Passion breaks inertia!

As a product manager, you’re responsible for overseeing the development and success of your product. It’s a challenging role that requires a broad range of skills and expertise. While there are many lessons that you’ll learn in the course of your career, one of the most valuable non-textbook lessons is the importance of having a strong passion for your product.

Passion is what keeps you going, even when things get tough. It helps you to stay focused on your product’s narrative and to keep refining it until it resonates with your target audience. A great example of this philosophy in action is the Amazon PR/FAQ framework, which encourages product managers to write a press release and a set of frequently asked questions about their product before it’s even built. This exercise forces you to think about your product’s value proposition, its key features, and how it will solve your customers’ problems.

Another important aspect of having a passion for your product is the ability to communicate it effectively to others. As a product manager, you’ll need to pitch your product to a wide range of stakeholders, including executives, investors, and customers. The key is to tell your product’s story in a compelling way that resonates with your audience.

But passion alone isn’t enough. You also need to be open to feedback, particularly negative feedback from customers. This feedback is invaluable in helping you to identify and address any issues with your product, so you can continue to improve it. As Nick Bogaty once said, “A complaining customer is a customer that cares…they are less likely to churn…”. So, embrace negative feedback and use it to make your product even better.

In conclusion, having a strong passion for your product is one of the most important things you can do as a product manager. It helps you to stay focused, communicate effectively, and make your product better. So, get into the trenches, get ship done, and passionately tell your product’s story.

Passion breaks inertia!