Day 3/30: Top Skillsets for Product Managers
Product sense, strategy, execution... where do I even begin?
As I mentioned yesterday, the core essence of a product manager is hard to define.
If you look up skill matrices, career ladders, and such artifacts online, you’ll likely feel confused, as I did for some time.
Here’s my take on the most important set of skills to focus on honing as a product practitioner:
Navigating yourself and steering others through ambiguity;
Self-awareness and awareness of the people around you and the bigger contextual situation you’re in;
Weaving people, ideas, and information together to move towards a goal or vision that connects everyone and everything together;
Understanding how complex systems and their individual constituents work and may change over time due to organic or manufactured changes;
Flexible communications to convey the appropriate information to the appropriate person/people at the appropriate time;
An insatiable curiosity that seems infinite, to better understand people and our world;
Compassion for and having a deep understanding of the people you serve in this role—users, customers, teammates, stakeholders, and other partners; and
Being able to create distance between yourself and your thoughts, feelings, or other things you may hear about your work.
Speaking from personal experience, even if you’ve never held the formal title of Product Manager or some equivalent, focus on the job descriptions you’re aiming to apply for, and be creative in identifying transferable skills and knowledge from the wealth that is your past experience.