7 kinds of excellent product managers need to have the quality

The product manager now appears to be a very common it job, but it is also a very high level of personal requirements for the overall quality of the position, and people send nickname "Product Soul Designer". If you are interested in becoming a good product manager's friend so light to see which of the following abilities, I think should be able to help you better in your ideal state of progress.

I. Communication skills

A successful product manager must be a good communicator.

The most common feature of the analysis of the best product managers I know is "excellent verbal and written communication skills at work".

Why is communication important? In many companies, the most decisive role of product managers plays a role as a communications hub, as shown in the following illustration.

The ability to communicate effectively among different roles is to say that it is the ability to communicate with different types of personalities, that is, to speak different languages when communicating with different roles. For effective communication, it is important that you use the "language" of the target audience.

For example, most engineers tend to be "introverted", while most sales/marketing specialists tend to be "extroverted". This means that when communicating with an engineer, you need to use "another language" when communicating with a marketing specialist. Similarly, when you communicate with a supervisor, you have to focus more on the "forest level" than the "tree level," but many product managers are still talking to executives about how beautiful the tree is.

II. Leadership without power

Successful product managers have the ability to become good leaders without formal authority.

Most companies, product managers are expected to play a "leadership role" in multiple areas. This includes leading the project team, leading the product planning and roadmap, and leading cross-functional communication.

In most of these cases, however, the product manager does not co-ordinate the rights of these departments.

No power to lead others? I want to say, use joint effects, negotiation, networking and other similar techniques.

Is it possible to lead without power? My idea of this is well summed up by this question, and my answer is: How much power does Gandhi and Martin Lu have?

Iii. Learning Skills

That, in my Peng Yi words, is that good product managers are good at doing things they're not good at.

Good product managers must have the ability to learn quickly, the market changes quickly, and new technologies are always springing up. Differentiated products are produced in less than 6 months today, sometimes even faster.

I think the one mistake most companies make when hiring product managers is that they value "tough expertise".

For example, a company that does software security is looking for a product manager with more than 5 years of experience in software security. I think it's a wrong way.

A better approach would be to find a product manager with experience in software engineering and have the ability to learn quickly. It was a very good approach for me, and the best product managers I had had no expertise in what he was doing before they were hired.

Iv. Business acumen

Successful product managers also have a good understanding of basic business principles.

They understand how to identify market opportunities, the importance of competition differentiation, the strategies to create successful products, pricing, promotion, cooperation, analysis, statements, and other.

That doesn't mean they need a master's degree in Business Administration. In fact, most of the successful product managers I've contacted have no MBA, but they have a good understanding of the fundamentals of business.

V. Love Products

Successful product managers have an inherent love for products.

They are happy with the pace of the new product in the market, as much as they have. They register a large number of "betas" sites, download the latest version of the software and use, and so on.

They are happy with the design of the products, even if they are not made by their company. They hate poorly designed products, even those made by their own companies.

They love to create great products, whether it is a brand new product, or to improve existing products.

Vi. attention to detail

Any business is made up of details, and attention to detail is the essential foundation for creating great products.

Steve Jobs once said:

The imac is not just a color or a translucent or shell shape. The essence of the imac is to bring each element together to become the most outstanding consumer computer. In our latest imac, I'm adamant we got rid of the fan because it's more enjoyable to work with a computer that doesn't always hum.

Throwing away the fan is not only a stubborn decision by Steve, he needs a huge project behind him to figure out how to better handle power consumption and how to better dissipate heat from the machine. This is the core point of our products, customers buy us, is to let us solve all these details, so they are easy and like to use our computer.

Successful Product Managers view details not just about product performance, but also on competitive analysis, project planning, and almost every activity they are primarily responsible for.

My words: Again, this detail is reflected in your report, plan, and mission plan. In terms of content, please describe the implementation details as much as possible, and in performance, try to embody the UI design details of a product designer. If a product manager who doesn't even make a report enjoyable to read, how can you expect a product to have a good user experience?

VII. Conventional Product management skills

A product manager needs these skills to perform daily tasks. They include writing market analysis reports and demand analysis reports, performing competitive analysis, creating product routes, stating product performance and benefits, defining user interfaces, and so on.

Every company needs such skills. This skill is in the end because I think it's easy for the product managers who have the six points to learn these skills.