Product Management in Steve Jobs Way

I recently finished reading the book "The Steve Jobs Way". Though the book talks about Steve Jobs' management style and what a visionary he was, I cannot help myself exclaiming that he was the best Product Manager that the industry would ever see.

As a budding PM, I got to learn a lot from how he conceptualized, designed and executed the products that revolutionized the industry. As a best PM, he always kept consumers first and always kept on aiming for perfection to please the end users.

Similar to Steve Jobs, a PM needs to be passionate about his Product. It was Steve's passion that gave world such wonderful products like Mac, iPod, iPhones. It was this passion of his which gave him a lot of driving force and he turned a deaf ear to words like 'This cannot be done'. His passion motivated him to push his team harder to get the desired product. His passion made him the best evangelist of his products. Who can forget his great presentations at WWDC evangelizing the new era of music players, phones and tablets.

A PM should always pay attention to every detail especially the ones pertaining to customer experience. This will help a PM in conducting continuous innovation to get closer to an ideal product. There are so many stories dedicated to Steve's attention to details and this blog would be insufficient to quote all of them. And the best thing about him was that he always accompanied details with quality and simplicity. He always wanted the products to be simple to use and never believed in having complex user manuals. This is the main reason behind iPhone having only a single button. Like Steve, a PM should be the ultimate user of his own products He was a master in converting customer's wants to needs.

Often he used to quote Henry Ford "If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me, 'A faster horse'." He used to believe that if we ask a group of users - even those who aren't dissatisfied with a product - how to make it better, they will just end up thinking of things that are wrong with the product. The best that we would get from this exercise is incremental improvements. This won't lead to innovation or dramatically new products. Even I believe rather than asking users for features or solutions, just ask them the problems that they are facing and try to solve them using your expertise. He knew the expertise and strengths of his team well. He believed in holistic product development but at the same time knew when to partner with others.

As a owner of the product, a PM needs to take significant decisions by trusting his guts and insights. Then you need to ensure that you convince all the stakeholders for executing this decision. I cant really quote Steve's example here because he had a full authority on the team and could get things done in his own way, but he earned this respect and position because of the qualities mentioned above.

The best way to keep on improving these skills is by "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish!!"

Steve, thanks for being an inspiration always. R.I.P !!

First 6 months as a PM

Its been a long time (1.5 years) since I wrote my last blog. So the best thing I thought of sharing with all are the last 6 months as a Product Manager as that would summarise a lot of things that I have been upto in the past (obviously excluding things at personal front)

Well, I was one of the few people (single digit I suppose) from my batch at IIMB who opted for a career in Product Management and thought of returning back to the Software industry. You feel good sometimes that you are out of the rat race but at the same time it give you jitters. You wonder if this is the right move after 2 years of investment in MBA as none of your other batchmates want to board this train. But slowly as you interact with more people you realize that all of us are different in one way or the other with different interests, passions and priorities in life. So, to make a better choice for yourself you need to understand yourself better and need to give some time for things to settle down. You get more confidence on your decision when a leading Business Magazine of the country features you in their cover story for doing things differently.

Anyways, afterall these thinking and introspection, I settled with the Product Management role in a leading storage company. I wanted to start my PM career at a place where I could learn the initial nuances of job and get a good mentoring from some senior people. At the same time, I didn't want a small piece of the pie (read it as PM of part of the product based on location). I wanted to work with a strong Engineering team so that my interest in technology booms further. Haven spoiled by the excellent environment in Google, I wanted to work in a company which can boast of its work culture globally and believes in giving a lot of freedom to its employees. Taking all this into consideration, I found NetApp as the best fit for me amongst the available opportunities at that time.

Its the first time that NetApp hired fresh B School grads as PMs but they did a splendid job in ramping us. I must say it took my couple of months to figure out what is happening around me. This is such a technology centric company that initially meetings were like Greek and Latin to me. But slowly, I started reading more about the technologies that we use and develop. I started talking to more people to understand the various products we deliver and slowly started to master my own product. It would be wrong to say if I never thought that why I needed a MBA degree if I had to work in such hard-core techie product (will answer that later). But my passion for technology and zeal to learn new things helped me ramp up soon enough. Infact within 6 months here I was in Delhi, talking to customers on my own and talking freely about our technology and the future roadmap. I was not only confident in talking about my product but also the complete package that we offer to customers (and definitely my MBA skills were helping me here). I was feeling so happy and getting such a kick out of all this. Finally, I had got what I wanted - a good mix of technology and business. I am now in a position where I understand the market and customer needs, translates them to requirements for my Engineering and deliver great products in the market to kick out the competition. I am part of the complete cycle and can see the big picture now.

At last, I am glad that I picked up something which aligns with my passion and didn't follow the rat race.

Disclaimer: All the views presented are my personal and not endorsed by my current employer in anyways