Product Management beyond Frameworks.

This post is an attempt to put my thoughts into words with all that I have experienced in operating as an Intern Product manager to a Product leader journey from a corporation as big as eBay to startups like Blacklane to currently at Issuu Inc.

In over 15 years of experience across different domains I have learnt product management from ground up and over the years I have realised the power of frameworks and how you can use or misuse them. In this post we will look at the world beyond frameworks because anyone can now do a Reforge class and feel like a God of frameworks. Let’s see what happens on the ground.

Here is the talk I gave on the topic on Medium day 2023 !

So, we all have access to dozens of frameworks today to define what is Product management, how to run the show, how to define the what & the why to finally get to the solution and create that user value. Product management however is beyond that, it starts where all the frameworks end. It’s a lonely role where getting very good at is extremely hard, you not only have to be a deep thinker but also be a street smart person to think on your feet.

If we break it down what product managing really boils down to is these 4 core skills you need to be good at:

1. Communication
2. Design
3. Engineering
4. Business acumen

In this post we will primarily focus on communication and business acumen.

Let’s dive into Communication. Communication is the single most important skill that will enable all other skills and put you at the pedestal of managing the product. You as a PM have to talk to customers, engineers, designers, and execs and synthesise it all. If you lose ground at any point due to lack of communication skills, it will inevitably impact the end product you will build.

To understand communication we have to understand the audience so we can pick the right words from the mutual language of understanding to put the point forward. So you have to be very good at written and verbal communication and practising it is the only way to get better at it. Write your own product and marketing announcements for everything you build and make it as concise and clear as possible. Now there are different levels of communications, and addressing a townhall needs specific presentation skills so you can be high level or zoom into details based on the group you are addressing.

However in the day to day job we speak to a lot of individuals and we are essentially dealing with different kinds of brains/minds (if you go down the rabbit hole brain and mind are 2 different things but we will use the term interchangeably for the sake of simplicity). Now each mind perceives things differently and different minds have different mindsets and it turns out that eminent American developmental psychologist Robert Kegan has done a lot of work for us already by classifying these mindsets into 5 types as we humans grow up.

• Stage 1 — Impulsive mind (early childhood)
• Stage 2 — Imperial mind (adolescence, 6% of adult population)
• Stage 3 — Socialized mind (58% of the adult population)
• Stage 4 — Self-Authoring mind (35% of the adult population)
• Stage 5 — Self-Transforming mind (1% of the adult population)

Kegan’s study is more focused on how we can evolve and develop to aim for a self-transforming mind where the person is in a high awareness state and can reflect on the limits of their own ideology or personal authority. Nevertheless the ability to understand the kind of mind you are interacting with will allow you to tailor your communication. For example if you are dealing with person with Imperial mindset, you should know that they will always put their needs first and are usually a very egocentric person. Now it does not matter if an imperial mind is your colleague or your boss (except the degree of pain you will experience) you have to keep your communication at a level where you do not hurt their ego. Avoid hiring an imperial mind and if you end up with one, fire them if you can.

A socialised mind however, where the majority of populations reside, are the collaborative bunch to whom relationships are very important, they avoid conflicts and value the rules of the game aka society. If you are dealing with a self-authoring mind on the other hand then you are dealing with an assertive person, someone who has created their own set of values of principles, they are decisive and when making decisions they can remove their bias and personal feelings to look at facts so bring them facts, market research and data stories to prove your point and get their support. The only way self authoring is different from self transforming is that in self authoring mind one acts according to their own internal model — which itself can have facts and bias.

Btw if you think I did not speak about Stage 1 of impulsive mind because it would not exist in a work environment, check out this tweet of my personal favourite product guy Shreyas

Fact is you can not do much about impulsive minds, avoid and navigate towards your goal.

Ok this is just a sense of minds we are dealing with. To be an effective PM, you must tailor your communication to different needs and play various roles such as a conductor, motivational speaker, diplomat, and smooth talker to keep the team on track, motivate them towards a common vision, coordinate with other departments, and communicate progress tactfully.

Let’s talk about Design now. As a PM your job is to be the advocate of the user, you have to understand what motivates a certain action of a user. You have to be a sketch artist to take a vision and create an accurate mockup.

The best way to scale yourself is to bring your designer as early in the process as possible. We need to take that journey of exploring the problem together with the designer from the very beginning. Obsess on the user motivation of why the user would or would not take a certain action. People are lazy and they do not read, reduce the number of clicks and thus the time to value.

People pay for convenience and the more convenient we can make the experience for the user the better it is.

Understand the style of your designer colleague and try to complement their personality. Tailor to their mindset to align and get to the user’s mindset together. Engineering is no different; your EM is your partner in crime. Over time you would develop a knack to quickly understand the technical feasibility of any solution. What you have to work out well is to make the life easy for your engineering team easier by shielding them from unnesseary work and pressure and making sure their work is shipped as soon as possible to see the desired result. A post I wrote in 2018 about things I learnt moving from Engineering to Product elaborates how we as PM’s can enhance the value of our engineering team.

Let’s dive into business acumen now, according to ChatGPT
Business acumen refers to a person’s ability to understand and interpret financial and business information to make informed and effective business decisions. It includes skills such as financial literacy, strategic thinking, critical analysis, risk assessment, and market awareness.

Business acumen is having a comprehensive understanding of how a business functions, including its revenue generation, unit economics, and unique selling points. With this knowledge, decisions can be made in line with the company’s objectives while considering financial and market implications.

As a PM, it’s not enough to simply address user problems. We must also take into account a multitude of factors when making decisions. It’s not always feasible to tackle every single pain point or cater to every user request and we also shouldn’t address every problem Instead, we must prioritise what’s best for the business and where the true potential for growth lies. Where is the money $$ ?

For e.g while working for a ride hailing company Blacklane I was building our partner apps. Chauffeurs around the world would login to the partner app and pick the rides that fits their schedule. If you are a chauffeur in Paris and you open the partner app, you will see hundreds of rides per day. To help you filter and find the ride that best suits you, we have some basic filters. However, the chauffeurs were looking for more advanced filters. If you ask the Chauffeurs, they would ask to have an airport pickup and drop off filter.

Now, if I were to build an airport filter, what would happen is that all the airport drop-off rides would be taken in a flash, as they are painless. However, for airport pickups, chauffeurs need to park the car and wait for the guest. Thus, these rides might be left behind, and the longer a ride sits in the system without being taken, the worse it is for the business. (I did test such a filter, and it had a negative impact on the profit margins.) Therefore, such a filter would have been great for the chauffeurs (my actual users), but bad for the business (Blacklane).”

Some friction is beneficial for business and we have to make that disctintion and it’s crucial to identify what consumers are willing to pay for when developing a product or service, finding that insight is the real crux of business acumen. All of this requires extensive research and time. Thus to excel as a digital product manager, you need to be a skilled market tester who analyzes product analytics to determine its success, and an effective online marketer who can launch products and attract early adopters. (which demands another post later..)

Recap : Core Skills

• Communication — Know the people & stakeholders, what is their mindset to tailor your communication. Practise concise writing and verbal skills
• Design — Bring in your designer as early as possible in your problem discovery, construct the problem statement along with him/her.
• Engineering — Learn from your EM and make the life of your engineering team easier by bringing clarity
• Business Acumen — Know the numbers, the unit economics of the business and where are the dollors coming from and where is the potential