The Hidden Skills That Make Great Product Managers

Stop chasing glamorous PM skills like vision and strategy—the best product managers excel at three unglamorous fundamentals that actually drive results.

Most product management advice focuses on communication and analytical skills, but the highest-performing PMs distinguish themselves through simplification, follow-through, and willingness to do whatever it takes.

Key Takeaways

• The best product managers excel at three core skills: simplifying complex problems into one focused priority, following up on results after shipping, and "carrying the water" by doing unglamorous but necessary work
• Product strategy doesn't require fancy frameworks—start with comprehensive landscape analysis, honest current state assessment, and clear opportunity identification before defining solutions
• Breaking into product management requires getting the PM title on your resume first—lateral moves within companies or startup roles provide the most accessible entry points
• Great product managers ship frequently and learn from results rather than perfecting strategy documents—execution consistently beats perfect planning
• Following up on metrics and outcomes is rare but high-impact behavior that builds credibility and accelerates learning cycles
• The PM role involves significant unglamorous work including project management, QA, customer implementation, and sales support—embracing this reality drives success

Timeline Overview

• 00:00–09:33 — Three Traits of Great PMs: Maggie explains how the best product managers excel at simplification (finding the one truly important thing), following up on results (remembering to track and share metrics), and carrying the water (doing unglamorous but necessary work)
• 09:33–21:37 — Simplification and Communication: Practical advice for writing clearly including reading work aloud, using the Minto Pyramid principle, limiting lists to three items, and finding peer review groups for continuous feedback
• 21:37–31:42 — Follow-Through and Career Development: Why following up on shipped features is rare and valuable, how long it takes to become competent as a PM (4-5 years), and the trade-offs between staying deep versus job hopping for career growth
• 31:42–39:55 — Breaking Into Product Management: Most reliable paths include lateral moves within companies, startup opportunities, and MBA rotation programs, with emphasis on getting the PM title stamped on your resume first
• 39:55–54:16 — Product Strategy Framework: Step-by-step guide including mission/goals, landscape analysis, current state assessment, opportunity identification, challenges, solutions, and implementation planning with 20+ page depth
• 54:16–End — Contrarian Perspectives: Why being "data-driven" indicates shallow thinking, examples of product failures, and how content creation accelerated Maggie's career through increased visibility and network expansion

The Three Skills That Actually Matter for Product Managers

While most PM advice focuses on communication, analytical thinking, and strategic vision—skills Maggie considers table stakes—the best product managers distinguish themselves through three less glamorous but more impactful capabilities.

• First: Simplification and Focus Great PMs excel at identifying the single most important thing to work on and staying with it long enough to achieve results. This sounds simple but proves extraordinarily difficult in practice. Large companies present thousands of competing priorities, OKRs, and potential projects. Startups offer endless opportunities amid constant fires.

The challenge isn't just choosing what to work on—it's maintaining focus when stakeholders want to re-litigate priorities weekly. Effective PMs resist the temptation to chase new shiny objects or react to every urgent request. They understand that shipping one thing well beats partially completing ten things.

This skill requires both analytical ability and emotional resilience. You need confidence in your prioritization framework and the courage to defend your choices when others disagree. Most importantly, you need the energy to keep the team excited about the same project over months of development cycles.

• Second: Following Up on Results The second differentiator involves something shockingly rare in product management: actually measuring whether your shipped features worked. Most PMs define success metrics upfront, maybe even set up dashboards, but then never circle back to analyze results.

This follow-through provides compound benefits. For managers, it demonstrates reliability and creates confidence that projects won't disappear into black holes. For the PM, it accelerates learning about what works and why. The more you ship and measure, the better your intuition becomes for future decisions.

The mechanics are straightforward: set calendar reminders for two weeks, one month, and six months after launch to check your metrics and share results with stakeholders. This simple habit immediately distinguishes you from peers who move on to the next project without reflection.

• Third: Carrying the Water The most important but least discussed PM skill involves willingness to do unglamorous work that nobody else wants to handle. Great PMs embrace project management, QA testing, customer support, sales calls, copywriting, and implementation tasks that others consider "beneath" their role.

This mindset shift is crucial because PM success depends on outcomes, not activities. Unlike engineers who can finish coding tasks or designers who can complete mockups, PMs only succeed when customers actually solve their problems. This outcome-focus requires filling every gap in the customer experience, regardless of whose "job" it technically is.

