Lenny's Newsletter - What is product management
This is a peek at today’s subscriber-only post. Subscribe to get access to the full issue, plus every issue from the past two and a half years. 👋 Hey, Lenny here! Welcome to a 🔒 subscriber-only edition 🔒 of my weekly newsletter. Each week I tackle reader questions about product, growth, working with humans, and anything else that’s stressing you out about work. Send me your questions and in return I’ll humbly offer actionable real-talk advice.
I generally avoid meta questions like this, since they’re rarely actionable or useful. But because this is such a common PM interview question and because I’ve gotten this question from readers enough times and never found a definition that I like elsewhere, I’m going to tackle it this week. The job of a product managerI like this baseline definition:
There are three parts to this, each essential: 1. Deliver business impactFundamentally, you are responsible for delivering business impact. If your team drives positive impact—hitting important goals, reducing costs, shipping an important project, etc.—you’re doing your job. 2. Marshaling the resources of your teamYour job isn’t to do the building yourself but instead to increase the leverage of your cross-functional teammates—designers, engineers, data scientists, researchers—to deliver impact. To paraphrase Andy Grove, a product manager’s output = the output of their team. 3. Identify and solve the most impactful customer problemsBusiness impact comes from solving customer problems. Thus, it’s your job to lead your team to correctly identify, prioritize, and solve the most impactful customer problems. PMs are the ultimate business lever.
The three core jobs of a product managerAnother way to define the role of a PM is to break out the day-to-day jobs of a product manager:
All of that is a means to delivering impact. The attributes of successful product managersA different approach to understanding the PM job is to look at how PMs are evaluated. Earlier this year, I collected and analyzed dozens of career ladders from companies big and small, and out of this emerged 10 common attributes of successful product managers: Subscribe to Lenny's Newsletter to read the rest.Become a paying subscriber of Lenny's Newsletter to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content. A subscription gets you:
|
Older messages
Six rules of hiring for growth
Tuesday, November 9, 2021
How to hire and build your growth team—guest post by Elena Verna
🚨 Applications now open for my live course—Product Management Fundamentals
Friday, November 5, 2021
A three-week part-time live course with in-depth lectures, real-world assignments, special guests, and much more
Picking a wedge
Tuesday, October 26, 2021
When, why, and how to pick a wedge for your product
60 ideas to boost your growth
Tuesday, October 12, 2021
A motherload of growth inspiration by guest author Ali Abouelatta, creator of the First 1000 newsletter
The 10 commandments of salary negotiation
Friday, September 24, 2021
Guest post by Niya Dragova, co-founder of Candor
You Might Also Like
68 new Shopify apps for you 🌟
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
New Shopify apps hand-picked for you 🙌 Week 16 Apr 15, 2024 - Apr 22, 2024 New Shopify apps hand-picked for you 🙌 What's New at Shopify? 🌱 Default layout update for Smart Grid Changed ⸱ POS ⸱ 6
Bamboo Metrics, Lune AI, and Danger
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
One API for IP, device & user risk insights BetaList BetaList Daily Bamboo Metrics Exclusive Perk Daily emails for your team's key metrics, progress and blockers Lune AI Language Tutor in Your
A Shift in LLM Marketing : The Rise of the B2B Model
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
Tomasz Tunguz Venture Capitalist If you were forwarded this newsletter, and you'd like to receive it in the future, subscribe here. A Shift in LLM Marketing : The Rise of the B2B Model Snowflake
"so you made 1 cent per hour?"
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
Read time: 1 min, 22 sec On Jan. 7 2018 I made my first internet dollar: A whopping $3.32 I couldn't even buy myself lunch. What's even crazier... is on that same day, I got my paycheck (from
Founder Weekly - Issue 633
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
View this email in your browser Founder Weekly Welcome to issue 633 of Founder Weekly. Let's get straight to the links this week. General The Arc Product-Market Fit Framework This framework
Starting in ecommerce while still at a 9-5? Watch this video.
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
Free for 24 hours , In case you haven't seen this yet, here's a special replay of one of the most inspiring sessions from the Start Your E-commerce Business Summit. The wisdom and insights of
Nicolai Klemke — Switching Lanes: Physics PhD to Indie Hacker — The Bootstrapped Founder 314
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
Nicolai Klemke (@nicolaiklemke) is an Indie Hacker with a PhD in Physics. Talk about a career change!
The unspoken skill of finesse
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
What finesse looks like, why it matters, and how to develop it for yourself and your team ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏
KnowledgeBase, PhotoDoc, and Copybase
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
The AI-Powered Copywriting Platform for Teams BetaList BetaList Daily KnowledgeBase Build help centers to provide customer self service PhotoDoc Effortlessly annotate, organize, and back up your parcel
Is the NHS ready for AI?
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
We explore where startups are looking to deploy AI in the NHS, a new solo GP fund in Europe and FlexAI's latest raise. View in browser Notion flagship logo final Good morning there, Workforce