No-one can, or should ever be sure that they have a 100% right product strategy. But you can do a lot to de-risk your approach, and your tactics should vary depending on how much time you have to plan. * Is your strategy ultimately going to drive the change in behaviour you want? Find the key participants in your strategy -- e.g. the customers -- and talk, talk, talk to them. You'll learn a ton from the first 5-10 conversations, and suddenly you'll start to hear the same themes and be able to predict what they'll say. Then you can move on. * Read, and connect with people who are familiar with this situation in your industry or other industries. How did things work out? Is the current market / environment similar enough that you can draw conclusions? * The more experienced you are, the more confident you can be about relying on product intuition. A phrase I often use is "we've seen this movie before" and, it's surprising how many times the same situation gets repeated.

It's prevalant myth that PMs make all the decisions. They make some of the decisions but not all of the decisions. But, a PM is definitely responsible for making sure their team can make high quality decisions at a fast pace. They do this by making sure their teams have access to the right information at the right time. Some examples of how successful PMs do this are 1. Helping the team understand the company / department strategy - This is typically presented to the team as the business context driving the team's work + adjacent teams / departments and their strategies. 2. Bring the customer voice to the team - This is typically presented as the customer needs driving the product focus distilled from both qualitative (eg. customer feedback) and quantitative (usage data) 3. Helping the team understand the market landscape - This is presented as the market the team's product is targetting, competitive offerings in the market, strengths and weaknesses of the competitor compared to your product's strengths and weaknesses. 4. Mostost importantly, helping the team make decisions when they have incomplete information through rigorous logical reasoning and trade off analysis. Identifying the level of risk in the decision and getting buy-in from right level of leadership (higher risk requires a higher level leadership to sign off on the decision). 5. Finally, making sure the team is not revisiting a decision made in the past unless some new and compelling information surfaces that makes it a no-brainer to change the previous decision. This typically involves helping the team document decisions and clearly articulating the rationale for the decision. At Atlassian we use the DACI framework extensively for this purpose. As you can see, a PM can do a lot to influence decision making without actually being the person to make the decision. In the few instances where the PM has to be the one to make the decision, it's worth thinking through the worst thing that can happen if you got the decision wrong. You will realize that the stakes are not as high as we make ourselves believe. I like to remind myself that no one's life is at stake if I made a wrong decision, after all I'm building a collaboration software and not a critical medical equipment. It's also useful to remember that you make a lot of decisions in day to day life without breaking a sweat. Why should product decision making be any different?

A super common question! Traditionally the term "product manager" can often mean different things depending on the size of the company, the product's stage, and sometimes the overall market segment. I often times bucket them into these core groups: 1. Technical Product Managers (TPM): These PMs work closely with engineering teams on more technical products, thinks like API driven products where the end "customer" is technical in nature. For these roles, you will need a deeper level of technical expertise and the ability to understand the technical aspects of your customers needs. 2. B2C (Business to Consumer) Product Managers: In a consumer-facing environment—like mobile apps, e-commerce platforms, media consumption products — I find that PMs often emphasize UX and product design (along with core PM responsibilities). One of the key areas that this group focuses on is leveraging a typically broader/larger customer base to do things like A/B testing, and quick iteration on product designs to validate assumptions and feature value. 3. B2B (Business to Business) Enterprise Product Managers: These enterprise PMs focus on delivering products that solve businesses' complex problems. I spent a lot of my career here and this type of PM spends a lot of time on sales enablement, strategic account engagement, and roadmap management. Given that most B2B solutions have a longer sales cycle, their relationship with sales is key to success. Depending on the size of the organization, this type of PM also focuses a lot on the financial side of the product. 4. Infrastructure Product Managers: These PMs (sometimes internally facing only) focus on building components that other teams and products rely on, oftentimes within an organization. For them, the GTM isn't as relevant but they need to understand and balance things like scale, interoperability, and business alignment. Figuring Out Your Best Fit: 1. What are your Interests: Consider things like Do you enjoy getting into the weeds on technical discussions? Do you more get energized by user research and design? Do you geek out over analytical data and love looking at usage metrics to drive feature development? Each type of role has a different focus, so find the things that excite you. 2. Consider the Environment Do you want to reach a huge market of customers and iterate on minor feature developments and enhancements? Or do you want to work closely with larger business customers and develop a deeper understanding of their problems and how your product can evolve to meet those specific needs? No right or wrong answer, just what gets you pumped up each day. Remember, it’s about aligning your career desires, your core strengths, and the types of challenges that get you fired up to solve each day. We are problem solvers, so what types of problems do you love solving and how do you like solving them? Many PMs start in one area and end up in another. All the roles share a common framework of ensuring we are delivering business value for our organization and delighting our customers with innovative and useful solutions to problems they either have or don't even realize they have yet.

Product Manager position could be optional. A team building a software product will have someone fulfilling a product manager role either way. * Who will take accountability for the market success of team’s work? * Who will deeply understand the market, the customer and their pain worth solving? * Who will fight for the team inside of the organization to acquire needed resources and to defend existing? * Who will be a “PR manager” building team’s brand inside of the organization? * Who will detect early learning and make a case for adjustments and improvements? This list may go on and on. Try to make the case not for the position of a PM (“I am a PM, you listen to me”), but for the inevitability of the work above for any successful team. Chances are, your engineering leader and their team do not find this type of work most exciting. Hopefully they are reasonable to agree it is required, or at least helpful for the eventual market success of your product. From there, if you established there is work to be done - demonstrate how you can take this work off the team’s plate and have them focus on what they do best and enjoy most - building great software (or hardware, if that’s your thing).

