While contemplating the PM Scorecard and why organizations need to invest in understanding their PM needs, I was in need of an example that would make the most skeptical skeptic become a believer in the idea: PMs are not the same and are not generalists—even though Mind the Product thinks so. 🙄

As I was floating my “three modes of PMs” theory/framework to PMs that I know and respect, I was met with some criticism, but overall a lot of support and enthusiasm of the framework! By talking out my ideas, I started to realize that this framework could help PMs in the following ways:

1. Understanding what type of PM you are, including your strengths and weaknesses
2. Understanding what skills you would need to improve/attain to change to a different mode
3. Where new PMs should start (spoiler: in Optimization)

Initially, I was concentrating on what PMs do in each of these modes, but Rob Hayes of foundation.pm pointed out a useful addition: how they work.

So without further adieu, here’s the latest iteration of the Three Modes of Product Managers framework:

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I never read Product Manager job descriptions.

They are often “basic,” describing the most tactical and mundane aspects of Product Management as if they were looking for somebody who hasn’t done Product Management but somehow has at least seven years of experience…

Don’t believe me? Here are some common requirements stated in job descriptions:

Determines customers’ needs and desires by specifying the research needed to obtain market information.

Maintains and organizes the backlog based on priorities and strategy

Launching product features, beta programs, and marketing programs

Meeting customers and presenting the product roadmap

These “responsibilities” make the job sound far more robotic and laborious then it is! To combat this, I often find myself using way more than my “10 mins to ask questions” during interviews and scheduling additional interviewers to understand who they need, as interviewers are not always aligned on who they need.

(Here are some of the questions I ask when interviewing, and some particularly for startups)

The wrong PM hire can be detrimental: causing the company not only the person’s salary, recruiter fees, but a bad PM hire can even cause loss of market share.

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I’ve always said that getting into Product Management is harder than becoming a doctor or a lawyer, as with those two professions you can go to school and if you put in a good effort, it’s highly likely you’ll end up being what you set out to be.

Product Management is a bit different as most companies wouldn’t just trust somebody to come in with no experience to take over their products. Thankfully, we’re starting to see programs out there to help folks become Product Managers and continue developing their skills as PMs.

Some of those workshops/programs can be quite costly so how does one who finally became a PM continue to be a PM, but more importantly, being the PM your company needs? How does one continue to assess their skills to ensure you’re plugging in the necessary holes where it counts and strengthening where it counts?

I’ve been pondering such questions for the last couple of months and with some inspiration and help from SVPG and Cal Newport’s and Scott Young’s Top Performer course, I’ve developed a skill matrix to help you identify where you currently are as a Product Manager and help you target the most important (aka bang for your buck) areas for improvement.

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Previously, I shared some of the questions I like to ask when interviewing with an organization for a Product Manager position. One thing I quickly realized while interviewing back in the day was that interviewing at an established company or former startup is quite different than interviewing at a startup, and that’s because the startups deal with a lot of risk around viability.

You might say that all organizations, whether they are startups or not, deal with risk, and risk comes with working anywhere. But, as a Canadian working in the US on a work, I knew that if I wanted to work for a startup, I needed to understand for myself whether the startup in question had the potential to succeed. I took this aspect seriously because if I joined a startup that tanked, I would have to leave the US promptly and then try looking for a job in the US from Canada…and that’s something I wouldn’t be very excited about doing. In addition, I wanted to find an organization that I could be with for the next couple of years.

So how could I understand whether a startup had potential to succeed (or at least survive for the next 12 months)?

Well, by having an honest and open conversation with the founders of the startup and asking these questions:

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Interviewing for a Product Manager role is not an easy task, especially since there are just so many factors that can make a company either the best place to work at or the worst place to work at. A year ago, well pretty much exactly a year ago, I wrote about the 6 Fits every Product Manager should consider before accepting a job, to help understand if this job is the job for you. This article became my second most popular article, behind the slightly controversial Waterfall vs Agile vs Lean post.

We’ve all heard how important it is to ask questions during interviews, not only for you to figure out if this role is for you, but also because it shows your prospective manager/company that you are thoughtful and care about what you do with your life. But coming up with good questions in not easy, especially if you are new to Product Management and are not sure what to ask, or you’ve been out of the interview game and are a little rusty.

The side benefit to asking good questions makes you look like a candidate who wants to work there

Over the last three years, and after interviewing with ~50 organizations, I’ve developed a list of questions for me to ask, in case they were not answered during the interview, to help ensure that I understand the role and company as much as possible, and most importantly, whether a specific role and company are the best for me.

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It’s a start of a new year and you may be looking for a new challenge as part of your New Year resolutions. When looking for a new job, you would usually look at other companies that build their own products for their own customers, and most importantly, have a Product Manager position. But now you have another choice: agencies.

I’m not talking about the traditional digital/media agency here. I’m talking about a different breed. These “agencies” offer Dev and UX resources to help others build products and tend to refer to themselves as any of the following: product consultants, product development firm/shop, design firm/shop, etc.

Their main goal is to help you build a product, not just a website or a useless app.

Some of these firms either started out as an outsourced dev shop and then added design/UX to their toolkit or started out as a design/UX shop and added development to their services. Now they are looking for Product Managers!

But why?

To answer this question, I’ve spoken with a number of these product development firms, including Neo, Happy Fun Corp., Fueled, Prolific Interactive and Thoughtworks, to understand why they need Product Managers. Here’s what I’ve learned during the conversations:

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From my personal experience, empathy is the one attribute that almost every single job descriptions depict as a requirement for their Product Managers.  This make sense since Product Managers are supposed to be the advocate of the user, and in order to do that, they must be able to empathize with their user, right?

Well, this author believes empathy is a piece of the puzzle, but another attribute is much more needed:

Let’s look at why:

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