Sometimes people ask me what it’s like being a product manager or how to be a particularly good one.

This is the advice I generally share, the 7 obsessions that I believe a product manager channels into success during their careers.

1. Customer Obsession

“The key is to set realistic customer expectations, and then not just to meet them, but to exceed them - preferably in unexpected and helpful ways.” -Sir Richard Branson

Before you try to create, do your level best to understand. This is the frustratingly simple truth at the core of all product management activities.  

It’s why embracing a deep and abiding empathy for your fellow humans is so fundamentally important to our profession.

You need to know your customers.

You need to dive deeply into their world. Apply zealous ethnography. Listen to them as much as possible. Pore over their user surveys, chats, and feedback. 

(Remember: whenever you’re not solving a real problem for your clients, you’re just building a very fancy paperweight.)

2. Data Obsession

“Data! Data! Data! I can’t make bricks without clay!” –Sherlock Holmes

Data should be your compass as much as possible. 

You need to seek the truth that lies buried inside the data. Dig into the qualitative and quantitative. Pay close attention to the compelling stories that data tells. Consider the thorny questions raised by data. 

Hypothesize. Experiment. Discover.  

This is how you gain clarity through the fog of uncertainty - one data point at a time.

(Remember: you will almost never have all of the data you need.)

3. Collaboration Obsession

“I like people who are working on practical things and who are working in teams. It’s not so important to get the glory. It’s much more important to get something that works. It’s a better way to live.” -Freeman Dyson

You’re standing at the intersection of a passionate group of problem solvers. By default, grant the sincerity that every one of them wants to solve interesting problems and generally make the world a better place.

You’re the glue holding the whole thing together.

Build the bridges. Flatten silos. Burn impediments to ash.

Foster an environment where ideas flow freely and every team member feels like the proverbial superhero-rockstar-pirate-ninja types. 

4. Prioritization Obsession

”Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.” -Peter Drucker

The ideas for things to do will crash over you like a tidal wave. 

Prioritization is the art of curation within this environment of seemingly infinite possibilities. 

In this perpetual exercise, you will continually seek to estimate the relative impact, risk, and value of all the work to be done sitting in your backlog. 

It’s your choice what the team focuses upon. This is how product’s evolve and change over time. This directly shapes the Future with a Capital F.   

Prioritize ruthlessly in alignment with your product vision.

5. Agile / Auto-didactic Obsession

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” -Ferris Bueller

The 21st century marketplace is actually moving at warp speed.  It’s exactly the bored researcher with his thumb pressed on fast-forward that William Gibson wrote about in Neuromancer. 

Embrace the fact that there’s now so much change happening that everyone is essentially a perpetual newbie.

You need to keep learning to discover what’s new, what’s changed, what are the new opportunities or risks. You need to keep learning to stay ever so slightly ahead of the curve.

You need to willingly embrace change.  

Stay nimble. Pivot whenever needed - and ideally based upon data generated by experiments. Stay nimble. 

(Think more swarm of low-cost drones here and less gigantic aircraft carriers.)

6. Resilience obsession

“The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” -Marcus Aurelius

Spoiler alert: There will be bumps along the way. Big, angry, soul-scorching bumps. 

And yes, you will sometimes be discouraged.

Your experiments will fail. You will make bad decisions. You will communicate poorly. Your collaboration will be regretfully subpar.

But here’s the thing… what Marcus Aurelius wrote is exactly correct.  Every apparent setback actually holds the seeds for moving forwards. Every stumble is just the setup for a big comeback.

Stay tough. Learn as fast as you can. Don’t repeat mistakes.

7. Agency obsession

“Custodiant incendo” (Keep moving forwards.)

I’ve already touched on this a few times.

  • You need to dream about the future and what sort of changes will be beneficial.
  • You need to make decisions, even in the face of uncertainty and doubt.  
  • You need to encourage otherwise individual contributors to rally together towards a shared goal.

What’s the common thread here? These are all action verbs, not nouns.

As a product manager, you’re not solely reacting to circumstance. You’re proactively driving forward momentum.

Seize the initiative. Actively explore possible solutions. Anticipate the challenges.

Always keep moving forwards.

And thank you to Audri Ordelt for her feedback on an early draft of this post.