Product Management

… Valley, they're doing market research, they're talking to customers, they're working with developers, they're iterating, they're doing the end-to-end product management. (00:11:31): What happened on the other side of things, especially…

… PM as conductor is sort of how I describe the product management function, but one of the key Naomi-isms that I think is really critical to getting stuff done is what I call extreme clarity. I think our jobs are su...

… oduct managers, they've seen a lot of this in practice now and I think they understand that, but there is this mismatch of people who haven't been in product management saying they want to go and thinking that they need to learn some…

… thing I didn't realize as a product manager in a large tech company is there is very little product management that you do. They're mainly just writing documents and then being the team secretary and running around getting approvals, but…

… There's so many different definitions for product management, but the one that I have come to myself that I really like is, when you are building a product, you have this team, engineers, designers, so much potential. The purpose of…

It was really funny last year after that interview, so Yuhki, our chief product officer, had invited me to a dinner for our PM team. And it took a while to get out of Config at the end of the day, and I eventually made the dinner but I was…

I think probably everyone's learning to do a bit more of everyone else's job in this current moment. That said, I definitely think there's still immense value in product, immense value in design, immense value in engineering.

… There's an art and a science to product management. And in a lot of ways I come from a background of education and in a lot of ways in product management, it's very similar.

" And I think that especially in product management, we're supposed to be the holders of this vision for what the product should be. And so it's easy to come in with a lot of conviction and not really ...

… And don't get me wrong, project management is important, but it is not product management. And furthermore, in almost every company I see with feature team product managers, they have a boatload of project managers anyway.

… The New York Times article about product management wasn't this. " And they're like, "What should I do?

… That all assumes that they understand real product management, otherwise it's going to lead to very different symptoms.

… that sounds very hard and painful, but I like that metaphor. Okay, so let's talk about how you set up the product org to move as fast as you move.

… The core of product management is competency-based, meaning there is someone in an organization that represents the customer the best, that has a deep knowledge of the customers an...

… So you'll hear me say product management is clarity and conviction. And in writing the headline, you have to focus.

… (00:37:25): I would try to think about product management, expanding the responsibility and including distribution. Understanding the customer and teaching people how to tell a story.

… My first PM job was a product management rotation job at TripAdvisor. I had no PM background.

I thought about this one a lot and I consulted the Slack workspace team. Because it's been a long time since I've tried to get into product.

The one I like to have in this area is that people who are really excited about being data-driven, to me that is oftentimes a red flag for their product thinking, especially if it's an executive who's saying things like, oh, so we make all…

… And I think some companies are very scientific on their product management that they like to measure everything and they do a lot of tests and things, but we just decided we don't think that's necessary or that's good for us...

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

… a lot more emphasis on things like delightful animations or fun little Easter eggs, and I am not sure when or where that got lost, but it feels like product management as a role has gotten formalized and become a little bit more…

… Basically, I think even enterprise companies will tend towards a consumer type product management over the next decade than the other way around, that's my bet. And so let's call that PLG, just writ large.

… And how I got into product management was really around understanding deeply the customer and understanding deeply the product and being able to show impact on the combination of these tw...

… I think that's the most dangerous piece of advice ever in the history of product management because I think that is how you end up having PMs who try to act like dictators instead of leaders and facilitators. Because if you're acting…

Yeah. Well, let's start with how we look at the world, which is this idea of skills.

I think there's a part of that. One of the first things I teach is you're not a CEO, you're, you're not here...

… terms of the product, whether you're working for a big company or a startup, the core product management tenant is still the same, which is, you have to work backwards from the customer problem or the user problem. Building a technology…

… I still think working on smaller products and companies is a way great way to get into product management in part because you'll get to touch all of the functions that are required parts of the product discipline, and I think it's hard…

… I think one of the things that might be off with a lot of the product management education and conferences is, it's good that they take a lot from UX and it is important to be people-centered, but the reality is the product manage...