Finding your uniqueness as a product leader

The role of a product manager is incredibly rewarding. When you're out with friends and family, you can point to tangible products, store locations, feature launches, or company sales figures to showcase your contributions. Unlike many modern jobs that are difficult to explain to those outside the industry, a product manager's impact is easy to illustrate simply by sharing the product itself.

Being a product manager is challenging—there’s no way around it. We constantly balance demands from business partners and customers, engage with external vendors to understand their roadmaps and manage dependencies, and work closely with engineering teams to address tech debt while exploring new possibilities. All of this must be done while delivering on today’s product commitments and strategically planning for our customers' needs over the next 1, 2, and 5 years.

Product managers have no shortage of frameworks—RICE, RAPID, 2x2, and MoSCoW—to balance customer needs with engineering capacity and capabilities. However, these tools are only half the equation. The other half is the ability to influence and build credibility. Trust is what enables product managers to drive organizational alignment, take bold product bets, and secure investments in new capabilities that accelerate growth. What makes a product manager unique is their ability to build that trust through a deep understanding of both the product and the customer.

The ability to influence and build credibility comes from several key areas, allowing you to stand out among the growing ranks of product managers in most organizations. Key practices that can help you elevate your impact as a product manager include:

• Deep domain knowledge - A highly successful product manager not only understands the tools of the trade but also has deep expertise in their product's domain. If you manage enterprise business systems, you should be well-versed in your company's finance, legal, and HR processes. If you oversee a SaaS offering, you must understand both competing tools and how your product differentiates itself for users. If you manage a product in the manufacturing space you must develop a deep understanding of supply chain, product quality and logistics.
• Practical industry experiences - A product manager with firsthand experience as a practitioner has a significant advantage when engaging with users. They can speak the industry’s language, deeply understand pain points, and build trust through their direct experience in the role.
• A well formed & thoughtful POV on your buyer - Combining domain knowledge with personal experience to develop a thoughtful point of view is what truly sets a product manager apart. Simply interviewing users and documenting their requests isn’t enough—great product managers go beyond that to shape a clear vision for their product or domain. While trade-offs on time and resources are inevitable, a well-formed POV can evolve into a long-term vision that excites engineering teams and inspires leadership to invest more heavily in key products, buyers, or markets.

We've covered the importance of knowledge—now let's shift to the key behaviors that will help you stand out as a product manager:

• Coaching others for creativity - A highly impactful product manager brings their knowledge, passion, and point of view to every conversation, inspiring those around them. Success requires collaboration, often extending beyond the product team to include marketing and sales. The more enthusiasm and alignment you create across teams, the greater your product’s chances of success.
• Educating engineering teams - Engineering teams can develop a knowledge gap when they become too removed from users. Ensuring they have a strong understanding of and empathy for their user base fosters greater creativity and velocity, making them true partners in product development. You can facilitate this by organizing sessions where customers speak directly with engineers, allowing them to ask questions and see firsthand how their product is used.
• Driving both rapid innovation & steady improvement - As a product manager, you frequently face limited resources, requiring constant trade-offs in product development. Balancing the need for new, innovative features with the incremental improvement of existing ones is a regular challenge. Successfully managing this balance drives effective product growth while maintaining customer satisfaction.
• Advancing your long term vision - Earlier, we discussed the importance of having a strong, well-formed point of view on the future of your product and its buyers. Your ability to execute on that vision is a key measure of long-term organizational and priority management. Continuously review your POV to identify opportunities to build small features that, over time, drive significant shifts in product capabilities and competitiveness.
• Drive teams towards agreement - In my career as a product manager, I've never had a team that naturally agreed on everything. More often than not, it's the product manager's role to step in and resolve conflicts around priorities, resources, customer perspectives, and value assessments. Read as many books as you can on negotiation, and continually build your network of internal supporters to leverage when consensus is crucial.

One of the most distinguishing activities of a product manager is bringing unique perspectives to both products and consumers. Your personal experiences are a valuable source of insights, and adjacent domains you interact with daily can offer a wealth of knowledge about user experience, expectations, workflows, and objectives. A few of my common influences include:

• Purchasing a car - The experience of buying a car can be both frustrating and exciting, depending on your perspective on negotiating. This process can inspire product managers to think about areas like inventory planning, search capabilities, and the steps involved in closing a deal, such as loan applications, wire transfers, warranty upsells, and personalized guidance on using the vehicle’s features. An observant product manager can identify opportunities for improvement and use these insights to enhance the purchasing process and user experience for their own product.
• Building a house - Building a house can be a long, unpredictable process involving materials management, order of operations, quality control, and subcontractor coordination. Each of these aspects offers valuable lessons that apply to managing or influencing other physical-asset products. An observant product manager can develop a thoughtful point of view on customization, quality and price trade-offs, and subcontractor management.

I often hear people in the community say, "be the CEO," when referring to how product managers should operate and take accountability. While I agree with some aspects of that mantra, I believe it’s too broad for product managers to truly focus their time and be successful. What makes a product manager unique and successful is their ability to leverage expertise and experiences, which translate into strong opinions and perspectives that drive the organization forward. The most critical aspect is the ability to constantly advocate for customers and their needs, ensuring that these voices influence decision-making and strategic direction.

By consistently demonstrating expertise, insight, and a clear vision, a unique product manager earns the confidence of stakeholders and teams, positioning themselves to lead with influence and drive impactful decisions.