What does a successful Product Manager look like?

Vishal Soni
Product Coalition
Published in
4 min readDec 3, 2020

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I asked product teams (so you don’t have to) and here’s what they had to say!

Credit — Dilbert comics

I’ve recently had the opportunity of speaking with a lot of different product teams and people from the industry (perks of actively interviewing!). And while most of the time it’s the interviewers tag teaming against me with their questions and me answering, I generally get the opportunity to ask them some questions towards the end.

One question that I have been consistently asking everyone is — “What does success look like for this role (of a Product Manager)?”. Truth be told, I didn't have much of a plan when I started posing this question in my initial conversations, but as I spoke to more people, I realized that this was a gold mine!

I have had the opportunity to pose this question to a Developer, a Technical Writer, a Customer Success Manager, a Product Owner and a Chief Digital & Strategy officer — and it was amazing to know the breath of view points on how they see a successful product manager as. So here’s a summary of what each of these product team members shared and which quality they believe makes a successful product manager —

1. A Developer’s point of view — “Transparency”

“A good product manager will make sure the developers are working in the right direction and spending our time & effort in worthwhile tasks. I should have the visibility on how my work is adding value and impacting the organization.”

Not sharing the vision and the strategy enough with every member (at every level) of the product team is a major mistake a lot of product managers make. And this is a problem which exists in almost every second organization (even I have been through this pitfall in my career).

To ensure that your team feels connected to the vision and the strategy of the product, they need to very clearly see the value they are delivering with their work. Not only does this ensure the team is aligned towards the north star, it also motivates the team by giving them a feeling of empowerment.

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A product person who believes human-centered design is the trigger for innovation and the opportunity to re-think how we do things | Ex-Amazon