54: Can A Product Manager Thrive in a Different Industry and Become a Good PM in Tech

In this episode of the How to Succeed in Product Management Podcast, marketing professor Jeff Shulman and The Product Management Center advisory board member Soumeya Benghanem welcome Matthew Landry (Cisco Meraki) to talk about what makes a good PM in the networks and security field. A good PM is someone who is intellectually curious and one who has an element of unhappiness with the status quo because in this field you will have to formulate strategies as you collect information while satisfying the end users or customers.

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
• 04:21 How metrics change in different technology industries
• 06:12 Metrics in networks and security
• 11:10 The need to deliver value and build instrumentation
• 15:02 Trade off between collecting information vs. satisfying the customers
• 24:24 What makes a growth PM
• 27:59 Defining the product management roles
• 31:47 Switching across different subdisciplines of product management
• 34:24 What kind of person fits the product management role?
• 39:25 When to know if this is not right for you
• 41:33 Collaboration between multiple departments