How is the role of product growth manager different from other product managers?

Great question.  One important piece of knowledge is that EVERY PM is responsible for having a growth mindset. Growth PMs are NOT the only PMs responsible for growth.  Growth PMs are defined differently from company to company, and some companies don't have titles called Growth PMs. The most common Growth PM team that I've seen is usually responsible for user acquisition. This means they own the product features that help users have a smooth onboarding experience.  Sometimes the responsibilities ...Read More

A traditional product manager is responsible for a specific set of features and functionalities in an application. They focus on building the functionality with great UX. A Growth Product manager looks more end-to-end and identifies opportunities to deliver incremental growth. Let's take an eCommerce website application. A feature product manager might be responsible for the checkout experience. They will be thinking more about building capabilities in checkout (like supporting new payment types ...Read More

The skill sets for growth and non-growth PMs are about 85% overlapped. The key differentiator is analytical sense. While all PMs need to ensure the team is focused on driving customer and business impact, growth PMs always have a direct tie to driving business KPIs. This requires a more advanced level of understanding trends in the data to identify areas of leverage.  On the flip side, it is important to know what a Growth PM doesn't need to be great at in a given role. For example, I hired a PM ...Read More

I've wrestled with this over the course of ten years now. I used to think Growth PMs and Core PMs should just be one in the same and every Core PM should be able to do Growth work. However, I don't really believe that anymore. From my experience, there's a place in the business to do optimizations (Growth) and a place to do exploration (Core) work.  Core PMs generally have a stronger skillset around taking big bets which require a lot of coordination and patience. Growth PMs require high analyti ...Read More

The role of a product leader is to develop products customers love, yet in a way that helps business. Specifically, the product management function's role is to help reduce the risks on value and viability of the products. I don't see any difference between a traditional "product manager" title and "product growth manager" title. Those are just titles, and eventually what is expected from them is the same: help develop the best products, in a way that helps business. What may change is their are ...Read More

There are three common approaches that companies take to address product growth. These include: Everyone does growth, meaning each Product Manager is responsible for building the core features and improving adoption and retention of these features. Having a dedicated Growth PM as part the core team, who reports to the Head of Product and focuses on growth levers specifically for that product area. Having a dedicated Growth Product Function that either focuses purely on acquisition or takes a Pro ...Read More