As you progress on the journey of building great teams, you create the vision, build a strong foundation of trust and motivate your team to reach beyond what they thought they were capable of doing. The next step is to work with your teams to develop their ability to work more effectively and hone their skills for the markets your products serve.
Why should you focus on developing your team?
You’ve nailed the vision, and built the foundation of trust, now you need to motivate your teams. The success of your product depends on the work they (engineering, UX/design, marketing, sales, etc.) do. In nearly all cases, the individuals on whom you depend for this success do not report to you. That’s why motivating and influencing become some of the most important things you do as a product manager.
What are the key elements to motivating and influencing your teams?
Another key element of a successful product management organization is creating trust with your teams, the teams you work with to build your products. Creating relationships of trust sets a foundation for the work you and your teams will need to build great products.
Why is building trust so important?
One of the key elements of a successful product management organization is creating the vision for your products—the ‘why’ that drives their purchase and the factors that make them successful in their markets. When you nail the product vision, you’re well on your way to business success.
So how do you create product vision?
Titles have a way of morphing over time. In some cases, they improve and become more popular. At times, because of the acts of certain, often high-profile, individuals, titles can lose value.
When you think about the title ‘product manager’ how does it make you feel? Does it still hold the value it had when you first started learning about it? What about when you took your first job as a product manager—do you feel the same today as you did in those first days and weeks?
Many product managers have begun their tenure with an up-and-coming company by hearing the phrase, “We want you to be the CEO of the product.” While many have argued the validity of this statement, it is something that every product manager should aspire to become, and that is what the market wants.
So how does one achieve this admirable and lofty goal? A startup company CTO explained this best: a product manager is someone who will stop at nothing, accept no excuses, take no prisoners, and make the product successful. The PM owns the product and is completely responsible for its success.
One of the key elements to business success is customer engagement. When you have customers that are excited about your products or services, your business grows and you prosper.
As good as it sounds (and you know this), building trust with your customer base is hard work. It takes effort and perseverance. It takes time. It’s an investment that will pay dividends if you give it the focus it needs.
Accountability is a key leadership principle. Those who do great things, or do small things in a positive way, succeed because they apply the right principles, they do the right thing.
Taking ownership of every aspect of aspect of your situation is the first step.
We’re almost done with the first month of 2017. Most statistics I’ve read about people who set new year’s resolutions show that more than half have already given up by this point in the year (in less than one month). Hopefully you’re not one them.
One of my perennial goals is increasing learning and applying what I learn to business and life. For years, learning has been a key component of every plan.
In many ways, creating new technology based products and services has become much easier in recent years. With mobile apps, software as a service (SaaS) and other new tools, the cost of turning ideas into real products has significantly decreased. What has not changed is the significance of deeply understanding the market your product will serve.
What is the key to knowing you have a winning product?
Lead on Purpose 