from Lenny Rachitsky | by Lenny Rachitsky

What is product management? A thread 👇

1/ Your job as a PM is to deliver business impact by marshaling the resources of your team to identify and solve the most impactful customer problems. Let's break this down.

a. Deliver business impact Fundamentally, you are responsible for delivering business impact. If your team drives positive impact—hitting important goals, reducing costs, shipping an important project, etc.—you’re doing your job.

b. Marshal the resources of your team Your job isn’t to do the building yourself but instead to increase the leverage of your cross-functional teammates—designers, engineers, DSs, etc.—to deliver impact. To paraphrase Andy Grove, a PM’s output = the output of their team.

c. Identify and solve the most impactful customer problems Business impact comes from solving customer problems. Thus, it’s your job to lead your team to correctly identify, prioritize, and solve the most impactful customer problems.

2/ Another way to define the role of a PM is to break out the day-to-day jobs of a product manager: t.co/a5d9jhkCUt

a. Shape the product: Harness insights from customers, stakeholders, and data to prioritize and build a product that will have the most impact on the business.

b. Ship the product: Ship high-quality product on time and free of surprises.

c. Synchronize the people: Align all stakeholders around one vision, strategy, goal, roadmap, and timeline to avoid wasted time and effort.

3/ A different approach to understanding the PM job is to look at how PMs are evaluated. I looked at dozens of company career ladders and found that there are 10 attributes that companies most look for in product managers t.co/8DfNglRz9O t.co/thZiIiGPWT

If you're a new PM, focus on these five: • Communication • Collaboration • Execution • Customer insights • Strategy

4/ Though there's a baseline concept of a product manager, the role varies widely by company. I surveyed about 1,000 PMs across hundreds of companies and found that there are two ways the PM varies: • Skills: Which skills matter most • Influence: How much influence PMs have

a. Skills Though companies look for the same broad set of skills in their PMs, the skills they care about the most vary widely. Here’s a look at which skills a bunch of well-known companies emphasize (the darker the color, the more important it is to them). t.co/BkYVYnsIRB

b. Influence The amount of influence a PM has within an organization also varies widely. On one end of the spectrum, we have the mini-CEO, who is very much in charge. On the other end, we essentially have a project manager—with little say over what gets built. t.co/3mpPVYm0C4

5/ Finally, when looking at the PM role, it’s important to differentiate between a startup and a big-company PM. The differences are even more significant than the two spectrums we looked at above. Every single part of the job is different. t.co/loPSVDzcfY

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