of product parenting. Knowing how and when to stop the development of features that aren’t core to your product’s success.
The role of a product manager is extremely varied, just like that of a parent. The role of a product manager has its good days and bad days. It comes with some sleepless nights, just like that of a parent. You get to experience some amazing highs as you manage launches and feature releases throughout your product’s life, and there are the occasional low points where discipline is harder on you as the product manager than it ultimately is on the product itself. But through it all, you get to see and manage change to your product that sees it grow and thrive, just like a child.
I have not been blessed to be the parent of a human child. But I have had some amazing products that I’ve had the privilege to conceive, birth, adopt and discipline over my 20-year career. I know that I was the best parent I could be for those products, and I’m proud of the part that I played in sharing them with the world and eventually handing them over to new product parents to continue to nurture.
And, having now left my career for new adventures, I’m glad that I have a good metaphor to help explain to people what I did as a product manager for all those years. To those not in the telecom industry, it’s probably a lot more relatable than the actual, specific jobs that I did.
What about you?
Do you have experience as a product manager? What metaphor do you use to describe the product manager role? Share your thoughts below.
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