Being a successful product leader in a fast changing world

Q: 1. How can I be a better product leader?

To become a better product leader , focus on understanding and meeting evolving customer needs through empathetic listening and persona-based design. Foster a culture of collaboration and innovation by leveraging emotional intelligence to influence and guide cross-functional teams effectively. Adapt your product management approach to fit the dynamics of your company size and stage, prioritizing initiatives that align with critical demand and frequent use. Continuously strive to simplify complex problems and processes, aiming to deliver impactful solutions that drive digital transformation and customer satisfaction.

August 10, 2024
Leadership
5 min read

By Rajeev Srivastava – Director of Product Management at Google

The role of a product manager has never been more critical or complex. Tasked with balancing strategic vision, customer needs, and operational execution, product managers stand at the crossroads of innovation and practicality. They are the orchestrators who must harmonize diverse teams and ensure that products not only meet market demands but also exceed customer expectations. Let’s look into valuable insights and strategies that can help you navigate this intricate terrain and thrive in your role.

Key Takeaways:

Adapt to remote work and evolving customer expectations to stay competitive in the digital age.
Design with a consumer-centric mindset and develop persona-based solutions for better user satisfaction.
Influence and guide teams through high emotional intelligence to foster collaboration and innovation.
Tailor your product management approach to fit the size and stage of your organization for optimal results.
Master listening, distinguish between complex and complicated issues, and prioritize effectively to drive product success.

In this article

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What Does a Product Manager Really Do?

A product manager has 6 main roles:

1. Identifying Customer Needs

A product manager’s foremost responsibility is to identify customer needs. This involves:

Understanding business objectives.
Determining features required to meet those objectives.
Envisioning what success looks like.

2. Crafting and Leading the Vision

The best product managers are visionaries. They:

Don’t just replicate existing products or solve minor problems.
Address problems at scale and drive the product’s vision forward.
Lead the team to achieve strategic goals despite various challenges (market conditions, internal and external obstacles).

3. Setting Strategy and Evaluating Ideas

A critical part of a product manager’s role involves:

Setting strategy and evaluating ideas objectively.
Not being hung up on the ownership of ideas but valuing the best ideas regardless of their source.
Using these ideas to define the product effectively.

4. Building Scalable Solutions

Product management focuses on scalable solutions rather than custom development. This entails:

Building solutions that can be deployed multiple times.
Prioritizing effectively what to build and what not to build.
Recognizing that strategy is about choosing what not to do.

5. Collaborating with Cross-Functional Teams

A product manager operates at the intersection of:

User Experience (UX): Ensuring solutions meet evolving user needs.
Technology: Working with engineering and implementation teams to push the boundaries of what is feasible.
Business: Deeply understanding business problems to craft relevant solutions.

6. Balancing and Adapting

Success as a product manager requires balancing these aspects:

Understanding business problems and customer needs.
Leveraging technology to create solutions that resonate with users.
Constantly adapting and thinking strategically to ensure the product not only meets but exceeds market expectations.

By mastering these responsibilities, a product manager can effectively lead a team to develop products that are innovative, scalable, and aligned with business objectives.

Simplifying Product Management: A Real-World Perspective

Let’s take a step back and make this real. We have outlined what a product manager does, and it might seem straightforward: talk to customers, understand their problems, prioritize, and build solutions. But let’s pause for a moment to truly reflect on this process.

The Journey from Customer Explanation to Real Need

Imagine you’re looking at a sequence of steps—starting from what the customer explained they wanted to what they really needed. Initially, the differences might seem minor; both might involve a swing tied to a tree. However, the paths taken to reach these outcomes can vary significantly, often becoming convoluted.

As a product manager, you navigate through various perspectives and inputs, which can make the problem both interesting and challenging. Consider these scenarios:

Customer Explanation vs. Actual Need: The customer might describe a tire swing, but they need a robust, safe swing for their children.
Business Consultant’s Interpretation: Their description might be close, but with added complexity to meet perceived business goals.
Programmer’s Implementation: It might include all necessary components but miss the user-friendly aspect.

