More and more difficult to use one sentence to describe what we do

It's a headline but a worthwhile product manager 's thinking. Every day we learn how to describe our product in one sentence, but it's getting harder and harder to describe in a single sentence what we do . Sometimes, when I jump out of my work environment and think carefully, I will find it hard to find out my core competitiveness by doing daily things.

Product managers than programmers and designers, programming, design skills, a life-saving skills, but also their core competencies, which is easy to understand. But for the product manager, if you summarize from a technical point of view, it is simply weak burst to see the tools we use every day, word, PPT, project, axrure, excel, MM, are based on the basic tools, Even a little professional Axure, I want to learn well, a week can be about to get to a medium level.

If more than hard skills, we certainly can not talk about the core competitiveness of individual, at best spell a comprehensive quality to self-comfort. So product manager's core nirvana must be soft skills.

Once there was a senior told me that product managers should use their logical ability as a weapon to arm themselves, especially when the product status is confusing, PM must be calm to find the thread from the mess. This is good, but seemingly still can not talk about core competencies, so go ahead and take a further step, is the chaos of the product status is when?

In general, there will be two cases, one is the product when there is no direction, one is lost in the product development process. The two situations inside and outside basically cover the core values ​​of the product manager. The ability of the product manager to determine the status of these two time nodes.

Understand the user's heart

This is a very good thing to understand, the demand is the life of the product manager, tap the user (where the user may be your boss, make up your own brain) needs, or understand the needs of users is a necessary process, that is To find the direction of the product, or to correct the direction of the user is actually a group of virtual existence, which contains several levels of things:

1 know who the user: Just like chasing the goddess, before the action to understand the process is essential, secretly look at the QQ space, concerned about the microblogging Han is a must. So to the emergence of the target user places, forums, QQ group and so on

2. Understand the user: there are many ways, focus groups, user interviews, not one by one enumerated

Meet the user

In fact, during the course of this work, there are many methods and methods that are subject to the rules. Difficult is, finally found that after you know all of these, you still can not make WeChat, can not make 360, can not make the watercress. Because the core things are often hidden behind

1. grasp the core needs: demand everyone can find, but the demand has real needs, there is a false demand, there are core needs, there are marginal needs, do not understand the people, must be lost

2. The demand behind the demand: Found that users want bread, in fact, the user is hungry, you give bowl of fried rice Yangzhou may even more appetite, which requires sufficient experience to make judgments

3. Product grasp the bottom line: people are dissatisfied with the desire, but after all, the product can not be a good man, there must be their own bottom line. Take and homes, is the embodiment of skills

Understand the team's heart

A product is often created by a number of teams, the team is composed of a living person, each has its own division of roles, have their own responsibilities, so have their own position. I remember Chai Jing's "see" in a sentence: no one in this world is absolutely justice, are for their own interests. This is not a blame on the moral level, only a simple objective description.

Thus, as a product manager, the same awkwardness often encountered during product development can be completely different for engineers, testers, UEs and operations. Communicating this matter, to put it bluntly is a reasonable compromise, one by one communication, not ability, but the basic skills of the workplace.

But multifaceted communication and coordination really are not easy things, you have to try to do a few things

1. Trying to understand everyone in the team: working style, ways of thinking, endorsements of experience, personality, etc., will affect everyone's perspective and understanding of things

2. Try to get the truth of the matter: by correct questioning, remove the subjective unverified part, then the objective part of the superposition

3. There is a bottom line to compromise

Finally, there are some truths that will certainly hurt the interests of some people, and if so, sometimes the "window paper" can not be stabbed or stabbed. In fact, the bottom line for grasping the principle of the heart is respect.

I think the students who study psychology have the genes of innate product, just as I think Lejia will be a very good product manager.

And inside and outside, product managers face most people. Getting people, does not mean that to meet, but the principle of respect. This is not an overnight practice, must be in the constant wall and failure, summed up, others will not learn the core competitiveness.