Best of 2022: What Makes Product Management Difficult?

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 Jeremiah Nelson (Motorola Solutions) to talk about becoming a good PM in a difficult environment. Product management is a job that requires teamwork, team effort, and collaborative planning to successfully launch and eventually sell a product. It can become a difficult task and extremely challenging but with the people in the team, nothing is impossible. 

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
• 07:46 When does product management become difficult?
• 10:46 What is the rubric that customers give you?
• 11:37 Indicators to help understand the customer’s rubric
• 15:19 Who should not be a PM?
• 20:12 Every PM owns the decision regardless of how it's made
• 27:09 You are not your product
• 29:49 What makes a better PM for API and technical products?
• 36:07 Get a detailed understanding of how things function
• 42:02 Goal-setting methods for a new project
• 46:24 Take care of yourself first
• 48:54 Being a PM is about the team you create