97 / Empowering Product Managers To Unleash Product’s True Value

Kent Weathers is Chief Product Officer at Brainmates and Director at the Association of Product Professionals (APP) – valuable perspectives for a conversation about the future of software product management.

In this episode of the Product Momentum Podcast, Kent Weathers joins Paul Gebel and asks us product people to imagine for a moment a world without waste – specifically, the staggering 70% of the estimated $6.8 trillion investment that companies will make in digital transformation in 2023 (HBR). As product managers, our role must be to teach organizations not only how to build things better – but also how to build better things.

“That’s what product management does; that’s the missing component,” he adds.

Despite making tremendous progress in recent years, professional development for product managers has been slowed. Not by the scarcity of training/learning options for them, but “by organizations that unintentionally prevent them from doing good product work.” Kent’s mission (and, by association, APP’s) is to empower product people to do what they know to do by helping C-suites structure their organizations and develop their processes around product.

The key is to develop within the organization a product management practice, Kent explains. “A practice is about aligning all the necessary product functions and all the functional heads around good, sound product management and then developing a culture where people are empowered, where they’re trusted, where they know what to do.”

The end result, he adds, is an organization that can unleash the power that product management brings to the table. “Without it,” he concludes, “they’ll never actually see the true value of product.”

Catch the entire episode to learn more about Kent’s and APP’s shared approach:

• Problem. Unlike the fields of law, accounting, and education (among others), no clear standards exist that guide candidates and prospective employers where product managers are in their careers.
• Action. Through APP, Kent is working to get all the voices together to create – and codify – industry-standard best practices for the field of product management.

• Objective. Provide a genuine assessment of where product managers are in their careers, and what hiring managers should be looking for, to optimize the PMs’ fit within their organizations.

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