My Take on Good/Bad Product Manager

Tags

competition, customers, execution, Goals, integrity, intentional, numbers, opportunities, priorities, proactive, problems, reporting, responsibility, strategic, tactical, trends, value proposition, vision, why

Several weeks ago during one of our planning sessions, my boss referred to the Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager post by Ben Horowitz.  While it has taken me awhile to get around to reading it, I am sure glad I did.  Love, love, love the context of the article … and disagree with the opening statement about possibly not being relevant today and/or outdated.

The underlying premise and ideas behind what is shared are, in my opinion, timeless. If you are interested in being a successful leader in product management, this is where you need to start!

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Know Your Customer, Know Your Business

Tags

addressable market, business acumen, customers, data, metrics

Over the past several weeks, there have been multiple occasions where we have been challenged on whether or not we know our business/customers. There are actually two similar but different points to the challenge … 1) understand your customers (current base), and 2) understand your business (future opportunity). I originally touched on this topic in my post The Numbers Don’t Lie, and I commented a follow-on discussion would likely be necessary with respect to articulating Available Market. It’s time to further dig in to both points to the challenge.

Indirectly Serving Customers

Tags

API, API economy, customers, ecosystem, growth, partners

If you’re not serving the customer, your job is to be serving someone who is. ~ Jan Carlzon, CEO SAS

One of the articles I read recently (5 Things CMOs Need to Know About APIs) hit home with respect to either a topic I’ve previously posted about, or situations relative to my role recently.

If you don’t understand APIs, the article provides a very nice high level intro into the topic and is worth the read.  But there are two specific points the article makes that I want to touch upon.