The emotional component matters equally. As the person responsible for results, you often become the team's emotional center. Maintaining optimism and momentum through setbacks requires genuine investment in the project's success, which naturally leads to taking on whatever work needs doing.

A Step-by-Step Framework for Product Strategy

Most product managers struggle with strategy because they lack a systematic approach for moving from vague direction to specific plans. Maggie's framework provides comprehensive structure for tackling strategic questions like annual planning, product pivots, or new opportunity evaluation.

• Start with Foundation and Context Begin by documenting your company's mission and goals, plus any high-level framing about current priorities. This establishes the strategic context for everything that follows and helps readers understand how your specific recommendations connect to broader objectives.
• Conduct Comprehensive Landscape Analysis The most valuable section involves exhaustive research into your operating environment. Document business performance, product status, market dynamics, competitive positioning, SWOT analysis, and key risks. Include customer feedback, support tickets, technical debt, and engineering constraints.
• Assess Current State Honestly Provide brutal honesty about what's working and what isn't in your current product, business model, and team capabilities. Include bottoms-up feedback from users, customers, and internal teams. Document technical hurdles that limit your options.
• Identify Clear Opportunities From all your research, extract the top one or two opportunities where your team can win. Focus on areas where your unique competitive advantages create sustainable differentiation. Explain why these opportunities align with your mission and capabilities.
• Define Implementation Challenges Document what must be true about the world for your strategy to succeed. What capabilities need development? What market conditions must persist? What technical investments are required? This analysis helps identify potential failure modes before committing resources.
• Create Specific Solutions and Plans Finally, propose concrete approaches for capturing your identified opportunities. Include sequencing, resource requirements, team structure, costs, and success metrics. Keep recommendations to three maximum to maintain focus.

The resulting document often reaches 20+ pages because comprehensive analysis requires depth. However, always include an executive summary upfront for stakeholders who won't read the full analysis.

Why Strategy Documents Should Be Comprehensive

Many PMs worry that long strategy documents won't get read, missing the primary purpose of the exercise. The document serves multiple functions beyond stakeholder communication.

First, it's homework for making better decisions. Writing forces you to confront gaps in your knowledge and develop opinions about complex trade-offs. The process of research and synthesis often matters more than the final artifact.

Second, it creates alignment opportunities with key partners. Engineering and design counterparts typically engage deeply with strategy documents because they need confidence in the direction before committing their teams. These partners often provide the most valuable feedback.

Third, it establishes a reference point for future decisions. When new opportunities or crises emerge, you can evaluate them against your documented strategic framework rather than making isolated judgments.

The summary section handles the communication challenge. Most stakeholders will only read the executive summary, which is perfectly fine as long as the deeper analysis exists for those who want to engage seriously.

Breaking Into Product Management: The Reality

The biggest barrier to PM careers isn't skill development—it's getting the first PM title on your resume. Hiring managers screen heavily on prior PM experience, creating a challenging catch-22 for career changers.

• Most Reliable Entry Points Lateral moves within existing companies provide the highest success probability. If you're already an engineer, designer, or other IC role, you understand the product and have internal credibility. Volunteer for PM-adjacent projects and gradually transition responsibilities.

Startups offer the second-best opportunity because they're more willing to take risks on unproven talent. Early-stage companies often need people who can wear multiple hats, making prior PM experience less critical than adaptability and willingness to learn.

MBA rotation programs at large tech companies provide structured entry paths but remain extremely competitive. If you can access these programs, they offer excellent training and career acceleration.

• The Title Threshold Effect Once you have PM experience on your resume, opportunities expand dramatically. The second PM job is infinitely easier to obtain than the first. This reality means accepting suboptimal first opportunities often makes sense for long-term career goals.

During interviews, the most important questions become "What have you shipped?" and "What were the results?" Having concrete examples of features you've launched and their impact immediately separates serious candidates from those who only understand PM concepts theoretically.

Why "Data-Driven" Thinking Limits Product Success

One of Maggie's most contrarian views challenges the product management orthodoxy around being "data-driven." While data provides valuable inputs, over-reliance on metrics often indicates shallow product thinking.

The Limitations of Pure Data Analysis Data describes what happened but rarely explains why or predicts what will happen under different conditions. Metrics can tell you that engagement dropped, but they can't tell you whether that's because your feature is confusing, unnecessary, or solving the wrong problem entirely.

