What do product managers do? In two words...

I've been working on a long essay/ short book about lessons I've learned in my time as a Product leader.

At the same time, I rashly volunteered to talk at my sons' school about why Product management is a career that every smart, creative and ambitious teenager should be thinking about.

For both of these, I've had to answer the gobsmackingly simple question: What do Product Managers do?

There's different ways to answer this. I'm sure if I had five product managers in room, we could have at least 10 different but roughly similar definitions between us - and a few diagrams. Most are pretty good, some tend to get very wordy. I like this from Sherif Mansour at Atlassian.

A product manager is the person who identifies the customer need and the larger business objectives that a product or feature will fulfil, articulates what success looks like for a product, and rallies a team to turn that vision into a reality.?

Nothing wrong with that. But I needed something simpler. Something that gets to the essence of the role. And so I've landed on two words: Reduce Ambiguity.

As Product managers - at whatever level we operate, whatever we're doing - this is our core function. The specific tasks we do are all about reducing ambiguity, but over different time horizons and for different audiences.

When we are working on a Product Vision or Strategy - we are reducing ambiguity about our medium and long term plans. When we're building a Roadmap - we're reducing ambiguity about our short to medium term plans. Product Discovery is an exercise in reducing ambiguity over how we will solve a specific problem in the way that works best for our customers and our business. Prioritisation...Product Definition. Setting and evaluating OKRs or metrics for success...well, you get the idea.

There's an irony here in that one of the things everyone says you need to be good at as a PM is embracing ambiguity. And that's right. But to be successful the thing you need to be great at is actually reducing it.

When I think of the really great PMs I've worked with - this was their super power: taking something massively ambiguous and uncertain and give it shape, structure and definition. You go into the room thinking 'what is this about?' and by the time you come out - you both know the answer to that, but you also know exactly who is going to do what next in order to make it happen.

The point is that ambiguity means inefficiency. It means 'bad cost' - of rework, of internal and external churn. You might be happy embracing ambiguity; lots of those around you - including those you depend on to actually make stuff happen - might just find it a massive blocker to them getting on with their jobs effectively.

Now, as slogans go 'Reduce Ambiguity' isn't the snappiest. I do not see a potential money maker in 'Eat. Sleep. Reduce Ambiguity. Repeat' merchandise.

For a start you should really have something positive. Forget 'reducing': what are you going to create more of? But this is one of those cases where the positive ('Increasing certainty'?) doesn't quite catch it.

But, you say, if you're going to make it a slogan then why stop at reducing it - hell, let's just Eliminate it.

The point is - you never eliminate ambiguity. Everything has some potential to change; some uncertainty. You never have all the data you need. You just have to reduce it to a level where everyone around you can function effectively. If you want to live in world of binary certainty, sorry. This might not be the career for you.

So - how do you reduce it? Well, it's not something you just sit in a room and do by yourself - 9 times out of 10 you will be leading collaborative efforts to make this happen (read anything by Matt LeMay on how PMs are 'connectors'). And all of the PM tactics and processes outlined above are all essentially processes mechanisms for reducing ambiguity.

But there are four core capabilities that you need to be able to do these effectively.

• How you create order from apparent chaos (chunking)
• How you communicate
• How you collaborate
• How you make - or help others to make - decisions

And those are things that really need another post. Or two.

Feedback very welcome on this! Like I said, it's part of something slightly bigger I'm working on and sharing in the spirit of 'release early and release often'!