It Takes Two to Do Good Product Management
The required skill set of a product manager is too broad to be addressed by one person
Let’s start with a question: what do you see in the picture below? Do you see trees, or is it a forest?
There is, of course, no right or wrong answer here. Some of us see trees, while others see the forest. The answer is set by how our brain is wired. Some people see the big picture (they are said to be right-brained), and some are more detail-oriented (these are the left-brained). Here are typical characteristics of these two groups:
The big-picture person is usually more creative, strategic, visionary, but at the same time disorganized, and sometimes impatient and forgetful.
The detail-oriented person is usually more methodical, analytical, and technical. She/he is weaker on perspective, creativity, and people skills.
The above division is, of course, some kind of generalization, but one cannot argue with the matter of fact — different people have different personalities, with stronger and weaker domains.
The product manager role involves activities that require both big-picture and detail-oriented, which together constitute the product lifecycle. Since our brain is wired either right or left and not both, this expectation puts many PMs in a trap, which I call the Superman PM trap. Here is a list of the main PM activities, sorted by big-picture vs. detail-oriented:
Big Picture
- Identifying the market needs.
- Speaking with users.
- Creating ideas on how to solve users’ needs.
- Building the product-market fit and the product strategy.
Detail-Oriented
- Writing product specs.
- Breaking specs into small user stories.
- Prioritizing tasks.
- Working closely with tech teams.
The truth to be told — doing all the above, and doing it well, requires super powers. Frankly, how many of us have super powers? Maybe there are a few out there, but for most of us, this is a mission impossible.
So, what is the solution? From my experience, there is a simple solution — split the job into two. Find a big-picture guy to do his/her part of the job, and a detailed-oriented guy for the other part, the more technical one. In fact, many companies do split the job, but surprisingly enough, a lot of companies still stick to the One-PM-fits-all concept, and keep banging their heads against the wall, not understanding why this model does not work. The failing has two faces — either these companies fail to deliver the products they envision, or they deliver working products on time, but the wrong products.
Regarding the question of how to split the two roles, some companies put the big-picture guy under Marketing and call this position Product Marketing. Other companies put both positions under Product and call it outbound vs. inbound product management. Both models can work, although personally, I prefer the model of Product Marketing that is under the Marketing department. Why? Because when the big-picture guys are not part of Marketing but rather part of Product, they tend to gravitate towards the internal and technical work, and forget their initial task which is building the product vision, watching the market trends, finding the product-market fit, etc.
In any case, these two guys must work well together. If not, forget about success. Here are some tips for good collaboration:
- Build trust and confidence. Be generous with the credits you give to each other. Remember that your success depends very much on the other guy.
- Share knowledge. As Francis Bacon once said, knowledge is power. Each one of the two holds valuable information that can benefit the other.
- Define clear responsibilities, i.e., who is in charge of each stage. Try not to overlap territories.
Once this is done right, magic happens. The effectiveness of this mini-team of two complementary forces can be remarkable and sweep the whole company.
Think of Superman and Batman. They are totally different, each one alone has his strengths and weaknesses. But when joining forces — they are unbeatable :)
