J.J. Watt is one of the best players in professional football, as evidenced by his 3 defensive player of the year awards and his 4 pro bowl appearances. Though Watt is certainly talented, his talent isn’t what won him his awards. Watt is famous for being the hardest working guy in the NFL. He does not have an offseason, he’s always working to improve as a football player. Watt, a former walk-on at the University of Wisconsin, knows that there are others out there that have more natural ability than he does, but his grit allows him to power past all of those other “naturally gifted” opponents.

Grit, as defined in Angela Duckworth’s Grit, the Power of Passion and Perseverance, means “perseverance and passion for long-term goals”. In her book, Duckworth sets out a couple of key examples of gritty people — people who set their sights on a goal and then work diligently and intelligently to attain it.

As a product manager, my ultimate goal is to change the world, even if only for a small group of users. As an agile practitioner, I know that iteration on an imperfect product is what creates a better, more impactful product. Duckworth’s research on grit made me consider whether I was doing everything I could to be a great product manager, and lead me to think about some things that I think gritty product managers do.

Do the Design

What’s the saying? A basic wireframe is worth a thousand words? I think that’s right. Great product is typically developed with the help of great designers, with my case being no exception. The meticulous nature of the designers I get to work with is what leads to beautiful, functional product, but I don’t think product should start there. Being a great product manager, though, means being able to communicate your vision to everyone around you, including designers. Whereas written requirements documentation can be interpreted differently depending on the reader, creating wireframes enables a product manager and their team to achieve shared understanding of exactly what’s in the product manager’s head, enabling more productive collaboration and reducing potential miscommunications. Gritty PM’s work to develop wireframes that communicate their ideas with stakeholders, engineers, and users.

Learn the Tech

I’ve seen articles that go both ways on how involved product managers should be engineers. The product management landscape is certainly divided amongst those who started as engineers and those who did not. Regardless of the extent to which it’s appropriate for PM’s to be in the trenches with the engineers on their team, I believe it to be vital that I understand what I’m asking of my engineering colleagues.

Becoming better acquainted with the engineering means googling the names of obscure potential stack components through to understanding how to work with them, and looking at the dev blogs of companies that use those technologies. It means practicing building in my spare time and talking. It means asking my team questions when I don’t understand something. Gritty PM’s work to develop their understanding of the nuts and bolts of their product so that they know exactly what they’re asking for.

Interact with the Users

I believe the job of a product manager to be to change the world, if only for a small group of people. That group of people is affectionately referred to as “users”. Whomever your user is — drivers, runners, bankers — changing their world means understanding it. Talking to users in person, shadowing users, and conducting your own testing are some key ways that I want to develop empathy for the users that I build for. Now, I work in a place where I’m lucky to have extremely talented UX Researchers and industry experts, but gritty PM’s don’t just trust the expert’s empathy. Gritty PM’s work to supplement existing understanding of user needs with their own.

Talk to the Experts

Back in little league, I remember one of my coaches saying “practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect”. One of the keys to making progress towards being an expert at anything, according to the research of experts like Anders Ericsson, is practicing in a way that achieves a specific goal, under the supervision of a coach or mentor.

Being the “CEO of my product”, I’ve found that, in my capacity as a product manager, I’m fairly slow to ask for advice or feedback from my peers. I don’t want to appear as if I don’t have total command of my product. I realize though, that putting myself on an island is not practicing my craft deliberately, and I need to do a better job of learning from those who know better than me. Gritty PM’s work to gain the insights of experts who can guide them to practice more deliberately.

Care

Simply put, great product managers know how their product improves the lives of their users. Through a combination of direct interaction with users, numbers, and sometimes faith, I strive to get to the point where I understand how each of my decisions have the impact to improve the lives of the real people using the products I’m creating. In her book, Duckworth states that such an altruistic motivation is not a prerequisite to deciding what your ultimate goal is, but it is necessary to truly achieve it. Thus, gritty product managers are ones whose drive to improve is motivated by altruism.

How do you think you can become grittier?