1. Over the years many people have asked me what it takes to be a product manager.  For awhile I gave them an answer that required lots of reading. A few years back I realized that while reading is useful there is a much faster way to determine whether or not you have the chops to be a product manager.

    • Try attending 3 meetings each day for the next week explaining to people with different ways of thinking, different motivations for working, and different financial incentives why they should do something.
    • Try getting 3 people who don’t report to you (i.e. you don’t control their time) to build something entirely new with you.
    • Try taking an email that deserves 200 words and cutting it down to 20 words so people actually read it.
    • Try telling the CEO that the business model we rely upon for 70% of our revenue is a dead end and convince him or her to adopt a different business model. (advanced topic)
    • Try taking a feature list with 40 things and cutting it down to 4 things you’ll actually do.

    Attending conferences and/or buying certifications programs in product management is a complete waste of time and money.  Instead, dive into it and along the way you’ll figure out whether product management is for you.

    1. arielseidman posted this

Ariel Seidman

Paper theme built by Brickspace Lab

Recent Post

Read more