I get several emails every week from readers with excellent questions on product management related topics. I try to answer as many as I can. Recently I received a nice email from a reader, Kim, that asked "Michael... What do you feel are the most important professional characteristics of a Product Manager?"

This question got me thinking. I started writing down the characteristics of excellent product managers I've had the good fortune of working with. Then I picked the seven traits that are most common among these folks - I summarize them in this article in order of priority.

By the way, I recently watched the movie Borat - in honor of that movie, I'm using the following subtitle for this article!

Observational Learnings of Traits for Make Benefit Glorious Craft of Product Management

Seven Traits of Successful Product Managers

1. Communication Skills

   Successful product managers are excellent communicators.

   This is the most common characteristic shared by all excellent product managers I've worked with - written and oral communication skills. Why is this important?

   At most companies, a critical role product managers play is acting as a communication hub on product-related matters - as shown in the figure below.
   
   
   
   This means - a successful product manager not only has the ability to communicate effectively with different roles, but also has the ability to:

   • Communicate with different personality-types.
     • For example, majority of engineers tend to be "introverted", while majority of sales/marketing folks tend to be "extroverted".
   • Speak different "languages" when communicating with different roles.
     • To communicate effectively, it is important that you speak the "language" of your target audience. This means you have to use a "different language" while communicating to marketing personnel, as opposed to engineers. Likewise, when communicating with executive management, you must focus more on "forest level" than "tree level" - this is a mistake I see many product managers make.
2. Leading Without Authority

   Successful product managers are excellent leaders, even when they have no formal authority.

   At most companies, product managers are expected to play "leadership role" in several areas. These include leading project teams, leading product strategy and roadmaps, leading cross-functional product initiatives, etc.

   Yet, in most of these situations product managers don't have any formal authority. This means, you have to be really good at "leading without authority" to be a successful product manager.

   How do you lead without authority? I'd say - using a combination of influencing, negotiating, relationship building and other similar skills.

   Is it possible to lead without authority? My thought on this is summarized well by the question Tom Peters, the popular management author, asks:

How much formal authority did Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. have?

3. Learning Skills

   Successful product managers have the ability to learn fast - even in relatively new areas.

   In most segments of the high-tech industry, markets change fast. New technologies are always right around the horizon. What is a "differentiated product" today becomes a commodity within 6 months. Sometimes even faster.

   A successful product manager must have the ability to learn fast - even in areas that are relatively new to them. If a product manager has this ability - it is relatively easy to manage products in new markets.

   One mistake that I think most companies make when hiring product managers is - they look for "strong subject matter knowledge". For example, if a company makes security software - they look for product managers with "5+ years experience" in security software. I think this is a misguided approach. A far better approach is to look for a product manager with experience in the software industry, and the ability to learn quickly. This approach has worked well for me - some of the best PMs I've hired had no "subject matter knowledge" prior to hiring!

4. Business Acumen

Successful product managers have a good understanding of the fundamentals of business.

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They understand how to identify market opportunities, importance of competitive differentiation, creating winning product strategy, pricing and promotion, partnerships, analyzing P&L statements, and so on.

This doesn't mean they need an MBA. As a matter of fact, most of the successful product managers I've worked with don't have an MBA - but all of them have a strong grasp of business fundamentals.

5. Love for Products

Successful product managers have an inherent love for products.

They delight in kicking the tires of new products in the market - as many as they can get their hands on. They sign up for a ton of "betas", check out the latest web sites, download trial versions of software just to check them out, and so on.

They delight in well-designed products - even if not made by their own company. They loathe poorly-designed products - even if made by their own company.

Above all, they love creating great products - whether it is a brand new product, or enhancements to existing products.

6. Eye for Details

Successful product managers have an eye for details.

Focus on details is an essential pre-requisite to creating great products - as I mentioned in my previous article and Steve Jobs mentions in the following quote:

The iMac is not just the color or translucence or the shape of the shell. The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible consumer computer in which each element plays together.

On our latest iMac, I was adamant that we get rid of the fan, because it is much more pleasant to work on a computer that doesn't drone all the time. That was not just "Steve's decision" to pull out the fan; it required an enormous engineering effort to figure out how to manage power better and do a better job of thermal conduction through the machine. That is the furthest thing from veneer. It was at the core of the product the day we started.

This is what customers pay us for--to sweat all these details so it's easy and pleasant for them to use our computers. (emphasis mine)

Successful product managers focus on details not only when it comes to product features - but also in competitive analysis, project plans, and in pretty much every major activity that they are responsible for.

7. Routine Product Management Skills

Successful product managers have good "routine product management skills".

These are the skills needed to perform the routine tasks of a product manager job. They include writing MRDs & PRDs, performing competitive analysis, creating product roadmaps, creating presentations that communicate product features & benefits, defining user interfaces, and so on.

This set of required skills varies from company to company. I put this characteristic last, since I think most of these skills are easily learnable by product managers who possess the six earlier skills.

There you have it. My list of seven traits shared by successful product managers:

1. Communication Skills
2. Leading Without Authority
3. Learning Skills
4. Business Acumen
5. Love for Products
6. Eye for Details
7. Routine Product Management Skills

I know I have seven areas to improve - how about you?!

I find that this list is not only useful in self-improvement, but also when interviewing candidates for the product manager position.

Does this list make sense? What are the other skills you would add? Let me know by clicking the 'Post Comment' link below.

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