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Okay product managers, what has all your down-in-the-weeds detailed
product knowledge done for you and your company lately? Entitled you
to more phone calls and emails? Turned you into first line customer
support? Allowed you to write endless pages of detailed specifications
that are more painful than a root canal minus the Novocain? It doesn't
sound like product management.
In a nutshell, the more product knowledge you have, the less product management you're doing because your product knowledge gets you sucked in to a plethora of non product management issues. Liability? Furthermore, too much product knowledge leads to micro management - the kiss of death for anyone in a leadership role.
Consider seven key responsibilities of a product manager and determine if detailed product knowledge is more of an asset or liability? We offer one perspective.
- Analyzing the Market - When assessing broad trends and market dynamics, too much product knowledge distorts your perspective because you only see through the eyes of your products, making it all to easy to miss the obvious drivers to innovation. Detailed product knowledge = liability.
- Creating Strategies & Product Roadmaps - The focus here is more on why the market dynamics are conducive to new product initiatives, why they represent good revenue opportunities for the company and how you're going to make it happen. Detailed product knowledge = liability because you can't see the forest from the weeds.
- Defining Business/Market Requirements & Business Cases - It's all about defining scenarios and problems first, and product knowledge is not required to define a business problem. Your target customers have the same problems today they had 100 years ago. They just have them for different reasons. Product knowledge is only required to suggest the most appropriate features for creating the solution. Detailed product knowledge = asset and liability asset because you need to recommend reasonable solutions in context of the product’s current state and liability because it forces you more into "how" features should work instead of "what's needed and why" from a business perspective.
- Working With Engineering - Engineers know more about the product than anyone. Product Management's job is to keep them focused on higher level objectives and solving problems in a manner most conducive to marketability and usability. Detailed product knowledge = liability because it's conducive to micro managing designers and engineers. With clear business objectives, they'll easily figure it out.
- Training & Supporting Sales - Okay, now you can use your product knowledge as long as you keep the primary focus on why customers need it and secondarily, why the problems it solves are critical to the overall organization. Detailed product knowledge = asset as long as the dialog is centered on business issues instead of product features.
- Creating Product Positioning - The more you know about your product the more difficult it is to position its true value. Product positioning is all about "why" target customers need your product. Features are merely proof points. Detailed product knowledge is definitely a liability.
- Writing Detailed User/Product Specifications - Detailed product knowledge is a must here. This task however, is NOT the responsibility of a product manager. It belongs to the functional/user interaction designer. If you're good at it and enjoy functional design, do the product world a favor and make it your full-time job. User interaction expertise is sorely needed everywhere.
So who are the product experts? Designers, engineers, trainers, support technicians, client services consultants and the like, i.e. those who design it, build it and make customers successful using it, none of which fall into a typical product manager job description.
A product manager's primary responsibility is to drive the business of the products to grow revenue, which constitutes the need for more business savvy than product savvy. Product managers need to know their products, but not so well that they mortgage their ability to lead others, influence key decisions and articulate value. Of course, working for an organization that understands the role of product management is a big factor in maintaining this discipline.
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