Desirable Traits of a Product Manager

Product Leaders

Jan 28

These are excerpts from a recent podcast conversation (no AI editing). Listen to the full podcast here.

Soft skills on the rise

Technology products serve multiple purposes. The first is to solve the customer problem. The second is to do that to the benefit of the business. And really, Product Management skills go from being detail oriented because we are dealing with tech products to being very holistic, such as how and where does this product make profit? Where does it work for the company so that we're legally compliant? Even deeper as I’ve seen from working in a lot of regulated spaces.

So great Product Management skills are a combination of hard skills and soft skills. As technology gets easier to use, the soft skills actually get a little bit more important. So how do you collaborate? How do you work with the team in the best possible way to get your outcome? How do you even set these outcomes?

Curiosity and ambition

So I always tell people curiosity and ambition are probably the two most important traits to have if you're a technologist. There's a curiosity about how it's all working. The curiosity allows you to move into spaces you maybe didn't think were possible or maybe didn't show promise before (aka, innovation and creativity).

If the technology is new, you need ambition to push through all the barriers you encounter.

Is it really a legal barrier or not? Well, you've got to work that out with your general counsel.

Is it a technological barrier or not? You got to work that out with your engineering counterparts.

Does this fit our design system and the way it's supposed to build? (Should it?) Work it out with your designers at the leadership levels.

You're thinking about how to navigate the company's dependencies and the structure of your teams while still accomplishing your goals.

And you've got to push the envelope so that if you're in a larger company, you may have success now, but how do you maintain that success?

You need curiosity and ambition to push through the cultural and structural barriers that come up. So I think, yes, there's a detail orientation that people need but they certainly need these two traits of curiosity and ambition.

Being eclectic, holistic

I myself happen to have a very eclectic personality. I love to do all the things and so am well suited for product management.

Even though I started in engineering, I acted as a product creator for 20 years. I did these various roles but didn't have labels for them.

Curiosity, ambition, detail orientation, the ability to be holistic…are at the beginning of success. Hard work's in the middle of the journey to success. The end is when you analyze whether you've accomplished your goals.

For the hard work part, you need to use these personality traits while constantly learning new ways of working as technology changes and companies grow into different stages.

Listen to the full podcast here.

Being a Better Product Leader

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Desirable Traits of a Product Manager

Great Product Management skills are a combination of hard skills and soft skills. As technology gets easier to use, the soft skills actually get a little bit more important.

Feedback is a gift

Especially when you get 60% of the audience to fill it out...again and again. month after month. year after year.

How do I get that high of a response rate?

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What's the purpose of your Customer Advisory Board?

As a product guy, I want my most reflective and thoughtful clients that are aligned to our product vision to participate in the Customer Advisory Board (CAB).

However, most CABs are picked out by the sales, marketing and customer success teams looking to provide visibility and kudos to clients that we need to renew.

Annual Operating Planning (AOP): A Practical Approach for Product Leaders

It’s the time of year where leaders in all organizations are planning for next year, creating an Annual Operation Plan (AOP).

While these plans may not always unfold exactly as envisioned, they create a shared understanding among leaders and teams about key priorities for the coming year.

I recently facilitated a roundtable with several leaders about annual planning and distilled the discussion into an approach that is less painful and more fruitful.

Case Study: The Hidden Limits of Optimization

During my time in ecommerce, my team made some key adjustments leading up to the Christmas season with the goal of boosting conversion rates. We ran a multivariate test, tweaking elements in 7 critical areas on our most visited page type. Each area experimented with multiple variations, allowing us to test a wide range of possibilities.

Case Study: Are your renewals a house of cards?

After a reorg, my team inherited what we thought was an awesome product.

We had big name clients and a flashy demo that opened door after door for new prospective clients.

However, as we talked to current clients and looked into their use of the product (or lack thereof), it was clear this product was struggling.

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As CTO and Head of Product, I worried about the 13th month.

After an initial 12 month subscription, we wanted our clients to sign up for that 13th month, to renew for another year.

At PowerReviews, we had 1,200 clients in 20 countries. Every month, one or more client’s one year subscriptions were coming up for renewal.

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We discussed the role of UX research, the importance of qualitative and quantitative data, and how to demonstrate the value of design to non-design senior leaders.

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They create goals but struggle to achieve them.

Only some of this failure can be blamed on the goals themselves.

Part of this failure can be attributed to a lack of an analytic culture and a lack of an analytic mindset in your key employees.

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It’s a simple question.

But often there’s an unsatisfying answer.

The first step towards understanding whether you're successful today starts with recognizing (and using less of) the following types of data: “Anecdata”, Reactive measurements, and Internal metrics.

I Don’t Have Time for Product Discovery

Teams are stuck in a "doom loop" of planning.

Every time there's an unpredictable event, leadership asks for more planning in order to avoid another unpredictable event.

Instead of continuing to predict the future (poorly), teams should repurpose longer term planning time for discovery time.

Product Leaders: Getting Teams Started with Product Discovery

“Start somewhere, anywhere.”

The first Product Discovery effort for a team doesn’t have to be perfect.

Product leaders don’t have to be experts in Product Discovery to get their teams started doing Product Discovery.

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Over the years, I've managed and helped grow the career of many analysts and data scientists.

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As a coach, I facilitate most every session that I attend. The group size ranges from 3 to 100 people. These are some of my top techniques for getting the most out of individuals in a group setting.

Use these techniques to avoid groupthink and one-sided discussions.

What is Success in Product

Launching a product feels like success.

I've launched hundreds of features and products and that feeling never gets old.

Sending this newsletter feels like a launch, providing a mini rush of positive emotions.

But I know better than that.

Jim coaches Product Management organizations in startups, growth stage companies and Fortune 100s.

He's a Silicon Valley founder with over two decades of experience including an IPO ($450 million) and a buyout ($168 million). These days, he coaches Product leaders and teams to find product-market fit and accelerate growth across a variety of industries and business models.

Jim graduated from Stanford University with a BS in Computer Science and currently lectures at University of California, Berkeley in Product Management.

Jim Morris

Desirable Traits of a Product Manager

Soft skills on the rise

Curiosity and ambition

Being eclectic, holistic

Being a Better Product Leader

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