Skills, Qualities I look for in a Product Manager

I have spent quite some time, fighting product-building battles from trenches. In the process, I have got a liberal dose of mud, sweat, bloody wounds & scars. In these battles, the soldiers in my battalion were Testers, Designers, Developers, and very importantly Product Managers.

Sometime back a founder asked me about the skills/qualities he should look for in his Product Managers.  So here is what I jotted down at his request.

- Ability to observe the Market and find a void/opportunity in the Market.

- Ability to sense the changing trends in the Market.

- Ability to see a Market Need which may have been fulfilled by others, but can be fulfilled better by us.

- Ability to ensure Need/Solution fitment.

- Ability to explore and carry out SWOT analysis.  Each situation does not ask for every aspect of PESTLE analysis, but taking a conscious call is critical.  

- Ability to gauge ** whether we can make money ** out of it.

- Ability to sell the Market Need internally in our own organization and get some budget/funding to build SOMETHING to fulfill that Market Need. A truckload of funding appears better but it can be actually dangerous as well.

- Ability to curtail the ambition and build that tiny, small, crippled-down, crude, unpolished, basic version of the solution (aka MVP) for that Market Need and showcase it to the Market and seek feedback, so as to Validate our hypotheses.

- Understands that MVP is not the first version of the Product, and clearly understands that the real objective of MVP (better known as WVP) is gather market feedback and (if required) do course correction w/o making a big hole in pocket.

- Ability to decide (based on the feedback) whether to  (a) Continue or  (b) do Course Correction or  (c) Pivot  or (d) Drop the idea.

- Ability & willingness to accept the fact that Product Building business is sprinkled with many unknowns, half-knowns, and less-knowns.

- Ability to maintain the rhythm of ship-small, ship-often to tackle the risks arising from half-knowns and less-knowns.

- Ability to sense risks before they hit us.

- Ability to be extremely stingy and identify **that** specific portion of work that will give the highest RoI. (Here are my thoughts on how to be a stingy PO. It needs some practice, but it is possible).

- Ability to be a bit thick skin if you are shunned by prospects/market/anybody (which you will be from time to time).

- Ability to read the pulse of Market/Cust/Prospect/Competition/Sales/whatever.

- Ability to inspire and make the entire team your equal partner in the battle.

- Ability to choose between right and right (making a choice between right and wrong is very easy).

- Ability to be honest, open, & candid and own the goof-ups made by you.

- Ability to remain curious and keep eyes and mind open to seek new ideas.

- Ability to gather data, analyze data & use data. (Cust Acquisition Data & Prod Usage Data being the most critical).

- Ability to convince others when your answer is NO.

- Ability to say NO, even if others are not convinced.    

Product Managers typically have a mountain of backlog in front of them. So, this last one is quite a crucial quality for any Product Manager….
- Ability to decide  ‘what_is_needed_now’ & ‘what_can_wait’.   (in short,  WNN v/s WCW )