What Does It Take To Be A Product Manager?
Edition #001
Introduction
Welcome to The ContraMind Code.
The ContraMind Code provides you with the system of principles, signals, and ideas to aid you in your pursuit of excellence.
The Newsletter shares the source code, through quick snapshots, for a systems thinking approach to be the best in what you do.
The Code helps you reboot and reimagine your thinking by learning from the best and helps you draw a blueprint on what it takes to get great things done.
Engineering and the Mind’s Eye
by Eugene Ferguson
Eugene Ferguson shows in this book that good engineering is as much a matter of intuition and non-verbal thinking as it is of equations and computation.
Eugene reiterates that the conversion of an idea into an artifact, which engages both the designer and the maker, is a complex and subtle process that will always be closer to art than to science.
The author writes about the often neglected aspect of non-verbal thought in engineering.
In this episode of The ContraMinds Podcast, Roger Forsgren speaks to S Swaminathan and Vignesh Swaminathan about his career at NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), the foundational ideas that underlie the practice of Knowledge Management, and why being at the intersection of History and Engineering is a unique competitive advantage.
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Pradip Jamnadas, MD, is the Founder and Chairman of The Galen Foundation. The Galen Foundation’s Mission is to fill the knowledge gap between science and the public on health maintenance. A complete mind-body-soul approach supported by today’s science and yesterday’s wisdom.
Dr. Pradip Jamnadas is a medical graduate of the University College of London, England with post-graduate training at Yale University, specialising in Cardiology. He is a renowned lecturer and teacher, with a passion for high-tech interventions when called for, yet places greater emphasis on prevention measures.
What Does It Take To Be A Product Manager?
Amit Ranjan had shared his thoughts on what are the qualities, that he thought were, of the best Product managers. According to him ‘The Best Product Managers are those who have the heart of a designer, the mind of an engineer and the communication skills of a diplomat’.
As we thought through this, we read an interesting article in HBR on what it takes to be a great product manager. Here’s are some interesting ideas that we came across in the article:
The best Product Managers have the ability to empathise with customers and their problems.
The best Product Managers form authentic and trustworthy connections with both internal and external stakeholders.
One of the most important characteristics of a great Product Managers is their relationship management skills.
The best Product Managers are self-aware so that they can remain objective and avoid projecting their own preferences onto users of their products.
The best product managers maintain their emotions and keep it cool under pressure, they can quickly lose the confidence of all their constituents.
The best product managers have a deep understanding of how the organization operates and must build social capital to influence the success of their product, from obtaining budget and staffing to securing a top engineer to work on their product.
There is a strong yin-yang between product managers and engineering, with joint discovery, decision making, and shared accountability.
The best Product Managers understand what’s being coded but don’t tell engineers how to code.
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Three lessons we have learnt from this week’s missions:
Market Leadership tends to encourage the status-quo and become risk averse. Companies need to break free from this status-quo mindset to maintain and grow their market leadership.
For Personal Effectiveness and Performance Improvement, small improvements done consistently yields more results over big improvements done inconsistently.
Lessons learnt from failures are far greater than lessons learnt from success.
We hope you enjoyed this week’s edition of The ContraMind Code.
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