Five non obvious skills for product & growth managers in 2024
Summarizing, Managing up, Cross functional understanding, Growing and Outcomes
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Five things that I deem essential that I see go wrong if you skip on them in 2024 as a Product Leader:
Summarization
Managing up
Understanding Marketing & Sales
Don’t get high on your supply. Question your basics
Run your team with outcomes, not agile processes
Summarization
Do you know the story from Jeff Bezos where he says that power points are from the devil and he sits everyone down to read long documents?
Eh… I think Jeff talks more about his own preferences. The same applies to documents that do for good slides:
The problem is that a document usually does not have any limitations in length, a one pager that needs to fit into a presentation does. I use the following in different forms to great power because it forces people to think structured about their ideas. Whatever your weapon of choice is, you must learn to summarize your ideas and information.
A summary is not the end for searching truth, it’s the beginning. I agree with Jeff, though: When we try to convey information, whatever artifact you use, it should be self-sustaining without a narrator.
Behold, the power of a good summary template:
Whether you summarize at the top of a lengthy document, presentation or just to reiterate in a meeting what the basis is from last week… it’s always worth it to align people for a minute.
Why does it matter in 2024?
My attention has never been more distributed than this year, and I assume it’s the same for you too. Everything and everyone wants your attention. Unfortunately we have to play that game as well:
We tend to overestimate how much people understand what comes out of our mouth. A good summary doesn’t need to prove your point, it needs to outline it. It doesn’t replace your source material, it’s there to tease it.
Think about how often you’ve been in a meeting and you had no idea about what the presenter was talking about. The bigger the meeting is, the bigger the chance there are people who are clueless and the less likelier it is that someone speaks up.
Assume misalignment, summarize and then follow up with more in depth.
More:
Crafting business cases
If there is one gap that I see most PMs have in recruiting calls this is the one that gets most of them: the ability to create a business case. They always stumble when they get challenged live on air with something they need to evaluate from a business perspective.
It’s about knowing when, how deep, and, more importantly, how to validate a business case. This is not the same as researching because you’re not looking for truth first; you’re looking to manage risk. It’s about knowing before you dive into deep qualitative research whether it’s worth it to dedicate more resources.
I usually start from a core assumption and then branch it out with three outcomes that I will influence and try to substitute with more and more assumptions:
A great “hack” is to pair up with someone that thinks different than you in the same company. I created my best cases while having them challenged with a PM on the same level before presenting them to leadership.
This also irons out the most obvious clarity problems quickly; a good case is easy to read and understand for others. Test it first with your case buddy.
A good one is not to convince others; it’s to manage risk. And that works best if we can quickly invite other people's honest perspectives.
How to learn it:
“Superforecasting” by Philip Tetlock to understand the fundamental problem of trusting your sense when creating any case/prediction. This book was absolutely pivotal for me to understanding probabilities.
My article on the topic in much more detail (paid):
Managing Up
I posted an article on managing up in January that went wild. It is still a huge issue for many operators but shouldn’t be.
The short version is to not make promises too fast, keep the ones you make at all costs, or be proactive about them when they fail. Yes, some things are expected of you that you have to get done, but there are others where you absolutely should not have to bend over.
It’s a combination of overestimating how much we can get done and underestimating how things that don’t take a lot of time can lead to drastically negative consequences if you don’t manage them properly.
Not everything important takes a long time to manage. Conversely, not everything that takes a long time to deal with is important.
Don’t overpromise; if you get in trouble, own up to it. I cannot stress this enough: the worst you can do in a bad situation is to pretend it’s not that bad and that you have things under control when you don’t.
Sometimes, it’s actually better to throw your hands up and say, “I don’t know what I did here. Someone, please help.”
If you’ve never been a leader let it be known, there’s nothing more frustrating than someone who never pushes back from below because you don’t see resource shortages that way, this is also part of managing up.
Showing that it’s too much so your management can get you relief.
Why is it important in 2024?
As AI and other new shiny tools streamline our operational topics our soft skills become more and more important (and visible). Reliability to me is the most important one of them all.
We simply have no more use for ticket pushers, we need people who can reliably deliver and follow up on critical decisions and raise their hands when things go wrong.
More in the detailed article (paid):
The skill that gets you fired or promoted: managing up
I'm writing this article on the back of a frustration that happened last week and many times over the past year: I have a problem on my list today because someone else (whom I pay) promised me something weeks ago and didn’t warn me that they couldn’t deliver in time. I’m out of options and time.
Understanding Sales & Marketing
Especially if you work in Growth, you are starting to “mess” with other silos. Understanding what they do is going beyond just some fluffy stakeholder management. You really need to understand some basics about sales functions and marketing.