Despite everyone’s good intentions, the final product may not meet the customer’s actual needs.

The Pitfall of Overcomplication

This common scenario illustrates a key message: product management can be straightforward or incredibly difficult, depending on your approach. The goal is to solve hard problems, but the solutions don’t have to be complicated. Avoiding overcomplication is crucial.

Overcomplication can stem from:

Miscommunication: Different interpretations of the same requirement.
Unnecessary Features: Adding bells and whistles that don’t enhance the core functionality.
Overengineering: Creating solutions that are technically impressive but practically unusable.

The Importance of Simplicity

Keeping solutions simple is incredibly challenging but essential for delivering the right user experience. This involves:

Clear Communication: Ensuring all stakeholders have a unified understanding of the goal.
Focused Development: Prioritizing essential features that directly address customer needs.
Iterative Feedback: Continuously refining the product based on user feedback to avoid drifting from the core objective.

The Takeaway

In the end, product management is about balancing complexity and simplicity. The road to a successful product involves navigating diverse inputs and maintaining a clear focus on the end goal. Simplifying the solution, despite the hard problems it aims to solve, ensures that you deliver an effective and user-friendly product.

Remember, simplicity doesn’t mean easy—it means making deliberate, thoughtful choices to avoid unnecessary complications. This approach will help you avoid common pitfalls and deliver a product that truly meets customer needs.

The Evolving Role of Product Managers in a Post-Pandemic World

As we navigate the changes brought about by the pandemic, the role of product managers has evolved significantly. A recent poll highlighted that many of us, despite the challenges, are eager to return to the office. This desire is fueled by the need for interaction with colleagues, even if it means dealing with long commutes and balancing family time.

The global crisis has impacted everyone in various ways, presenting both challenges and opportunities. As product managers, it’s crucial to understand these shifts and adapt our thinking accordingly.

Understanding the New Environment

The pandemic has accelerated several key trends, particularly in digitization. According to a McKinsey study, the digitization of customer interactions has surged:

Pre-pandemic: 20% to 36% digitization over 18 months.
During the pandemic: 36% to 58% digitization in just six months.

This rapid shift is equivalent to accelerating three years of digitization within half a year. This trend is consistent across different regions, with variations in pace but a clear overall direction towards more digital interactions.

Changing Customer Expectations

Customer expectations have evolved and are likely to stay changed. Despite the rollout of vaccines and improving conditions, 62% of organizations believe these new customer expectations are here to stay. Key changes include:

Increased Remote Work and Collaboration: Remote work and digital collaboration tools have become integral to our daily lives, both personally and professionally.
Higher Demand for Online Purchases: Consumers have shifted significantly towards online shopping, impacting how products are marketed and sold.

Adapting to New Realities

Product managers must adapt to these changes by focusing on creating products and services that meet the new demands. Examples include:

Digitized Restaurant Menus: Restaurants have removed physical menus, replacing them with QR codes that customers can scan to view menus and order digitally, reducing contact and enhancing safety.
Flexible Return Policies for Online Purchases: For instance, bike shops offering extended return periods to account for the inability to test products in-store before purchase.

These adaptations reflect the need to reduce friction points and enhance customer experiences in a digital-first world.

Embracing Simplicity

The challenge lies in keeping solutions simple while solving complex problems. Overcomplicating solutions can lead to inefficiencies and missed objectives. Product managers should strive to:

Maintain Clear Communication: Ensure all stakeholders have a unified understanding of goals.
Focus on Essential Features: Prioritize features that directly address customer needs.
Iterate Based on Feedback: Continuously refine products based on user feedback to stay aligned with customer expectations.

Aligning Enterprise and Consumer Expectations

Today’s consumers don’t distinguish between their expectations as individuals and as enterprise buyers. Whether interacting with a brand as a consumer or an enterprise customer, the expectations remain consistent:

Intuitive Experiences: Easy-to-use interfaces and seamless interactions.
Personalization: Tailored experiences that address individual needs.
Quick Implementations: Fast and painless deployment of solutions.

