What do you see as the most important hard/soft skills to be a successful product management professional?

My personal acronym for the skills that make product managers succesfull is H.A.C.K. H for Humility. There are two particularly important benefits of humility. First, humble people better navigate the emotional roller coaster of being wrong and having to admit it. They quickly recover from situations where their ego might have gotten hurt and move on to the next experiment or iteration. Product managers make a lot of decisions and the ability to course correct quickly without dwelling produces a ...Read More

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 ...Read More

the ability to ask questions and synthesize - customers often tell you what they want to see happen in the product, but that may not be the most scalable solution for all of your target customers in aggregate. In customers interviews, get to the root of the “why” behind feature requests - why are they asking for this? what problem is it looking to solve? how big of a problem is this? what workaround are they doing today to bypass this problem? how would solving this problem help your customers b ...Read More

Thank you for asking. Here is my answer to that from an earlier Sharebird AMA: https://sharebird.com/h/product-management/q/what-do-you-see-as-the-most-important-hardsoft-skills-to-be-a-successful-product-management-professional?answer=BPd1U65Lna One thing I would add to that answer is that hard vs. soft skills is not a dichotomy I personally use. There is a "hard" and a "soft" side to every skill. For example, being "analytical" as a skill does not only require a sheer ability to reason and use ...Read More

Problem solving, collaboration, and communication are critical to being a successful Product Manager.  Being proficient in hard skills like user experience, data analytics, and project management are also important. But if you can’t get buy-in, or you can’t effectively lead the team to a successful product launch, your hard skills will have minimal impact on the business.  Besides this, think about the brand you are building for yourself as a Product Manager. I want my reputation to be someone w ...Read More

In one of my early interviews with a potential candidate, I asked the person what he thought makes a good product manager. I believe his reply aptly summarizes a key attribute to become a successful Product Manager irrespective of the sector, type or geography, and I quote, "a good Product Manager knows all that he does not know". For a PM, hard skills include core product management skills like roadmapping, prioritization, forecasting and measurment, user story telling and effective idea presen ...Read More