More problematically, "data-driven" thinking often becomes an excuse for avoiding difficult decisions. When PMs claim they need more data before choosing direction, they're usually procrastinating on judgment calls that require intuition and customer empathy.

The Alternative: Data-Informed Decision Making Better PMs use data as one input among many, including customer research, competitive analysis, technical constraints, and market dynamics. They develop strong opinions about user needs and market opportunities, then use data to validate or challenge those hypotheses.

This approach requires more courage because you can't hide behind "the data says" when making recommendations. Instead, you must synthesize multiple information sources and make bets based on incomplete information—which is actually what the job requires.

The Compound Benefits of Content Creation

Maggie's career acceleration coincided with consistent content creation across podcasts, blogs, and social media. While content creation requires significant time investment, it generates multiple career advantages.

• Visibility and Network Effects Publishing thoughts publicly creates opportunities for interesting people to discover your work and reach out. Many of Maggie's best professional relationships began through content engagement rather than traditional networking.

Writing also forces clarity about your own thinking. The process of explaining complex topics to broad audiences improves your ability to communicate internally and makes you a more effective PM.

• Accelerated Learning Through Teaching Creating content requires research and synthesis that deepens your expertise faster than purely consuming information. When you commit to explaining topics publicly, you naturally invest more effort in understanding them thoroughly.

The feedback loop from audience engagement also highlights gaps in your knowledge and exposes you to different perspectives that improve your thinking.

Common Questions

Q; What's the difference between simplification and just cutting scope? A: Simplification means identifying the core problem that matters most and solving it completely, while scope cutting often means doing partial work on multiple problems. True simplification requires saying no to good ideas that distract from the most important work.

Q: How do you balance following up on results with moving fast on new priorities?

A: Set calendar reminders for specific intervals (2 weeks, 1 month, 6 months) rather than relying on memory. The follow-up often takes just minutes but provides disproportionate learning value. Most "urgent" new priorities can wait for this reflection.

Q: Should I really do work that's "not my job" as a PM?

A: Yes, because your job is delivering customer outcomes, not completing specific activities. If QA testing, customer calls, or project management are necessary for success, they become your responsibility regardless of org charts.

Q: How long should strategy documents really be?

A: Length matters less than comprehensiveness. Include everything necessary to make confident decisions, typically 15-25 pages for significant strategic questions. Always add an executive summary for stakeholders who won't read the full analysis.

Q: Is being data-driven really problematic for PMs?

A: Pure data-driven approaches limit decision-making because data describes past events but can't predict customer needs or market changes. Better to be data-informed while developing strong opinions based on customer empathy and market understanding.

Conclusion

Great product managers distinguish themselves through unglamorous fundamentals rather than strategic brilliance: simplifying complex problems into focused priorities, consistently following up on shipped features to measure results, and embracing whatever work is necessary for customer success. These skills require emotional resilience and outcome-focused thinking more than analytical sophistication. When combined with systematic approaches to strategy development and genuine customer empathy, they create the foundation for sustained PM excellence across different companies and career stages.

Practical Implications

• Set calendar reminders to follow up on shipped features at 2 weeks, 1 month, and 6 months after launch •

Read all written work aloud to identify unnecessary complexity and unclear communication

• Create a peer feedback group with 2-3 other PMs for ongoing work review and professional development

• Embrace unglamorous tasks like QA testing, customer calls, and project management as core PM responsibilities

• Write comprehensive strategy documents for yourself first, then add executive summaries for stakeholder communication

• Focus on shipping frequently and learning from results rather than perfecting strategy documents

• When job searching, prioritize getting the PM title on your resume over perfect role fit or compensation

• Use data as one input among many rather than relying solely on metrics for product decisions

Standout Insights

"If you ever find yourself saying something like, that's not my job, that's probably a thing you should do"

— This captures the outcome-focused mindset that separates great PMs from those who hide behind role definitions. Success requires filling gaps regardless of org charts.

"Strategy is 5% of the work that you do. The person who has a good strategy will not be as successful as the PM who ships more stuff, gets more reps and has the ability to actually create impact"

— This challenges the common misconception that strategic thinking alone drives PM success, emphasizing execution and learning velocity instead.

"Being data-driven is a red flag for me because it signals that you're not thinking deeply about the problem"

— A contrarian view that data should inform rather than drive decisions, requiring PMs to develop strong opinions about customer needs and market dynamics.

Start this week by setting calendar reminders to follow up on your last three shipped features—then share the results with your manager to build credibility and accelerate your learning.