Just claiming, “PLG IS THE WAY SUCKERS!” is not working. Also, if you succumb to the usual reflection of “your [insert silo here] sucks and product/growth rules,” it is probably part of the problem.
Specialized marketing or sales functions are necessary for many things. They exist for a reason, and dedicated salespeople can still close many enterprise markets where the product alone fails.
Understanding these silos together with everything else on the list helps you find big opportunities and escape dangerous silo thinking. You don’t need to be a proficient salesperson or top-level marketeer, but get some fundamentals in your head at the very least.
It only puts you in a better position. Guess who has your back if you help them do their job better. Your sales and marketing leaders, and you in product, have the tools to do so:
Marketing: Slick onboarding flows to convert those MQLs
Sales: Product usage data to help Sales identify great target accounts. Make it easy for them to consume the data and close.
It’s hard to do either if you have no idea how either of them do their jobs.
Why is it important in 2024?
I keep talking about how (Product-led) Growth is the connection between classical product work and Marketing. In B2B you have the added complexity of Sales. Who is responsible for getting product-led sales started?
Most of the time it is product, the other silos don’t have the experience and authority to execute on it. My bid in 2024 and beyond is still on product-led sales and growth in that regard.
And that requires a deep understanding on crossfunctional silos and usage data.
How to learn it:
Sales: https://www.foundingsales.com/ → Great book to get started
Marketing:
How I started to look at Marketing in 2022 (LinkedIn Article)
Don’t get high on your supply. Question your basics.
There are way too many product people who do not collaborate with other PMs on their skills. I was one of them. This is another word for not growing anymore. It’s rarely out of arrogance; often, people just think that they are “too senior” to ask about basic stuff.
When I started my first Head of Product role, I thought that I was expected to have quantitative data skills. And I guess it was, but I never learned because I pretended I had my stuff together.
Only six years later, I finally got over myself and learned it by asking others for help.
We all learned how to manage backlogs, developers and designers different. And we all have our own ways that we like. When was the last time you checked how someone else is doing their stuff by sitting in their meetings and just observe?
Why is it important in 2024?
One question I usually ask myself in hiring is “can I learn something from this PM?” even if they are applying for a less senior position than mine. When I loop in my PMs to help me screen candidates, I want them to evaluate their future colleagues on the same dimension.
Our job is so incredibly diverse, there’s no “better” or “worse” PM, we’re all experts in something. Especially now with AI and all it’s sub disciplines coming up.
Especially now there are new concepts coming out constantly, it’s a wasted opportunity if you close your eyes to them.
How to learn it
Call a colleague up: https://www.mentoring-club.com/
Run your team with outcomes instead of agile processes
Knowing how to set intelligent goals and outcomes means letting go of control and processes. It sounds counterintuitive, but agile processes are not the saving grace to make a team productive in today's remote world and fast-changing markets.
Well, it might be productive, but not where it should be. Knowing how to identify meaningful outcomes (not financial outcomes) led me to let go of many processes inside of teams that constantly stressed me out. (Especially the SCRUM ceremony circus)
This includes most agile processes from SCRUM frameworks or—sorry if you're in it—SAFe. This is not only relevant if you’re a product leader with control over the organizational structure. It definitely is a must-have skill for any product or growth manager to get this under control.
And it’s not as easy as it sounds, but that’s exactly what makes it a differentiator the bigger your clients become. Setting meaningful outcomes in B2C vs. Enterprise is a totally different ballgame for different types of PMs.
In the past year, I have gotten tangled up way too many times in pointless discussions on point estimations and how we should structure standups and other ceremonies with teams.
Unless you ask me how I would do it as a PM myself, I don’t care as your manager how you do it if you deliver outcomes.
And I’m walking the talk here. I use very light requirements in my planning processes. They usually need to fit on an outcome-driven one-pager, as mentioned under point 1. Summarization, the one-pager.
How to learn it:
Get started here to have team structures that allow you to be outcome-driven.:
My Growth Guide 3.2. Outcome-driven goal setting:
Summary and…
To look at 2024 as the year of AI is a bit shortsighted. Yes, underneath it all, there’s a lot of AI running. And I think PMs are overfocussing on becoming hyper-technical. It’s more about what becomes visible because you don’t have to deal with certain things that much anymore because they get automated away.
The above skills are all pretty timeless. While they were already important in the past, they are now becoming even more important.
The trend goes towards fewer but more senior people, so start upskilling yourself today in what actually matters.
… one more thing - 50’000 coming up!
I’m closing in on 50’000 followers on LinkedIn, and it’s time for another epic write-up about how I ended up in this successful mess. Make sure to reach out in the comments about what you want me to reveal.
Great read, Leah! I would argue that the first three skills are great fundamentals for any developer as well if not all knowledge workers.
The other two are great skills for any leader.