Hello, how are you doing? I wish you a great day and a great evening. I hope you have a good time.
I wanted to talk about the Product Manager profile. Many people are interested because, unlike many of the profiles on the market, it pushes you to think about single problem from multiple perspectives. It’s not like there are no other profiles in the market that help you through it in your life. Having the profile of a consultant, you know, even a sales manager, or business analyst, pushes you to think from different angles, from different perspectives towards the problem.
However, the role of a product manager, also comes along with a lot of accountability and responsibility. So, it’s a real add-on to what you are learning. Not only do you have to think from different angles, but you have to be accountable and responsible for the actions you are taking and for the reasons you are taking them. And with the responsibility, you have an engineering team running with you, and with your vision, with your direction, your engineers are building day by day.
On one side, you have to work on different cues. What is happening in the environment? What is happening in the market? What is happening with your competitor, and what is happening with your customer? And at the same time, you have to act as a bridge and translate those insights and those observations into the form of a product backlog, which is a language that is understood by engineers.
We all know that computers understand 0 and 1; the language that the machine understands is 0 and 1. And everything which is built on top of it, like an operating system, low-level languages and high-level languages translates what humans want in their thought process into how the computer can implement it. I mean, it’s really astonishing.
Similarly as a PM, you are supposed to be getting exposure to what is happening around you, and then based on that, you’re creating a vision, an approach, which you feel is right. Then you are putting your team to work and building it with you, and you always have a responsibility to defend it and to champion it in front of the management and in front of customers. This, again, brings a form of responsibility and accountability into you.
You’re responsible for devising the roadmap, you know, I mean, for whatever, like a quarter, a year or a decade. You’re supposed to decide the milestones; you’re supposed to decide the goals. And, you know, no one is there to tell you at each and every step that this is right and this is wrong. No one can tell you every day that today you are on the right track, or today you are not on the right track.
Yes, there are brief moments of darkness, where you just keep moving ahead based on the assessment that you have done in the past, based on your talent and based on your wisdom. The decision that you have taken and you are following could be on the basis of analysis, your gut feeling, or the inspiration from things that you think work, and admire.
When I started my career after my MBA, to be honest, I thought that I would be a good sales person. I still think so. I would be a good B2B salesperson. I have good people skills. I can understand problems; I can build relationships.
So being allocated a Product profile, I didn’t like it much, because I felt like I wanted to take a break from engineering and coding. I was a developer for 3 years, and then I left it to do my MBA, and then I joined the bank as a Management Trainee. But slowly and gradually, I understood the importance of this role and how it is an opportunity in disguise. And all this happened because I decided to give it a few months and trust my superiors, and it turned out really well. Actually, it’s hectic job. It’s a very demanding job, but I think life is always demanding. And it’s good that something in your life keeps you at the edge, keeps you sharp, keeps you focused, and keeps you going.
A lot of people ask, “I want to be a product manager. What course should I do? What should I do?” So, to make an entry as a product manager start from wherever you are, first identify a problem. Any problem around you, whatever you think is broken and is worth fixing. Determine what the right solution should be for that problem. Then decide how you want to build a plan to reach that solution or to deliver that solution. Then think of how you can break that plan into smaller milestones to make it achievable and more logical, rather than a fiction or a fairy tale story. Once you reach that point, I request you to start working on it step by step. Start building it.
It doesn’t matter where you are when you land your first product manager interview. What point of implementation are you at? Have you done it 100%, or 25%? It doesn’t matter. But the fact that you identified a problem, identified a solution, devised of a plan to implement it, broke it down into SMART goals, and you start building it, with the full accountability and responsibility of implementing the plan. That is what a PM is required to do, and is expected to do.
If you are looking for a profession like this, it is worth it for you to put yourself in the shoes and decide if you like it. If you trust yourself, then the sky is the limit. I wish you a good day. Keep working, keep pushing yourself, and keep loving the life that God has given you.
Love and luck.
~R
