» Product duos and trios can enhance the team, but are never more important than the team as a whole
» If a team depends on an external decision-maker, could that person join the team to empower them?
» Speak the language of C-level by focusing on revenue, customer benefits, and financials
» Without understanding, there can be no empathy
» Product managers need to be able to communicate with a wide range of people using different languages
» The worst product managers only speak in the language of product management
» Be involved and interested, but not on the critical path
» Talk about the ideas you threw away, in commercial language
» Founders are rejecting the generic advice to delegate everything — this evolves the product manager role
Jason Shah says that joining a web3 company can be “an opaque process and a risky decision”. I’d add “ethically challenging and morally grey” to that description.
» 3 tenets of product ops: insights, research, and processes & practices
» Product ops is about enablement and coaching, not a rebrand of the product owner or product marketer roles
» Product ops is the ‘glue’ that binds different business functions and product focus areas together
» Product ops enables product teams to achieve better outcomes
“Should the product manager have some level or perhaps a great deal of responsibility for the profitability of the product? Should they understand things like the unit economics, that sort of thing?”
» A product manager works at the intersection between business, technology and user experience
» A product manager is not a replacement for absent specialists
» The product manager is accountable for ensuring the solution is both valuable and viable
» Product managers use their knowledge of user needs and business goals to frame problems and set priorities for their delivery teams
“Hi Jock, What’s the difference between a product manager and a business analyst?”
Product managers are sometimes referred to as the conductor of the orchestra. Some people think that the conductor’s job is to direct the players, to lead them through the music. That would be to misunderstand the relationship. Instead, here’s a different take.
Compared to when I started out in product management, we’re a lot better at defining what a product manager does. It’s always worth a reminder, so I’d like to share with you a talk I gave last summer, What does a product manager do (and not do)?
