The saying “A good Product Manager is the CEO of the product” is as old as the Product Management role is, written by Ben Horowitz around 20 years ago. There has also been a much discussed article in “Mind the Project” that says “Product Managers – you are not the CEO of anything“
While I agree with some of what is discussed in the abovementioned Mind the Product article, I still believe that there are a lot of similarities between a Product Manager and a CEO. While yes, the CEO is responsible for an entire company, the Product Manager is “only” responsible for the product, but if you look at the what the PM is doing, what decisions they need to make and the breadth of the organization they are reaching, some of their traits are really of a CEO.
Being the person I am, I decided to start this blog with a post that might be controversial, might be not, but I truly believe that there’s “something there” that should be regarded. In many companies, the Product Management organization is referred to as “the business”, and the PLM or Director of Product actually is also responsible for the business.
My role as a “CEO” (payless promotion, and even without a promotion!) started much earlier in my career to my PM tenure.
When I just started working for Cisco as a Systems Engineer, my manager depicted the position to me the following manner – “You are responsible for everything that happens around the Security line of business. You’re the CEO of Cisco Security business for the country”. This was an “ah-ha” moment for me, a point in time where my professional life completely changed. My formal title was “Systems Engineer”. My actual responsibilities were a huge set. Not only was I to understand the technical side of the security products. My role was also to understand everything around that. Ranging from Cisco sales challenges, partner sales challenges, partner pre- and post-sales challenges and much more. My manager and myself both held me responsible and accountable for everything that succeeded and failed in my patch.
When I moved to become a Product Manager, I promised myself that I will retain the same level of responsibility. The only way to ensure this is done would be to define myself as the CEO of the product. I required the same from my team as a manager. I required myself to be the CEO of the product line just as well.
CEO's Role vs. a PM's
Think of the role of the CEO in a company – you’d expect a good CEO to know so much. Who are her/his customers? What pains the company’s product(s) and/or solutions solve? What are the sales challenges, who is the competition and how do they thwart their company’s sales… A small-company CEO would know all of that because she is probably doing some of the sales work herself. In a large company, sometimes, not so. While a smaller part of CEOs’ time is invested in actual sales, great CEOs would always know their products and solutions. They would always know their sales challenges, their competitors and the pains their company solves. Would you trust your CEO to go alone and close that sale cycle? Probably not, as they don’t have the depth required to close it themselves, but they would definitely have the breadth…
For a PM, it is not that different. A great PM would always need to know so much about the product. Just like a CEO, each decision a PM makes about the product might mean great success or disastrous to the product. Is it any different? PMs are often called to help “close out a sale” just as well. Why? Because they are looked at as senior, as decision makers. They are considered as people who can make a difference. Customers like talking to impactful people. Oh, and they have that competitive knowledge. And they know how other customers are using the product. And they know the future. Well, at least from a next release and roadmap perspective.Now think of what you need to do in order to become a great product manager – is it any different? It is not about being an actual CEO, it is actually all about behaving as such as having the breadth of knowledge. Future posts will discuss this as well.
So, are you behaving as your product’s CEO? Don’t be a stranger – express your behavior and experience in the comments below!
