Why Generalists Make Better Product Managers
Research suggests that generalists are more creative, better problem solvers and lateral thinkers — aka ideal Product Managers
Last year I spoke at Leading the Product Sydney on the Evolution of Product Management where I talked about how Product Management has evolved over the past couple of decades, particularly how the role has been reshaped in a number of distinct ways.
One of those ways I discussed was how the role has shifted towards being a “jack of all trades” — a generalist role over a specialist one.
Let’s be honest, there’s not much depth you can go into in a 20-odd minute talk so I wanted to continue the conversation here and dive deeper into this topic — why generalists make better Product Managers.
We often think of Product Management as this new thing. Many companies have ‘shining thing’ syndrome and are jumping on the Product Management bandwagon. But the truth is that Product Management is not new — in fact, Product Management has been around since 1931.
However one of the biggest changes that has happened since then is that our world has become increasingly more complex and volatile — we are not the same place we were 20 years ago let alone back in 1931!
The rate of change has increased and disruption is the new norm. As a result, the number of competencies, knowledge, and shear ground you need to cover as a Product Manager is immense.
The truth is, no single person can be across all of these — not at least doing them effectively.
As a result Product Managers need to lean on the expertise of others, namely a product team. In many ways, product management today has become a team sport — a real group effort.
Product is a team sport.
