As I stepped off the plane, on the cold tarmac, the wind hit me in the face with a welcome relief from the dry air from 37000 ft. Little did I know, that within the next few minutes, I would be faced with an enquiry that dug deeper than it should have, like the proverbial fluttering of a butterfly’s wings, that started a storm of self contemplation.

More on that later…

If you have worked with product development through the last decade or so, you may have noticed product management evolve from a discipline that was aligned to business, sales and marketing (person-in-suit-who-writes-specs-and-disappears) to one that is meant to be the voice of the user (person-with-an-identity-crisis).

It is not uncommon to find proponents of both methodologies in equal numbers. While there are pros and cons to both approaches, I tend to lean towards the more user-centric, design-focused product manager with a sharp eye for business and markets, as opposed to a completely sales- and business-driven PM who happens to minor in design.

What is common, however, is that Product Managers are responsible for delivering products, but rely on a number of other stakeholders (engineering, UX, Marketing, Sales, etc.) for the overall success of their endeavors. An important skill in the Product manager’s toolkit, no matter if you are design first or business first, is the ability to identify the viable from the unviable. When I refer to viability, I am not only referring to design or technology, but equally important is the viability of the market for the product.

The famous Oresund bridge between Denmark and Sweden was proposed in 1936. It was, however, considered commercially and environmentally unviable until 1991. A great example of persistence, and of waiting for the right (viable) time to build.

This brings us to the three key skills in a product manager’s toolkit:

Understand your user — We all know and understand that we need to nail down the market for products we wish to bring to fruition. However, I prefer to use the term “understand your user” as it adds a human touch to the otherwise lifeless embodiment we like to use to define the end goal. You need to really connect with the people who will use your product. What problem will you solve? Why do these problems surface themselves and how are they solved today? Remember, happy users buy products and recommend these to other users with similar problems. No happy user = no market. Focus, focus, focus — Find one thing you want your product to do well and make that the purpose of your life. Live and breath that use case. If you are not helping your team focus on fewer things, and if you are driving them to build a swiss army knife where a hammer is required, your product will look like a cacophony that you yourself may find hard to describe, let alone build. Persist — This is where a lot of product managers fail. Building good products is like a long distance run. You need to start at a comfortable pace and settle in. Use energy wisely and do not give up. Good product development requires patience that requires you to survive past reprioritization of resources, bouts of refactoring, architectural discussions, backpedalling and procrastination. Be prepared to articulate and sell value of your vision at every opportunity.

…. and that brings me to the enquiry i was referring to earlier. The immigration officer asked me what my business in Canada was. “Participation in product development related meetings”, I replied. She asked me what my title was. I replied, “Product manager”. She immediately quipped, “Ah, so you manage people?”. “No”, I said “No one reports to me, but I am responsible for building products”.

At this point, she was puzzled, “How can someone be responsible for products, if you do not manage people”.

“I know who my users are. I do not manage people, I manage expectations”