The 5 Cs of a Great Product Manager

What makes a great Product Manager? It's a blend of art and science, but I believe it boils down to five essential qualities: Curiosity, Conviction & Clarity, Communication & Collaboration, Courage & Customer Empathy, and Creativity. Here are the 5 Cs that define a great product manager:

Curiosity

Be unassuming and curious. Understand what users are trying to achieve, how they're doing it, and where they face friction. Curiosity drives discovery and innovation.

Conviction and Clarity

• PMs often need to make tough calls on implementation, feature prioritization, and investment. The ability to have conviction and clarity about what needs to be built and why is crucial. It means, doing the primary and secondary research involving market research, competitor research, user research, hypothesis validations, and collating data.
• A mentor once asked me, “Sunil, would you invest your own time and money in this?” This question taught me to substantiate my decisions with strong reasoning.
• Problem and solution validations are crucial. Doing those solution validations without investing a lot of resources is what differentiates good and great PMs.

Communication and Collaboration

• Building product is a team sport. Even with diligence and clarity, a product vision can fall flat without effective communication and collaboration. PMs must influence without authority, align teams, and ensure everyone understands how their work contributes to business and personal goals.
• It’s about zooming out with stakeholders and leadership and zooming in with engineers and designers. Speaking the language of engineers, designers, data scientists, marketers, finance, and legal teams is essential. Motivating the team and bringing energy to achieve common goals is key, “song and dance” are part of the package even if you are introvert.

Courage and Customer Empathy

• Empathy is vital to building great products. Understanding and feeling the customer’s pain points drive meaningful solutions.
• Courage differentiates good PMs from great ones. It’s about owning and being accountable for actions and decisions. When things go south, own it and take corrective actions. Sometimes, this means killing a feature that isn’t yielding results despite multiple iterations.
• Trust your product instincts even when data is scarce. Your team’s trust in you and your ability to show courage is crucial. However, make sure this is the exception, not the rule. Data should guide most decisions.
• Have the courage to say No, backed by sound rationale and data. A PM needs to be firm yet fair in decision-making, steering clear of opinion-based decisions without data support.

Creativity

• Creativity fuels innovation. It’s about thinking outside the box and finding unique solutions to complex problems. While it’s great to be creative, remember that as a PM, you own the problem and drive the solution.
• Great PMs foster a culture of creativity within their teams, encouraging new ideas and approaches.

Embracing these 5 Cs helps product managers navigate challenges and drive impactful outcomes. What other traits do you think are essential for a PM? Share your thoughts!

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