How to be a Good Product Manager ?

Deliver customer value, not product features

If you want to be a bad product manager, try to deliver as many features as possible. The more features you have, the more likely you are to have the things that any individual customer cares about. Customers expect products to keep getting better, and the way a product keeps getting better is by adding more features. Plus, adding a whole bunch of smaller features will be just as good — if not better — than adding that one big important enhancement. More is always better, right?

Stop gathering requirements

If you want to be a bad product manager, gather requirements. How else will you know about what to put in to the product if you don’t ask others? Interview current customers, ask them what their requirements are, and make sure to capture them. That’s what being “customer-focused” is all about, after all — responding to any customer request. Make sure to gather requirements from internal stakeholders too. Get a list of features from customer support, marketing, sales, and senior executives. If you just gather all of the requirements from all of the right people, you’re bound to have a successful product — right?

Delegate tactical responsibilities

If you want to be a bad product manager, do everything yourself. You’re the product manager, after all, so you should be the final authority on everything related to the product. You should be the one answering questions from salespeople, drafting press releases for marketing, defining all of the processes for suppliers, and poring over every detail with engineering. Sure it takes a lot of your time, but that’s what a product manager should be spending time on. What other more important things are there to do?

Be comfortable being uncomfortable

If you want to be a bad product manager, make sure you stay within your comfort zone. There are many different responsibilities in product management, and some of them might not be things in which you are experienced or even competent. Stay away from doing anything that will make you look bad or make you feel uncomfortable. There are plenty of activities you can do within your comfort zone, and either ignore or get someone else to do the things that make you sweat.

Plan for the present and likely future

If you want to be a bad product manager, plan for far advance into the future. Your product will of course be a success, so you need to have every possible detail figured out now to ensure it will continue to be a success for years to come. It’s just as important to plan for an issue that will likely come up tomorrow as it is to plan for an issue that could possibly come up a few years from now. If things go really well — or really poorly — you want to be prepared “just in case,” no matter how unlikely that may be.

Work effectively with sales

If you want to be a bad product manager, distance yourself from your sales force. Your job is to get the product defined and built, after all, not to sell it. The company has levels of sales management focused on improving sales, so they don’t need you involved. If the product isn’t selling as much as it should, that’s a problem with the sales people, not with the product. Your success as a product manager is only defined on how good the product is, not how well it’s doing in the market.

Ask a good product manager

If you want to be a bad product manager, do not seek out advice from other product managers. The problems you are facing in your job are so unique that surely no one has ever encountered them before. Your product is special and different, and there is no way that someone else could provide advice. Even if there was someone who could help, you certainly couldn’t share any details because of confidentiality, security, and intellectual property issues. Plus, solving problems on your own is good for your character. You’re never going to learn if you’re always asking other people for help, right?

Do not be afraid to remove features

If you want to be a bad product manager, don’t ever remove features. Why would you take something out of your product? More features just make the product better, so taking away features would obviously make the product worse. Sure, not everyone will use every feature, but that’s why you have so many of them. What if you take away something that even just a small portion of your customers use and you alienate them? Customers always ask for more features — not less — so in the end, the product with the most features win.

Choose promotions for effectiveness, not coolness

If you want to be a bad product manager, make sure to only do “cool” and “viral” marketing to get your message out. You need those “whiz-bang” promotional ideas that will get people’s attention. Flashy stunts, guerrilla marketing, and social campaigns are the only way to get your word out. Print advertising, direct mail, trade shows — those “old media” techniques are just not appropriate in today’s world and any product marketing manager with any self-respect will avoid them at all costs.

Understand qualitative vs. quantitative research

If you want to be a bad product manager, rely solely on quantitative research. Business is about numbers, after all, and there’s a reason you had to learn statistics in school. If you can’t prove something to a level of statistical significance, it must not be reliable. You would never make a decision about a product that’s used by millions of people by just getting input from a few dozen. What people say is not nearly as important as how many people say it.