The 3 key skills a product manager needs to be successful

Bonus: books to read to improve the skills

If you want to be a successful Product Manager, you’d need to have a combination of hard and soft skills. Here are the 3 key skills that you must get better at.

1. Customer-centric – Products solve customers’ problems. It’s critical for a Product Manager to identify real customer problems and needs by talking to people and analysing their behaviour. You’ll navigate through hundreds of problems and choose the one that will make the difference. Consider reading these books focusing on the customer problems:

• Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice

• Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works

• The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you

2. Leadership – A Product Manager is the voice of the customer and works across multiple business functions. They balance the needs of the different areas of the organisation and influence them to meet customer needs. The Product Manager needs to be able to paint the future, lead through influence, context and intent. In addition, great PMs effectively negotiate through technical, financial and political hurdles while representing the needs of customers. Consider reading these books on leadership:

• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable

• The One Thing You Need to Know About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success

• Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders

3. Strategy – Strategy is an informed opinion about how to win and one of the most important skills of a great Product Manager. The PM should foresee and communicate the future direction of the product by constantly analysing the current market, emerging technologies and competition. Consider reading these books on strategy:

• Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters

• Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant