8 Core Competencies Required by Product Managers

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What core competencies do product managers need to possess?

This is not only a question that is frequently asked during product manager interviews but also one of the questions we often ask ourselves in our daily product work. Similar to many questions related to product managers, there is no standard answer to this question. Different people from various backgrounds and perspectives may have different views on the core competencies that product managers should have. Here, I will attempt to share my perspective on this question based on personal experience and reflection.

The core competencies of product managers can be categorized into two aspects: general qualities and professional skills. General qualities encompass qualities and skills that are not confined to the role of a product manager but are equally essential in other positions. These qualities include proactivity, learning ability, thinking ability, and communication skills. On the other hand, professional skills are more specific to the role of a product manager and encompass skills such as requirements analysis, product planning, project management, and data analysis.

I. Proactivity

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Proactivity, is the most crucial quality for a product manager. The majority of a product manager's work revolves around driving people and projects forward. To successfully advance these initiatives, proactivity stands as the most critical subjective factor. Furthermore, proactivity is not just vital for product managers but is also a crucial quality required by many other roles and, indeed, most successful individuals.

Depending on the different aspects that product managers encounter, proactivity can be categorized into four dimensions: towards tasks, towards others, towards the product, and towards oneself.

1. Towards Tasks

Product managers often have an endless list of tasks to handle. Without a proactive attitude towards tasks, product managers can find themselves passively controlled by various responsibilities. When overwhelmed, one is likely to become exhausted, eventually leading to a state of chaotic and unmanageable disarray.

Proactivity towards tasks involves accurately identifying the responsible parties for each task at hand and determining how to drive the resolution of these tasks. If you are the person in charge, it requires a mindset and habit of taking full responsibility for the outcomes, a willingness to overcome any obstacles, and the ability to actively motivate and drive relevant individuals to solve problems and achieve results. If you are not the person in charge, it entails understanding your role and responsibilities in the task, identifying key drivers in pushing things forward, and, once your part is completed, aiding the person in charge or the next point of contact in achieving a positive outcome and helping to resolve any issues.

2. Towards Others

The development, launch, and operation of a product cannot be accomplished solely by a product manager. It requires a team, even multiple teams, working together, and the product manager plays a vital role in coordinating and driving this effort. Being proactive towards others means taking on the role of a leader within this virtual team, actively leading, influencing, pushing, and motivating others to complete the tasks you wish them to accomplish and achieve your goals.

3. Towards the Product

As the person responsible for the product, everything related to the product is your responsibility, and it falls to you to drive it yourself or motivate others to complete it. A product manager enjoys the accolades of success and also bears the pain and frustration when the product faces setbacks.

4. Towards Oneself

While product managers can drive and assist in solving roadblocks for team members in areas such as interaction design, visual design, development, and testing, when product managers themselves encounter obstacles, they can only rely on their own proactivity. Proactivity towards oneself means being able to actively adapt and seek solutions when facing adversity and challenges, rather than passively accepting or waiting for resolutions.

II. Learning Ability

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The world is in a constant state of development and progress. This is especially true in the internet industry, where the rapid changes in business and technology lead to a turnover rate much higher than in other fields. As an internet product manager, failure to maintain a strong learning ability and a habit of continuous learning, as well as neglecting to keep up with new knowledge and emerging areas within the industry, will inevitably result in swift obsolescence.

Cultivating one's learning ability primarily involves listening, observing, studying, and practicing. Learning channels encompass books, new media, information sources, industry exchanges, work experience, online and offline courses, lectures, forums, and more.

III. Thinking Ability

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For a product manager, the importance of thinking cannot be emphasized enough.

Firstly, thinking is one of the most critical aspects of a product manager's role, and it's where their inherent value truly shines. On one hand, through thoughtful consideration, a product manager can design excellent products, creating value for both the company and its users. On the other hand, through deep thinking, a product manager reduces the cost of trial and error in the product development process, conserving the company's resources, both in terms of manpower and finances.

Secondly, thinking is an indispensable part of the learning process. Only through thinking can the knowledge acquired truly be absorbed and mastered.

Lastly, for anyone, be it in learning or in work, maintaining a habit of conscious and habitual thinking is imperative. Consistently reflecting and summarizing one's thoughts, life, and work allows for a clearer roadmap toward one's desired life, steering clear of a mundane and uneventful path.

To enhance and cultivate thinking ability, one can begin with the following three aspects:

• Frequently develop your own understanding of work and situations. For every task or issue, formulate your own insights, questions, and suggestions. Actively express the results of your contemplation through verbal discussions, writing, and other means, gaining new insights through communication and sharing with others.
• Cultivate the habit of asking "why" often. Regularly question "why" in response to the information you receive and the current state of developments. By asking questions, you compel yourself to think. Through ongoing inquiry, reflection, and response, you not only enhance your thinking ability but also develop the capacity to swiftly identify the essence of situations.
• Maintain regular retrospectives and summaries. Conduct periodic reviews and summaries of your insights, experiences, and observations in your work (or life). This practice not only helps you avoid making the same mistake twice but also provides optional problem-solving approaches and methods for similar issues you may encounter in the future. Therefore, in my view, regular retrospectives and summaries are the most critical form of thinking.

IV. Communication Skills

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Communication is an essential and indispensable tool for a product manager to achieve results. Throughout the workflow of a product manager, from receiving requirements, analyzing them, designing solutions, scheduling, implementation, tracking, and feedback, communication with different roles and individuals is a continuous thread. Without effective communication, a product manager cannot drive others to achieve the desired results and would merely be a futile dreamer. It's precisely because communication holds such a pivotal role in a product manager's work that communication skills become one of the necessary abilities for a product manager.

In the process of a product manager's work, communication can be divided into two forms: verbal and written communication. Both are equally important.

Verbal communication encompasses simple interactions like daily work exchanges and interpersonal communication, as well as more complex tasks such as presenting and reviewing PRDs. Written communication includes basic tools like chat and work emails, as well as more complex documents like PRDs and product manuals. When it comes to communication, nearly every aspect of it can be explored as a dedicated topic for detailed discussion. It can even be said that communication is a subject worth dedicating a lifetime to learn and understand.

The four general qualities mentioned above, with proactivity as the foundation, are also the most challenging. Building on a foundation of proactivity, conscious cultivation and development of learning ability, thinking ability, and communication skills lay a solid groundwork for enhancing a product manager's core professional competencies.

V. Requirement Analysis Skills

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The work of a product manager is fundamentally centered around requirements, unfolding in accordance with these demands. Once a product manager receives requirements, the process of requirement analysis commences. The outcomes of requirement analysis not only affect the product manager's work but also steer the direction of the entire collaborative team. Its significance is self-evident.

In requirement analysis, the most crucial principle is to see beyond the surface and discern the underlying reasons. When a user says they want a faster horse, if a product manager mindlessly and thoughtlessly conveys the request like an echo chamber, the product manager will ultimately deliver nothing but a horse. However, if you further delve into the user's underlying desire for a faster mode of transportation, you might discover that they wish to expedite their travel. In this case, a car could be a better solution. This story may be familiar to many, but in practical work, for various reasons, we often overlook the deeper reasons behind the requirements presented by the requesting party and hastily push for implementation.

It's worth emphasizing once more that product managers should avoid becoming mere megaphones. Being a megaphone means relaying received information and requirements downstream without reflection, supplementation, or organization. Such behavior is irresponsible and fails to reflect one's own value. Bringing a product to fruition requires passing through a chain that involves "business/operations-product-UED-development-testing-operations." Each link in this chain needs to contribute its own analysis, reflection, and judgment after fully understanding the demands of the upstream, filling in the gaps in upstream thinking, and delivering output downstream to ensure a smooth product launch. Acting as a mere megaphone that blindly conveys upstream requirements delegates the thinking and analysis work that should be done by the product manager to others. This not only diminishes work efficiency but also ultimately reduces one's own value, leading to a dispensable position.

Adhering to the principle of looking beyond the surface to discern the underlying reasons, a product manager, upon receiving requirements, needs to engage in detailed communication with the requesting party and relevant stakeholders (such as legal, compliance, risk management, finance, etc.). By combining the essential business demands, business value, priorities, system implementation capabilities, and the impact on relevant stakeholders, comprehensive thinking leads to the final requirement analysis results. These results become actionable product solutions to drive the implementation process.

VI. Product Planning Skills

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Product planning sets itself apart from ordinary requirement analysis. It requires product managers to frequently rise above the realm of detailed and trivial demands, taking a higher perspective to contemplate the positioning and objectives of the products they are responsible for. Based on the product's history, current status, and the goals it aims to achieve, product planning involves devising an implementation plan that not only aligns with the product's inherent aspirations but also caters to the rational demands of various business stages.

Losing the ability to plan a product can easily lead a product manager to be content with fulfilling immediate product requirements, focusing only on the path directly ahead. Such tunnel vision can easily veer off course, and the product may become lost and confused while satisfying fragmented needs, unsure of its next steps. Therefore, while product managers fulfill these scattered demands, they must not neglect the strategic contemplation of the product as a whole. They should maintain control over the product, guiding it to maintain the correct direction while gradually moving closer. This is where the value and significance of product planning lie.

Possessing strong requirement analysis skills and product planning abilities ensures that a product manager can both navigate the immediate terrain and discern the path to the future. It combines the art of managing the present with the vision of reaching distant horizons.

VII. Data Analysis

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Skills In recent years, industries of all kinds have placed an increasing emphasis on data, particularly the data-rich behemoth, the internet sector. For a product manager, analyzing data is not only a means to gain an intuitive understanding of a product's performance but also a tool to uncover underlying root causes, devise solutions to address issues, and further analyze results data based on those solutions. Through this iterative process, a product gradually improves.

Basic tools such as Excel, SPSS, and the R language are a helpful addition to data analysis skills. More importantly, a product manager's ability to grasp the importance of data, combined with their ability to seek the relevant data support for addressing key questions (such as what problem needs to be solved, why it needs to be solved, the potential benefits of solving it, and the effects of implementing a solution), is crucial. For example, user tracking data points can help us understand the actual paths users take when using a product. By assessing whether these paths align with our expectations, we can gather valuable insights to inform the subsequent optimization of a feature.

VIII. Project Management Skills

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Product plans, from design and development to testing and launch, often take the form of various-sized projects. In the absence of a project manager, product managers frequently find themselves juggling project management tasks, making project management skills an essential part of their skill set.

The field of project management offers numerous specialized resources for study. What needs to be emphasized here is that one of the most challenging aspects of project management for product managers is managing requirement changes. As information received changes, dealing with requirement changes is unavoidable. The key lies in the ability to recognize the value, purpose, cost, and impact on project progress of these changing requirements. Whether it is possible to provide a convincing solution based on these considerations is the critical question. At times, due to project resource and time constraints, temporary solutions can also serve as a practical way to address immediate issues.

In Conclusion

The role of a product manager demands a high level of comprehensive skills and abilities. The capabilities of a product manager significantly influence a product's performance, and since a product serves as a tool for executing strategy, its performance also affects the implementation and execution of a company's strategic objectives. Hence, the value of a product manager to the company is self-evident. The eight core skills discussed in this article that a product manager needs are not limited; they await continuous exploration and refinement in both theory and practice to help us become better product managers.