Values of Product Management
By: Shrikant Kadu
Tags: Silicon Valley, Product Management, Product Mindset

I’ve been fortunate to have worked with some of the smartest product managers in the San Francisco bay area. In hindsight, all of them are great PMs in and out of their 9 to 5 jobs and what truly makes them a great PM is their outlook towards the world and the tenets with which they live. Product Management is not just a job for them; it is a lifestyle. In this article, I am summarizing a few common but interconnected values that I’ve seen great PMs embody.

Common values of great Product Managers

Empathy

Human beings are fundamentally wired to view the world keeping themselves at the centre of reference, but great product managers can empathize with other human beings, without necessarily taking on others’ emotions. Great PMs embody empathy in everything that they do and it not only helps them to put themselves in the user’s shoes, but also to build deeply meaningful relationships with their peers, friends, and family.

Self awareness

One cannot gauge how users will respond to features unless one knows why (s)he responds to things the way (s)he does. At the heart of user understanding is an understanding of human emotions and fundamental need behind every emotion, which great PMs gauge through their understanding of their own emotions. Moreover, while good PMs become power users of their product, great PMs ensure that their affinity towards their product does not let them overlook user inputs. It takes self awareness to recognize your biases and reevaluate your decisions. Self awareness also enables PMs to position themselves within the org, showcase a good presence of mind and conduct according to the interpersonal dynamics of the org.

Vision

Good PMs have fundamental understanding of how technology works, but great PMs can envision the societal impact of emerging technology in the long term. Great PMs envision the outcome of the technology impact without getting bogged down by short term limitations. To have good vision of societal implications of a technology, great PMs often apply first principles to understand the tech and 10x thinking to deduce its implications on society. Similarly, great PMs apply this practice of long term outcomes > short term barriers in their day-to-day life, enabling themselves to make optimal long term decisions.

Structure

As much as good PMs enjoy the process of executing on a product/feature, great PMs bring structure to provide the whole experience to users. This often means peeking out of the core responsibilities and bringing unaddressed risk to respective teams. Great PMs are go-to people to bring structure to dissect and validate the problem. This quality to bring structure to things enables great PMs to think systematically about their personal as well as professional problems.

Resilience

Nothing worthwhile is ever accomplished without some degree of setback and it takes an ability to persist through failures to accomplish a vision. Good PMs are optimistically flexible to pivot and reassess opportunity in the face of failure, but great PMs dissect the failure using first principle and objectively come up with a plan to bring reality to product vision. This is the same quality that great PMs use to get things done in a complex org with competing priorities and to navigate through uncertainties during conception of a product/feature. They become a positive anchor for things to move. It takes resilience to stay motivated and objectively assess setbacks to make sound decisions. Great PMs embody this quality in all walks of their lives.