This Product Manager Had A Breakdown

I got a call from the hospital. His voice was faint. "Brian, I am not going to be able to come in for a few weeks. I am not well." "What happened?" I asked. "Well, as you know the pressure of the upcoming product launch has been tough and I just felt a bit out-of-control."

Who would guess that product management could be so bad for your health. It should be the greatest job on earth, but too many product managers are beaten down by lousy strategy, poor communications, and just too many demands on their time.

Building great products can be incredibly rewarding, but it carries with it risks that must be respected.

In the past, I have written about the role of a product manager being the CEO of her product. Yet unlike a CEO, most PMs lack the administrative assistant, board of directors, and executive leadership team. They also get paid a lot less.

At Aha! we have talked with thousands of product teams over the last eighteen months about building their product strategy and visual roadmaps. We have also run product and strategy in six software companies ourselves, so we have suffered the challenges.

Being a product manager in today's agile world is tough. PMs are pulled in every direction and are encouraged to constantly look down rather than looking up and out. As I was thinking about the product manger on my team who broke down, I started to list the major dangers of being a PM.

Here are the top four challenges and the reality is that many leaders face these problems:

There is not enough of you
There are never enough hours in the day for upper management, engineering, sales, support, and marketing. Does this scenario sound familiar? Your manager is looking for a PPT deck for that new product initiative. Support needs you to get on a call with your largest customer who is threatening to cancel because your product is complicated. Sales is just "one" feature away from closing the big deal.

You decide
As the product leader you need to make the tough decisions -- even if your boss thinks he is telling you what to do. You know customers like family, collaborate with engineering, and guide the rest of the non-technical team to greatness. You need to make the big decisions.

Expert in everything (or at least pretend)
As a Product Manager embedded in a cross-functional organization, you are expected to be an expert in everything. While nobody would miss product management if it (and you) disappeared in the short term, ensuring every group understands the product and how to market, sell, and support it depends on you.

You are on your own
I once knew a VP of Product who came into a newly created role at an emerging company She was highly recruited and expected to jump start innovation and stabilize a rapidly growing platform. To get the job done she was given one direct report. There were twenty engineers across the US, but they reported up to the VP of Engineering. As a product leader, nobody reports to you but expectations remain sky high.

Product managers must love what they do if they are going to do it well. There is just too much uncertainty to fear risk in the role and understanding the challenges upfront matters.

To ensure you thrive as a PM, know the dangers and plan accordingly. You must captain your product and motivate lots of folks who need to build, market, sell, and support it.

Don't end up like my poor product manager who was in need of psychiatric care. He recovered and went on to grow his career, but no one wants a job that damages your health.

What are the biggest risks you think product managers face?

==============================================================
ABOUT BRIAN AND AHA!

Brian seeks business and wilderness adventure. He has been the founder or early employee of six cloud-based software companies and is the CEO of Aha! -- the world's #1 product roadmap software. His last two companies were acquired by Aruba Networks [ARUN] and Citrix [CTXS].

Signup for a free trial of Aha! and see why 5,000+ users on the world's leading product and engineering teams trust Aha! to build brilliant product strategy and visual roadmaps.

We are rapidly growing and hiring. Rails Developers. UX. Customer Success. Content Specialist.

Follow Brian on LinkedIn and @bdehaaff

Follow Aha! @aha_io