Product managers must ensure that these expectations are met, regardless of the target audience.

Adapting as a Product Manager: A User-Centric Approach

As a product manager, adapting to the ever-evolving landscape requires a user-centric mindset. By considering yourself as the consumer and understanding your own changing needs, you can better align your strategies to meet business demands. Here’s how to effectively adapt:

1. Embrace Persona-Based Design

When developing products, it’s crucial to design with specific user personas in mind. This involves:

Defining the User: Identify the type of user for whom the product or capability is being designed.
Conducting Research: Engage in thorough research to understand the user’s needs, preferences, and pain points.
Collaborating with UX Teams: Work closely with user experience (UX) designers to ensure that the product meets the defined user’s expectations.

2. Identify Influencers and Key Partners

Understanding the influencers and key partners in both the consumer and enterprise worlds is essential:

Consumer World: Determine who the buyers and influencers are within a family or individual setting.
Enterprise World: Recognize that users in an enterprise setting, such as contact center agents, might not have a direct say in purchasing decisions. However, their satisfaction is crucial for adoption and success.

3. Focus on the User and Buyer Experience

In a subscription-based economy, user satisfaction is paramount. Whether dealing with consumer applications or enterprise solutions, ensuring a positive user experience can significantly impact product adoption. Here are some key points:

User-Centric Design: Even if users don’t influence the purchase decision, their happiness with the product affects its success.
Buyer Convenience: Make it easy for buyers to make decisions. Simplify the buying process and ensure they can justify their choices.

4. Simplify and Enhance User Experience

The primary goal should be to make users’ lives easier. Here’s how to achieve this:

Simplification: Focus on reducing complexity in product design and functionality.
User Experience (UX): Prioritize a seamless and intuitive user experience. A well-designed product that meets user needs effortlessly will lead to higher satisfaction and loyalty.

5. Leadership in Product Management

Effective leadership in product management involves focusing on both the user and the buyer. Here are a few principles to guide you:

User and Buyer Focus: Understand and cater to the needs of both users and buyers. Their experiences are intertwined and critical for product success.
Simplification: Strive to simplify processes and experiences. Complexity often leads to dissatisfaction and decreased adoption.
Continuous Improvement: Regularly seek feedback and iterate on the product to enhance its usability and effectiveness.

The True Role of a Product Manager

The notion of a product manager being the CEO of the product is a common pitch, but it can be misleading. While a product manager might think and act like a CEO, they are not actually making all the decisions themselves. Instead, they are enabling others to make those decisions, which is a crucial distinction to understand.

Influence Over Authority

As a product manager, you must think like an owner but recognize that your primary role is to influence and guide rather than command. You are responsible for deciding the why and the what of the product strategy, but not necessarily the how. Your role involves significant responsibility and accountability, but it’s also about influencing people to make the right decisions.

This is where emotional intelligence becomes vital. A good product manager understands how to navigate relationships and influence team members, stakeholders, and customers to achieve the best outcomes.

Company Size and Stage Matters

The approach to product management can vary significantly depending on the size and stage of the company. For instance:

Large Companies: Companies like Google or Facebook have specific approaches to product management that might be very structured and collaborative.
Smaller Startups: A startup might have a more flexible and dynamic approach, where roles and responsibilities can be more fluid.

Understanding these differences is crucial for a product manager. Some companies might have a product management-driven approach, where the PM leads the engineering team. Others might have an engineering-driven approach, where engineers take the lead and PMs follow.

The Ideal State: PM-Engineering Partnership

The ideal situation is a balanced partnership between product management and engineering. In this model:

PMs Decide What to Build: Product managers focus on the strategic aspects, defining the vision, goals, and features of the product.
Engineers Decide How to Build: Engineers handle the technical implementation, figuring out the best ways to realize the product vision.

A successful product requires a strong collaboration between PMs and engineers, where both sides respect and leverage each other’s expertise.