There is a a shift from from execution to influence & strategy. Earlier in your career you are often helping drive the product to launch and collaborating with a large group of stakeholders to make it happen. As you become more senior, your role shifts to influencing product strategy based on your experiences from the market, competitors, and customers. In this phase you have to be effective at defining and articulating the strategy, then influencing across the organization to adopt, and then leading various cross-functional teams to drive execution, metrics, and long term success. Additionally as you get more senior you have to be looking ahead 18-36 months to really set your product vision up for long term differentiation. 

The “soft skills” are often what separate the good from great product managers. In particular: * Curiosity - An insatiable curiosity about your customers, partners, fellow team members, technology and just about anything that comes your way helps add arrows in your quiver you can use when tackling the wide range of daily challenges product manager takes on. * Story Telling - Central to a product manager’s success is the ability to influence key parties to deliver an outcome. Whether its influencing the customer to use your feature, the engineering team to build something, the product manager ultimately has to craft and deliver a clear, energy-infusing narrative that touches on logic and emotion to compel the party to deliver the desired behavior. * Hustler Mentality - Great product managers consistently deliver results even in the most constrained environments. They do this by being scrappy, resourceful and opportunistic - using great judgement to figure out where they should spend their energy, thinking creatively about how to marshall the resources they have, and steely resolve when tackling blocking issues. They do not resort to victim mentality. This is not to say that specific technical or writing skills are not important. However there are many flavors of PM where “hard” skills required vary. But the above needed soft skills tend to remain consistent.

I tried to always approach my career with 2 axis: you should either learn a lot, or earn a lot. If you don't have any, then look for another job. If you don't see growth opportunity but still has way to learn a lot, I think it's worth staying. In the case of conflicts with your manager, you can also learn what is NOT working, and what you will try not to do in your future jobs. It happened to me where I stayed for 2 years with a manager I was in conflict with, but I learnt a lot about what works and what does not work.

Many data-driven Product Management (PM) teams often overlook long-term strategic KPIs, such as Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), by focusing on short-term metrics like quarterly margins or one-off transactions. This approach can be detrimental, as retaining customers typically yields higher CLV and reduces churn-related costs. Another critical KPI often missed is Feature Discoverability and Time to Value. Despite having sophisticated features, users rarely utilize them due to: Difficulty Finding Features: Users struggle to locate necessary features. Longer Time to Realize Value: Understanding and realizing the benefits of these features often takes longer than competing alternatives. By prioritizing these long-term strategic KPIs, product teams can enhance adoption rates, accelerate customer value realization, and ultimately drive sustainable growth and customer loyalty.

There are lots of frameworks, templates, and communication channels you can use to create ongoing communication about past launches. I usually find the biggest issue with this type of communication is not a lack of framework or tools, but usually either (1) remembering to do it or (2) keeping people’s attention post launch. For remembering to do it, I would just set calendar reminders for yourself and hold yourself to it. That is what I personally do. For keeping folks' attention, I would suggest starting a cadence of regular updates BEFORE the product launches - then you can get people into a rhythm of updates. They will know when and where to expect the information. Then once you get past launch, you can adjust cadence but keep the content and the channels the same con continuity. This can help people to have a mental model to receive this info, even well past launch. A framework that I like to use for these types of updates is: wins, learnings, next steps. This is a good way to keep people focused on the impact of the work, and may also encourage more attention if you are good at highlighting learnings that can be shared more broadly with other teams. 

Developing your product strategy skills involves a combination of education, hands-on experience, and continuous learning. 1. FORMAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING * Courses and Workshops: Enroll in courses related to product management, business strategy, and market analysis. Many universities and online platforms offer specialized courses that can deepen your understanding of these areas. * Certifications: Consider obtaining certifications from recognized bodies in product management such as AIPMM (Association of International Product Marketing and Management) or Pragmatic Institute. 2. PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE * Hands-On Involvement: The best way to learn is by doing. Engage directly in the development and execution of product strategies within your organization. Volunteer for new projects that require strategic thinking and planning. * Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work closely with different teams (marketing, sales, customer service, engineering, etc.) to understand various perspectives and how they contribute to the overall product strategy. 3. MENTORSHIP AND NETWORKING * Find a Mentor: Connect with a seasoned product manager or strategist who can provide guidance, share insights, and help you navigate complex challenges in product strategy. * Networking: Join professional groups and forums (like Product Management communities on LinkedIn or local meetups) where you can learn from peers and stay updated on industry trends. 4. CONTINUOUS LEARNING AND ADAPTATION * Keep Up with Industry Trends: Stay informed about the latest trends and technological advancements in your industry. Reading industry reports, subscribing to relevant newsletters, and attending webinars can help. * Feedback and Reflection: Regularly seek feedback on your strategies and decisions. Reflect on what works and what doesn’t, and continuously refine your approach. 5. READ WIDELY AND DEEPLY * Books and Publications: Read books and articles on strategy, product management, customer psychology, and business operations. Authors like Marty Cagan, Ben Horowitz, and Clayton Christensen provide excellent insights into the dynamics of product strategy and management. * Case Studies: Analyze successful and failed product strategies to understand decision-making processes, market reactions, and operational execution. 6. USE OF TOOLS AND TECHNOLOGY * Master Strategic Tools: Familiarize yourself with tools that assist in market analysis, customer feedback, road mapping, and project management. Tools like JIRA, Trello, Roadmunk, or customer feedback platforms like UserVoice can be very beneficial. 7. SIMULATION AND SCENARIO ANALYSIS * Engage in Scenario Planning: Practice developing strategies under different hypothetical market conditions to improve your strategic thinking and adaptability.