How to be a Great Product Leader

One of the challenges we've long acknowledged in the tech industry is how difficult the transition can be from a software engineer to an engineering manager due to the vast distinction in the skill set to be great at the new role. Equally challenging but less talked about is how much this same challenge exists when transitioning from a product manager to a manager of product managers, ie. a product leader.

I wanted to share some of the best practices I learned along the way making my own transition from a product manager to a product leader.

Shift your individual focus from design and execution to vision and strategy

I think one of the first challenges that new product leaders face is understanding exactly the division of labor between themselves and their team members. While you are largely given sound advice to focus on driving results through your team, it doesn't mean that when done right you are shirking all individual responsibility.

The way I think about product management is it boils down to driving the vision, strategy, design, and execution of a product area. Individual contributor product managers spend the vast majority of their time on the design and execution of their specific features and some of their time developing a vision and strategy for their features aligned to the entire product areas vision and strategy. As you become a product leader, you should be spending more of your own individual time driving the vision and strategy for the entire product area and leaving the design and execution responsibilities for individual features to your team members. Doing this right means a lot more than simply supporting your team. It involves significant individual contributor work of a new flavor to distill down the various input from your team members, your executive team, and most importantly, your customers, to create a clear and compelling vision and strategy. This work is very difficult for individual team members to take on and is best suited to be the direct responsibility for the product leader.