Adapting to the Company Culture

As a product manager, you must be adaptable. The right approach varies by company size, stage, and culture. Understanding and aligning with the company’s culture and operational style is critical to your success. Here are some tips:

Evaluate the Company’s Approach: Understand whether the company follows a PM-driven, engineering-driven, or balanced approach.
Assess Your Fit: Consider if the company’s approach aligns with your strengths and working style.
Adapt Accordingly: Be prepared to adjust your approach based on the company’s needs and culture.

The 3 Superpowers of a Product Manager: Listening, Complexity, and Prioritization

As a product manager, what could be your superpowers? What will make you super successful? The answer isn’t complex, but it’s crucial. Here are the three key skills that can set you apart:

1. The Power of Listening

Listening might seem basic, especially for experienced professionals. But the way you listen matters immensely. There are various types of listening:

Listening to Win: Hearing others to win an argument.
Listening to Fix: Hearing to solve a problem.
Listening to Learn: Hearing to truly understand and learn.

As a product manager, the most important form of listening is listening to learn. Your job involves hearing out many stakeholders and understanding different perspectives. By doing so, you can synthesize information, gain insights, and make informed decisions.

2. Distinguishing Between Complex and Complicated

Understanding the difference between complex and complicated problems is a subtle but important skill:

Complicated Problems: These can be resolved with a well-defined process. For example, fixing a car’s engine, whether it’s an internal combustion engine or an electric vehicle, follows a series of steps.
Complex Problems: These involve many interconnected factors and variables. Solving complex problems often requires innovative thinking and can’t be addressed with a straightforward process.

As a product manager, tackling complex problems can be your breakaway opportunity. It’s where you can make a significant impact by bringing creative and strategic solutions.

3. Mastering Prioritization

Prioritization is about balancing the criticality of demand and frequency of use. Here’s a simple framework to consider:

High Demand & High Frequency: These are the top priorities.
High Demand & Low Frequency: Important but secondary.
Low Demand & High Frequency: Necessary but not urgent.
Low Demand & Low Frequency: Low priority.

Applying this framework helps ensure that you focus on the right things, delivering maximum value and efficiency in your product development.

Product management is a dynamic and challenging field that requires a blend of strategic thinking, emotional intelligence, and practical skills. By focusing on user needs, adapting to changing market conditions, and honing your superpowers, you can navigate the complexities of product management and drive your products to success. Remember, your role is not just about making decisions but about enabling others to make the right decisions and guiding them to execute effectively.

About the Author:

Rajeev Srivastava – Director of Product Management at Google

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How can I be a better product leader?

To become a better product leader, focus on understanding and meeting evolving customer needs through empathetic listening and persona-based design. Foster a culture of collaboration and innovation by leveraging emotional intelligence to influence and guide cross-functional teams effectively. Adapt your product management approach to fit the dynamics of your company size and stage, prioritizing initiatives that align with critical demand and frequent use. Continuously strive to simplify complex problems and processes, aiming to deliver impactful solutions that drive digital transformation and customer satisfaction.

2. What does a product leader do?

A product leader orchestrates strategic direction, prioritizes initiatives, and guides cross-functional teams to deliver innovative solutions that meet customer needs. They define product strategies, balancing market demands with technological capabilities, and drive execution to achieve business goals. A key role involves fostering collaboration and ensuring alignment across departments, using emotional intelligence to influence decisions and maintain product vision. Ultimately, a product leader champions continuous improvement, adapting strategies based on market feedback and technological advancements to drive sustainable growth and customer satisfaction.

3. What is the difference between product leader and product manager?

The main difference between a product leader and a product manager is in their scope and strategic focus. Product managers typically handle the day-to-day execution and operational aspects of a specific product or feature set. In contrast, product leaders take a broader, more strategic role. They define the overall product vision, set strategic priorities, and ensure alignment with business goals across multiple product areas or the entire portfolio. Product leaders also guide and mentor product managers, fostering innovation and driving long-term growth and market success.