Product managers are not the CEO.
However, does this also mean the reverse? The CEO is no the product manager? No. They can act like that sometimes. The responsibility of the roles heavily intersect. A large part, in my estimation, is due to both positions having visibility company-wide, and the requirement of working with everyone in a company in order to get your job done.
See, it’s a funny thing. I’ve heard stories from PM’s getting chewed out for walking into meetings thinking they run the show. In reality, a PM runs very little of a show, even if they have their own team. They greatly rely on key players to help get their job done – and they don’t have authority over those people!
Don’t get me wrong – we play a key part in a company. Truth be told, it’s probably one of the hardest jobs out there to be successful at. Trying to ensure everything stays on track (especially if you are a PM in charge of Services execution as well, which is becoming more & more common) without a) being part of senior management and/or b) having direct authority over other key folks in the company to drive things through.
First point: you have to build relationships. Strong ones. You must be able to consider all members of management your ally, since they will need to help prop & support you. This is much like the CEO. Both of you do in fact need to have (in a startup, anyway) daily interaction with all members of management, or if the company is of a smaller size, the whole company.
There’s nothing wrong with this. So long as you aren’t an arrogant ass, but know what you are doing and how you want to help the company be successful, you’ll be fine. Especially so long as you don’t pretend to know how to do each member’s of management’s job better than they do. That’s a no-no. We are jacks of all trades, but the idea is not to be better salesman than our Sales leaders, or developers than our CTOs. That’s crazy talk.
Second, get some wins. This is so key, especially for new PM’s. You want to get some wins under your belt and build up your cred internally. If you can’t do this, you’re known trust & ability will drop significantly.
Third: you are not setting vision nor strategic direction. You take your cues from management & the CEO. You help to supplement their choices, and make recommendations – and may in fact define a large portion of detail, but you are not running the company.
There may be a lot of personal conflict for PM’s there around this matter — I know there is for me. However, at the end of the day I know that I’m not the CEO and i respect that.
There’s one MAJOR lesson I’ve learned for dealing with this. Use the following words religiously:
“It’s my recommendation…”
If you feel strongly that something should be done in someway, offer up to the CEO, “I recommend (based on A, B, C) that we do this.” Why is this so important? Because this way, you aren’t being an arrogant jerk by saying, “do it this way, because I want you to, and I am the all-powerful product guy / gal!” to your CEO. That’s a recipe for trouble.
There’s a lot of relationship building that goes into being a good product manager. Nevermind also displaying cross-functional leadership, execution, vision, planning, and functional aptitude (can sell, understand marketing, basic finance, etc…), you have to get things done on a daily basis to and actually ship products.
So while PM’s are not the CEO of the company, they are the role closest to being the case – that much is true. Just respect the structure and understand that it’s there for a reason.
Happy shipping!
