A common theme in conversations about product managers is the notion that they don\u2019t need to be technical; they just need to bridge the gap between technical and non-technical teams. In my experience, particularly with enterprise and security products, this is a complete fallacy. Part of why this argument persists is the misconception that all product management is the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you\u2019re working on a 10-year-old product based on 20-year-old deployment patterns\u2014and this might be hard to hear\u2014chances are you\u2019re not innovating. Instead, you\u2019re managing customer requests and operating within the constraints of the bureaucracy you\u2019re part of. Your roadmap likely consists of a mix of customer demands and features cloned from smaller competitors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another reason this perspective persists is that many organizations divide product managers into two categories: inbound and outbound. Outbound product managers are this decade\u2019s version of product MBAs. They often have a limited understanding of their customers and their needs, instead focusing on systematizing a go-to-market strategy based on abstractions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the problem domain of enterprise and security\u2014especially in small to medium-sized companies, where innovation tends to happen\u2014there is no substitute for being an expert in what you\u2019re building and selling. One of the most important things to understand is your customer: their pains, their constraints, and the schedules they operate within. The thing is, your customer isn\u2019t just one person in an enterprise sale. As I\u2019ve written before, at a minimum, you\u2019re dealing with an economic buyer and a champion in any sale. If you\u2019re lucky, you have many champions. And if you think strategically, you can even identify your champions\u2019 champions within the sale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This requires you to understand everyone\u2019s job and perspective. If you don\u2019t understand the technology or problem domain natively, you will always struggle\u2014and likely fail\u2014especially in smaller, early-stage companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Don\u2019t get me wrong: once a company finds product-market fit and has a reproducible recipe for selling into organizations\u2014or as the market evolves and expectations for a product in a given segment become standardized\u2014it becomes less necessary. But even then, bringing that expertise to the table remains a powerful force multiplier that enables organizations lucky enough to have these resources to vastly outperform much larger and better-funded competitors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since I spend most of my time these days with smaller companies or very large companies looking to become more competitive again, all I can say is this: without the right product leaders, the best you can hope for is growing at the pace of your overall market and maintaining the status quo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A common theme in conversations about product managers is the notion that they don\u2019t need to be technical; they just need to bridge the gap between technical and non-technical teams. In my experience, particularly with enterprise and security products, this is a complete fallacy. Part of why this argument persists is the misconception that all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-startups","category-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unmitigatedrisk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unmitigatedrisk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unmitigatedrisk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unmitigatedrisk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unmitigatedrisk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/unmitigatedrisk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unmitigatedrisk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unmitigatedrisk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unmitigatedrisk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}