Why is the job of a product manager so fascinating?
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The author of this article Evonne Tsai is currently the deputy manager of the business transformation department of an e-commerce company. Thank you for authorizing the “Practical Guide” website to reprint it.
Recently, my online course “Product Manager Workplace Learning: A Compulsory Career Guide for PMs!” has started to raise funds!
I am really grateful to many people who have recommended and shared, and then I was surprised to find that among these recommended masters, they include my PM master [You Shufan-gipi] (https://medium.com/@gipi.tw), [Content Hacker] (https://www.contenthacker.today/) [Vista ] (https://medium.com/@vista), M Viewpoint (I love watching live broadcasts) Miula Hung ⋯⋯There are also Li Baifeng who has a slash in the fields of investment and financial management, Inside, Hahow courses and publishing, etc., all of them have been product managers (PM, Product Manager) or are currently working as product managers (the names of the above people have all moved one orz)!
Product managers are responsible for defining the features and functionality of a product, as well as the long-term strategy for enhancing and expanding it. The role requires technical knowledge, a solid understanding of the market and good business instincts. Many product managers are also heavily involved in developing the marketing plans and budgets for their products.
There are many others I have listened to (who haven’t recommended my class yet XD), such as Fred Jame, Shi Dianzhi Tenz Shih or Guji (I only found out about his relationship with Miula after watching the live broadcast), all of whom are also PMs. Hearing so many successful cases, I really want to make people shout:
I PM and I am proud!
Taking advantage of this exciting moment, I would like to share with you how the career choice of Product Manager has changed my working methods and way of thinking. I think it can be summed up in three points:
- Start from the purpose and “commercial value” instead of immersing yourself in work.
- Cross-departmental perspective and communication skills.
- Overall view of the project, and “the ability to secure and allocate resources under the overall view.”
Starting from these three points, I will explain to you one by one - why is the job of Product Manager so fascinating? Also, why is it that when a fresher is lucky enough to be a product manager, it’s like receiving a huge treasure!
The first gift my PM experience brought me: start from the purpose and “commercial value” instead of immersing yourself in doing things
When I was a rookie at the beginning, I was in the stage of “receiving orders and producing”. I would just do whatever I received, and I would inevitably be overwhelmed. If the demand was changed or even canceled, or if I worked hard but couldn’t sell it at all, the morale of the entire team would be damaged, and my trust in the team would be greatly reduced.
After being stabbed a few times, you will start to become “wary” about making wishes (huh?). You will tell yourself, “No!” You can’t just take on the task casually. You need to find out what the other person really wants? Also, what is the “commercial value” of this wish? But you can’t be led away stupidly, and then you start looking for solutions.
Even if you don’t think so, it’s easy for the team to keep questioning you: Why do you do this, why do you do that, how many people use this? Can this be sold for money? We can only bite the bullet and try to clarify it again - messing with “imaginary needs” may hold up for a while, but it will soon be exposed. Especially when something you make does not get the results you originally expected, you will start to be questioned by colleagues or customers. You know, having trust shaken is a serious matter. Dear PM, cherish your feathers!
Perhaps because of being trained too much, PM has naturally experienced and grown up, and can start from the purpose and commercial value. And starting from “why” and then looking at “how”, it will eventually become a reflective thinking of the PM.
After working as a PM for a long time, I think everyone knows that we must first clarify the purpose and business value before doing anything, instead of starting to perform the work when being assigned, or even being led by a pile of wish lists. However, since I started coaching people, I have discovered that this is not the intuition of ordinary people. Even people who “know to ask clearly about the purpose” find it difficult to “really clarify the purpose by asking the right questions” or “smell out what is unreasonable.” Having said that, it’s easy to get pulled away.
There is another sentence that you must often hear: “[Research on not harming the body first, then focus on the effect] (https://www.mobile01.com/topicdetail.php?f=37&t=2183683)”. For me as a PM, this sentence makes me feel that something is wrong as soon as I hear it (why do you suddenly fight against the advertising slogan of a pharmaceutical company)?
If you don’t want to harm your body, just don’t take medicine in the first place! This is like the PM saying “ask first, don’t delay”, “seek first, don’t spend too much money”, and then we focus on achieving the project goals. To be honest, this doesn’t make sense. Even if there is really no delay and no budget, as long as the purpose of the project is not achieved, the intermediate process will be wasted.
I think goals and results are the most important. While pursuing results, you must not harm your health. In other words, the PM should control the schedule and cost of the project under the premise of “achieving the goal.” This is the most important thinking given to me by product manager experience.
In my online course, I will discuss how to clarify needs and “control” needs to prevent divergent needs from overwhelming you. In addition, I will also teach you how to deal with “the situation where the requirements keep changing.”
The second gift that PM experience brought me: cross-department perspective and communication skills
As a newcomer, cross-department communication is a challenge but also an important opportunity. The role of PM happens to be at the hub. The back-end will come into contact with engineers, designers, suppliers, outsourcing vendors and operations departments, while the front-end will come into contact with business and marketing, and even directly face customers and channel partners.这些人有不同的需求或是使用不同的语言，身为PM就必须想尽办法驱动这些人。
Having said that, ordinary people rarely have such an opportunity to face so many different departments at the same time, or even handle such diverse information and needs. Therefore, this opportunity is really precious!
Therefore, even though I worked as a PM in a large company like ASUS Computer in the past, I do not think that my performance in ASUS was limited and I could only be a “small screw”. Of course, it is not difficult to imagine that large companies tend to have a more rigorous division of labor, but it is absolutely impossible to “just do your own thing well.” As PMs, the field of vision we can see is quite broad.
