Is an aspiring PM who struggles with decision making absolutely doomed as they consider pursuing PM?

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 Helping the team understand the company / department strategy - This is typically presented to the team as the business context dr ...Read More

It's hard for me to think anyone is 'doomed' per se but I would make this a focus area if you are truly trying to get into product management. Making smart decisions quickly is a strong product management trait and so to be successful, you will need to be comforatble doing that. I would probably reverse the lens and ask yourself if you would be happy making smart decisions quickly everyday. Does that excite you? If so, then dive into why you can't or don't want to currently. If it is not excitin ...Read More

Product managers are important for a number of reasons: Prioritization to ensure business deliverables are done in the highest value order possible A single point of reference for the business to make trade-offs Consistency of customer voice in the product portfolio Decision making is not always the task at hand. Sometimes the Product Manager needs to assemble the right people, SMEs, customer context, market information, and present that to the business leaders for a decision. Then the product m ...Read More

Are you committed to working on this known gap? If not, then I would say this is a deal breaker for becoming an effective Product Manager. A Product Manager's role is to be able to take multiple, loud, often urgent inputs and be able to identify which opportunities to pursue now, pursue later, or never pursue. You need to make these decisions and micro-decisions on a day to day basis. It's better to make fast, wrong decisions on reversible things than to paralyze and make no decision (which is a ...Read More

I believe being decisive is absolutely essential for product people. This is because it unblocks your counterparts and increases velocity if you're able to make game time decisions. Analysis paralysis is the antithesis of velocity. However, being a good product manager means that your decisions are based on a deep understanding of the business and the user and your own product sense that you've gained through releasing software. Decisiveness without that context will only waste engineering cycle ...Read More