Product Management as a Superpower

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Today my daughter asked me, ‘Dad, if you would like to get a Superpower, what would it be?’. After a deep breath, I answered to become exceptional in Product Management – I would like to build great products that millions of people would love to use. Product Management definitely is a superpower that encompasses multiple core skills.

Here is a list, what I believe a Product person should possess to have this superpower.

Product Vision

The product person should understand the core problem for which the product is proposed. Understand how big is the problem, can it be a sustainable business, what more can be done over the long run to make it a long-term success. Define success for the product. Impact it can make and at what cost. What technology, political, and economic trends make the problem more severe, and that people will need your product. Understand the ecosystem, competition, your core advantage that can add huge value to the product. In short, a long-term thought process is critical to building a successful product. You need to put a strategic roadmap that excites you, your team, and your partners.

Understanding Customer Problems

What is the customer’s core problem that you intend to solve? What are their alternatives? What are possible solutions? How critical is the problem for the customer? How will customers discover your product? How is the customer using your product and how effectively – all the above questions matter most. Staying close to the customer and working with them to see the effectiveness of your product is another superpower of a product person. There are a lot of unsaid, unseen things that you should be able to understand. The better you understand the customer and their problems, the better your product will be.

Analytics Guru

Understanding what’s going on with your product to take corrective actions is a critical skill. If you measure it, it can be improved. You should be able to double down on data, trends, charts, and question every aspect of it to understand what’s going on underline. Be able to connect the dots to draw the perfect picture, based on which you can make a better decision. You should classify good data and bad data to ensure you focus on the right aspects and not get carried away by meaningless data.

Storytelling

Influencing people to get things done is your job. And the best way to influence is to tell a compelling story that will stick to people and motivate action. People of all ages love stories, and it’s the easiest way to consume complex data, trends, and bottom lines. To make it easy for people to understand, you need to do the hard work in getting the story right. Your story should be backed with data, facts, timeline, events, places, feelings, and people to make it honest and trustworthy.

Execution

An idea, a dream, and a beautiful product sketch have zero value unless it’s shipped. Executing your idea into a concrete product that people can use is the next critical superpower after vision. It takes a village to build, ship, and maintain a product. Defining the clear requirements, communicating them, team collaboration, following the processes, monitoring the milestones, and taking corrective actions when needed can’t be replaced. This is the place where most companies fail or slow down. As a product person, you need to drive this effectively to ensure your dream is converted into a real product that people are actively using and paying for.

Business Acumen

What will sell to make it a sustainable business is the next superpower for the Product person. It’s hard to get money out of people’s pockets. There are free services and alternatives; people may live with the problem, and there is competition. The product person should be able to develop a great business model that works. The product should be baked with the business model in place and not be an afterthought. You need to know the cost of building, running the product. You should know what people can pay for, understand your profit margin, know how you can make an upgrade, understand the volume aspects, understand the scale you can support, and continue to reduce your product cost and increase the profit margin. As a product person, you can’t just leave it to someone else and should be part of the team that sorts it out together.

Prioritizing

There are many ideas, many feature requests, multiple problems, enhancements, executive requirements, business pressure, competitive pressure, user feedback, and your own ideas that you think can differentiate the product. You have finite resources in terms of time, people, and money to make the impact, and there is no magic wand to get this sorted. Prioritizing is a superpower you are expected to possess to lay down a robust product roadmap that will move the needle for the user and business. You need to have a clear-cut thought process to prioritize the items and convince everyone with the correct reasoning. All urgent, critical, strategic, important, and nice-to-have items should be aligned well and effectively communicated to all levels.

People Skills

You listen, talk, write and document. You work with all levels of people ranging from CEO/Exec, engineering, marketing, sales, support, partners, users, and third-party team. You need to have strong people skills to listen carefully, influence, care, communicate, excite, energize people to get the work done as a team. You need to showcase the energy, enthusiasm, and empathy every moment to keep the spirits high and deliver what’s expected. People are the crucial aspects of the game, and this superpower must be mastered.

Focus

It’s a noisy world out there. Your digital gadgets have made it worst. There are plenty of things that can easily distract you and take your time and energy, and you need to MUTE all of them to focus on what matters most. You should get time for thinking, be creative, experiment, dig deep into alternatives, decide your next action plan without any disturbance. You need to effectively manage your digital life to ensure it’s there when you need it rather than be available at every notification, chat conversation, or call. You need to prioritize your time and energy over millions of notifications to take it all. Attention to detail can only be achieved with a focused mindset.

People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.
— Steve Jobs

Grit

You and your product will be challenged. Your product will be criticized. There will be bad feedback due to gaps. Take it all and work on it. It’s an input to improve the product. Use it as a tool to get motivated and drive the opportunity to resolve the issues. Get your team together and start marching on it. Persist for a longer time, and you will see the same people marketing the product happily. This long-term perseverance is a superpower. It’s a marathon and not a sprint.

While I haven’t mastered all of these, knowing it is half the win. Working on it every day to push the envelope.

Let me know if you agree. Do suggest some more if I have missed it.