No matter where the PM is, he needs to play the role of a “screwdriver” and be able to use the principle of leverage to leverage the resources of all parties to make the entire “system” work. If you work for a smaller company, you have to become a self-directed king. In other words, you have to shoulder the responsibility from guard, center to forward.
In addition, the PM must communicate with the “boss and other department heads”.由于产品是很多公司的核心，因此PM很容易上达天听，直接和老板沟通。 When asking for “bridge” resources, it won’t be the person working underneath you, but the person in charge of the department. Therefore, PMs will have many more opportunities to “report to management and compete for resources” than ordinary freshmen. Of course, the pressure will be greater. However, in terms of overall growth rate and visibility, it will be much higher than that of ordinary freshmen!
There are many benefits to being a PM. Not only will you have experience in vertical and parallel communication across departments, but you will also have the opportunity to face all kinds of monsters. This will also be helpful when you want to take on a supervisory role or coordinate larger projects, because you will be less likely to suffer from stage fright after seeing more. Of course, another advantage of being a PM is that it is easy to gain a certain degree of visibility within the company’s system, and at the same time, you can get to know various people - to be honest, this is something I did not expect when I was a “department bian” (marginal person in the department XD) in college.
In my [online course] (https://hahow.in/cr/iwanttobeapm), I will list different roles that require communication and how to overcome them, including engineers, marketing, business, suppliers and outsourcing vendors, as well as “boss”.
The third gift that PM experience has given me: a global view of the project, and “the ability to allocate resources under a global view”
Finally, I think the value that my PM work experience has given me is actually to train myself to have a broader and longer-term view of the overall situation, and then to have a more dominant consciousness to optimize the allocation of various resources under the overall situation. Before coming into contact with project management, “completion of one thing” is just completion. However, in the scope of project management, every “completion of one thing” may be just the beginning or prerequisite for the next thing. If something is completed 100% as scheduled, it may only mean that the project progress bar has advanced by 1%. If it is not completed as scheduled, you may immediately think that items A, B, and C will be affected, and you need to start thinking about how to react and adjust. Since you are the one who plans the project, you are also the one who has to make contingency plans all the time. Over time, when you hear about a change, various influences and solutions will intuitively pop up in your mind, which can speed up your thinking ability a lot.
This is only the scope of “things” in one dimension, and there is another dimension in “investment of resources.”
From the beginning, every work item in the project must be sure that resources are invested in order to achieve output. This will be the result of integrating the needs and interests of multiple parties.
But how do you secure development or marketing resources? Let the project have visibility and contribution! Tell me, how can I make the project visible and contribute?
Well, please find out the value of the project to the company and convince your boss or department head!
In other words, in addition to the two dimensions of “things” and “resources”, advanced PM will also leverage “market information or business value” to drive a more appropriate allocation of resources to complete “things” and contingency plans, further achieve goals, and gain business value.
Going back to the part mentioned earlier in this article, the first gift and the second gift of the PM career, in fact, all of them are intertwined.
In addition, what should I do if there is a change? How to “strategize” and mobilize these resources may be to put out fires, or it may be to alleviate the peak of resource investment. Of course, it may also be “exchanging money for time”, or “choosing between the myth of the man-month and production efficiency”… Various decisions related to resource allocation may arise. At this time, how to find out these possibilities, how to evaluate, and how to communicate and coordinate to successfully execute the deployment are all extremely rare and precious opportunities and training (it is a concept that pushes you off the cliff and you can learn to fly XD).
As Miula said, “Actually, a PM is really a micro general manager. I think back then I was also a PM and became CEO in one go.” I think what he said makes sense.
Being a PM is a good experience. After all, the gifts given to me by the previous three PM careers are exactly what a small CEO has to do! If you can pass such a harsh test, no matter whether you continue to be a PM or not, you will be able to travel around the world with these three gifts!
Now, you can learn product manager methodology without pushing yourself off the cliff (or being pushed off the orz)! My online course “Product Manager Workplace Learning: A Required Career Guide for PMs!” is now raising funds! For the above three gifts, I will help you sort out a set of my unique methods in the course, so that you can quickly get a glimpse of the secrets of the PM palace!
Thank you for your support. The fundraising campaign for this online course has been confirmed to have met the standards, and the course will start on August 1st. The early bird program is now running. Welcome to share this course information with friends who are interested in entering the field of product managers!
This class allows you to easily learn the three key abilities of a product manager, and allows you to be successful in the workplace -
- Accurately grasp the needs of bosses and customers, and further “control their expectations”
- Give yourself the control over the project and no longer be dragged down by the needs of all parties. There is only hard work and no credit.
- Establish the basic sense of career and learning methods, and quickly level up from a novice!
This course is divided into three parts, including: “How to get a PM job?”, “Work soft skills: communication and drive” and “Work hard skills: Introduction to project management”. In this class, the essential skills you will learn are: “the ability to obtain resources”, “communication skills”, and “project management skills”. And this kind of function is not only suitable for product managers, but also a key ability that will make your career successful and smooth!
In addition, my new book “[Building 360-degree marketing product power: Product managers take you to the core of business competition] (https://www.books.com.tw/exep/assp.php/vista/products/0010819300?utm_source=vista&utm_medium=ap-books&utm_content=recommend&utm_campaign=ap-201905)” has also been published! Friends who are interested are welcome to refer to and purchase.
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💡 Want to learn content production and management? Come and sign up for the online course “[Content Power: The Super Power of Building Brands] (https://hahow.in/cr/content-power)”.
💡 Photo Credit: Mimi Thian
