7 Reasons Why Product Management is Awesome
There has been continuous hype around the role of product management in recent years. While not everything you hear about product management is a shared experience among all product managers, there are some really great reasons as to why product management is awesome and continues to receive attention. For those who are interested in the world of product management and want to fully understand what the hype around it is all about, here are 7 reasons as to why I believe product management is awesome.
- You get to solve problems for others
As a product manager, you have the ability to support and solve problems for others every single day. Whether you are looking to solve a problem for a customer by adding a new feature, identifying the potential for a new product initiative, or even supporting your own internal teams to execute on a specific task, you are always in a position to alleviate or resolve problems that others are experiencing. If you are someone who cares about others and wants to spend their time having a positive impact on someone else’s life, that is what the role is all about. At the end of the day, what makes this role awesome is that you get to come home knowing that you had a positive impact on someone else. Caution: It does become addicting to help, so don’t forget about yourself and your own needs (missing lunch does happen a little too often)!
2. You are in the middle of everything
Every one loves to mention that a product manager is in the middle of it all from business to design to engineering to marketing, etc., the product manager is always at the center and should always know what’s going on. Product managers are usually involved in most conversations and have the ability to speak their mind on decisions that are being made. While the product manager can’t and shouldn’t make every decision that others are responsible for making, they always get to leave with the context surrounding how things will work, how the user experience will be impacted, how the product would be marketed, and most importantly, how these decisions will impact their team’s objectives. The product manager has the ability to see it all and support where they see fit.
3. Your learning never stops
Product management has personally brought me new knowledge that I never thought I would learn in this position. Because you are in the middle of it all, you are always going to be looking for clarity. Through getting clarity, you learn so many new things along the way. Some of my favorite things I’ve learned consist of iterative development, driving outcomes, working with engineering and design, learning new design skills, learning how to measure team objectives with data appropriately and independently, etc. This role is all about learning, and the only way to learn is by doing. If you love to learn new skills in relation to product development, you’ll learn a little of everything as a product manager.
4. You are a trusted decision maker (hopefully)
Like most leadership positions, product management is mostly about one thing, making decisions and making them quickly. As a product manager, you are responsible for making data-driven decisions for what problems your team should solve and when they should be solved. In addition to this, you need to make sure that there is a clearly-defined solution or goal that will help drive your team’s objectives or the North Star Metric. When engineers or design has questions, you have the decision-making power and ultimately determine what is a ‘go’ and what is a ‘no-go’. Everyone around you is looking for insight into what is next and when a particular problem will be resolved. While Product Managers can’t always have the answers ready to go, they should be comfortable enough to make decisions for the team to progress forward without any blockers. Of course, while being in a seat to make decisions brings on it’s own form of stress, being a trusted decision maker is what being a leader is all about.
5. You get to control the priority
As a product manager, you control your team’s own path for developing the product. While you should always rely heavily on your team’s input to understand iterations, goals that could have been missed, and how the product should scale, you have an incredible responsibility to make sure that the team is focused on the priority that fits within the outcome the product lead has set with the strategy. You get to determine what comes next and when based on data insights and understanding users.
6. You can scale a real product
You are in the position to watch a product grow throughout it’s life cycle from decisions that you made with your team. At the end of the day, you get to take a step back and look at the product you played a major part in creating. You get to see the overall impact that the product has created for every day people and the organization. Most importantly, you get a sense of pride knowing that people are using the product every day to make their lives easier.
7. You have the ability to empower others around you
This is my personal favorite reason as to why product management is awesome. The product manager has such a big opportunity to bring the best out of their team and others around them. You have the ability to empower your team members to be great. It can be something as small as having an engineer on the team run your standup calls in the morning to gain confidence with communication or even bringing your entire team into ideation and discovery sessions for solving a specific customer problem. You can truly give the floor to anyone on the team to share a differing perspective from your own. As a product manager, you have the ability to create more leaders and all you need to do is trust those around you.
I hope this can provide you some insight in to why product management is awesome and even persuade you to make a leap into this role. While not everything about product management is awesome and not everyone will be made for this type of role, there are always some really convincing reasons as to why many others and I love it!
If you do have any outstanding question, please leave comments below or reach out to me on LinkedIn.
