Product Leader Manifesto: We Believe In Making Products That Improve The World
Published in
3 min readJul 12, 2023
As a product leader, I aim to ensure my team is motivated daily to drive maximum impact for our customers in a way that impacts the business goals. First and foremost, I am a builder — I love building and scaling products. I took my past experiences as an individual contributor that created products to product leadership positions — leveraging these past experiences and scaling expertise to lead teams effectively.
A strong team has a growth mindset, where people thrive by constantly learning from mistakes and other’s experiences. Personally, I have made many mistakes throughout my career and have spoken openly about them.
Beliefs
- I believe in making products that improve the world and add value to customers.
- Revenue-driven product is a core belief in my product decisions; revenue is the strongest indicator of customer value.
- The outcome is more important than the output. Product success cannot be measured by the number of featured shipped but by the extent of the impact it has on the customers and business.
- I believe in a beginner mindset — be curious about the customers, and understand their needs, wants, and wishes. Being humble and patient are two fundamental skills for product managers.
- Spend at least 30% of your time with the customers. If you can’t, spend that time learning about them — newsletters, tweets, magazines, academic pieces — whatever you can find to help you walk in their shoes.
- Make bets — in an informed way. Product discovery should be based on data (qualitative and quantitative) and small iterations to validate your assumptions as you go. Tests are a core tool for product managers (oh, and everyone should learn about biases — “Thinking Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman is a must-read book).
- Measure yourself by how long it took you to get to the value you sought.
- Product managers should spend most of their time understanding the right problems to focus on and build the solutions with their teams (UX/DEV etc.). You are not the one that decides what to do. You are the one that takes the right questions to your team to solve.
- Product Managers are responsible for simplifying complex information and building shared agreement on the problems and solutions in the organization.
- Product Managers must sharpen their communication skills, both verbal and rewritten. Communication is key.
- Product Managers are accountable for striving for alignment from vision to execution and must master stakeholders’ communication and product reviews.
- Product Managers should strive to gain deep knowledge of the market and the industry. Competitors, key trends in the industry, disrupters, and analysts’ views are all continuous study product managers should invest in. This knowledge will inform the best decisions.
- Roadmaps should be filled with problems the team will solve with measurable business outcomes.
- After a product is shipped, the battle for adoption and engagement begins — the product manager is the product’s champion inside and outside the organization.
- The people on the product team are the biggest asset; their growth and learning path are crucial for the product’s success.
Let me know yout thoughts in the comments.
