The meaning of life
This is the pinned tweet on my Profile and it does a good job of explaining what my twitter account is about.
Why is this the goal?
As with any creator, the problem I am trying to solve is one I face myself often.
How to become a better Product Manager (PM)?
There is no established qualification for Product Management (PMnt). There is no essential textbook for PMnt. There is not even a universally accepted definition or job description for what a PM does. So how does one become a PM, or a better one?
Some context…
I became a PM while working as a Marketing manager that understood technology. All the training I received was on the job. I learnt what it means to be a Product Manager by doing everything that I could pick up along the way. I was fortunate to work for a Manager who saw something in me and turned me on to this path.
We shared an understanding about the state of things which was widely different from what others in the organisation thought about as work. This “shared understanding” is what my manager used to refer to as Product Thinking. It allows a PM to be fundamentally different from all other roles in an organisation. It provides an implicit framework of the way the world works to the PM. It cannot be seen or heard, it can only be felt and thought through.
What is Product Thinking?
At the core of Product Thinking is an assumption — Products are not finite things. They are a complex network of needs, desires, features, goals, behaviours, emotions, and constraints. Products are not just tools or services, they are a cumulative throughput of thoughts, feelings and actions.
Every product has the capacity to change the world. In a way, every product does change the world. When a person uses a product, they are fulfilling a need, completing a task, achieving a goal, and bringing about change. Not just to themselves or to the people involved in creating the product, but also to the people who are part of the world created by this product. A product used by 100 people is not the same product which was used by only 10 people. To put it simply, products always exist in a state of flux.
Product Thinking is the ability to comprehend this uncertainty, to embrace it with open arms and to mould it in a way which keeps moving the ship forward.
PMs who have a handle on PT can see beyond the numbers and analysis, roadmaps and requests, and tune in to the pulse of the product. They are more likely to make the right moves, even with limited information or visibility.
This is the reason why PMnt is such an enigma. Every PM is living in a different world. No two PMs would solve the same problem in exactly the same way. In fact, no two PMs would ever face exactly the same problem. There is never a purely scientific way to make the right decision. The PM can only make the best decision - based on facts and feelings.
The Art & Science
And this is also why there is no fixed route to becoming a PM. Every PM in the world is affecting change in their own way, and some of them are sharing their knowledge along the way. Every tweet, article, newsletter, toolkit, book, course or program is an attempt to share the experience of a PM living in the world of some product. You can glean from it, you can use it to expand your thinking, you can learn new tools and techniques, but in the end you have to build your product in your own world.
There is a bit of art in the science and a lot of science behind the art. This is the life of a Product Manager. The Product Life.
