65: People Over Product? What One Product Manager thinks Many PMs Get Wrong

In this episode of the How to Succeed in Product Management Podcast, marketing professor Jeff Shulman and The Product Management Center advisory board members Red Russak and  Soumeya Benghanem welcome Anna Marie Clifton to talk about prioritizing people over product. A good PM should be able to manage products, people, and of course, both. A team has its own unique members and managing these people is an important part of a PM’s job.

Disclaimer: All opinions of the speakers are their own.

Support for How to Succeed in Product Management is brought to you by Apptentive, which enables product managers to measure shifts in customer emotion and gather actionable feedback across the mobile customer journey. To learn more, go to Apptentive.com/UW.

What to Listen For:

• 00:00 Intro
• 09:11 Influence without authority
• 11:42 What works in a different company won’t work in another one
• 13:59 Building trust relationships
• 16:26 Everyone is motivated by very different things
• 19:07 Framework or exercise for working with people
• 27:16 Clearly Product Book Club podcast
• 29:44 Politics in the workplace
• 30:54 Understand the unwritten rules
• 33:07 Frameworks are a waste of time
• 37:02 Definition of framework
• 39:02 Framework are for beginners
• 41:53 Managing young stakeholders
• 46:07 How to talk to people who disagrees
• 48:55 Final thoughts