
There is no clearly defined path to becoming a product manager. When I started, I was a graduate student in history at the University of Michigan. It was the product itself that seduced me—newspaper microfilm transformed onscreen to become searchable history. Product management is not a career path I planned or even something for which I could have gone to school. It is still something that most people learn on job, although there are nowseveral certification programs available.
Product managers come from engineering, sales, development, editorial, or even like me from a humanities background. Some are highly technical; others not so much. The good news is that you don't need to know how to code to be a product manager. But all great product managers are great storytellers .
Product managers need to inspire and persuade people across all departments towards manifesting a common vision. The best way to do that is with a great story. Stories have been told for thousands of years. Stories inspire hope; they provide meaning and purpose. Shared purpose that keeps people going through the many obstacles that impede a product’s progress. It’s what will get a product team through the Slough of Despond and up Difficulty Hill and beyond.
Product managers face an overwhelming amount of data from customer engagement reports, web analytics, research reports, market data and statistics. But great product stories move well beyond requirements or epics or data gathering. A story helps create the meaning behind all that data. Stories inspire us to action—finance to fund, developers to build and customers to buy.
Elements of a Great Product Story
Keep it simple! All great product stories address the why should I care question.
Hero
Who is your hero? Put your customer at the front and center of your story. Your hero must be relatable and he must be believable. Ask open ended questions, the more the better. What are his or her struggles?
Setting
What is your hero’s world like? What does he want it to be like? Remember the audience for your story is often inside the office, at least initially. Recreate your hero's world for them. Details count! Create an immersive experience for your audience.
Conflict(s)
No story works without conflict. What are your hero’s problems or obstacles? This is the heart of your story.
Resolution
What empowers your customer to become the hero of his story? The best stories become collaborations. Share your story as often as possible with customers, with advisers, with development, with finance and with sales.
When "your" story become "our story," you are on the way to becoming a great product manager.
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Reason #2 - You are safer from targeted software viruses


As I stressed in the post entitled, “
We’ve hired the best; now what? Trust is next. “Trust” is a very strong and multi-faceted word; a team of colleagues that doesn’t trust one another isn’t a team at all. Suffice it to say that there are lots of dimensions to trust not the least of which is believing in the competence of the party to trust. It’s impossible for trust to exist between two people who do not believe in each other’s ability to do their job. Trusting colleagues allows each to do his or her own job effectively without having to be concerned about a colleague’s work. With that trust established, a team can collaborate and support one another effectively, each contributing his or her part to the equation. A culture filled with trust exudes a sense of confidence of collaboration.
We’ve hired the best, established a great culture of trust and support; now, it’s time to ensure a united mission. Ultimately, the mission of any company is to delight customers to such a degree as to create evangelists of them. Those customer evangelists are then an even more effective sales force than any in-house sales team can be working alone. Evangelist customers are willing to do everything from providing reference calls for other prospective customers to proactively recommending your product to others inside and outside of their organization. Delighted customers are a sure sign you’re on the right track; evangelist customers tell you that you’re winning the market.
Finally, with a talented team, a trusting culture, and a united mission, all that remains is a sense of accountability. Effective companies celebrate successes but, equally importantly, hold themselves accountable for failures. All employees from the top down must believe in a culture of making commitments, keeping those commitments, and holding themselves accountable for the quality and timeliness of those commitments. It is that accountability that drives responsibility and ultimately drives quality actions and progress within a company.


Step #1: Don’t ignore it