I’ve worked with several product managers over the past several years. These are a few traits that I encountered amongst effective product managers.

• Communication: PMs who can digest large amounts of data, connect the dots and articulate a credible story will have an edge over others in influencing and perhaps inspiring teams. Clear communication can help PMs rally teams towards a common goal.
• Curiosity: PMs need to solve myriad of problems on a daily basis. Being curious and asking thoughtful questions such as “why”, “who”, “what”, and “how” can help PM hone in on facts. Which will lay a strong foundation for finding suitable solutions.
• Collaboration: Product management is a highly collaborative process that requires Product, UX, and Engineering to work closely together to build the best experience for their target users. Needless to say, it is incredibly important for a PM to be collaborative, as well as facilitate collaboration amongst team members.

These are my opinions, feel free comment and add your opinions. Always great to learn about diverse experiences.

I have been an entrepreneur, and worked with several product managers who have been entrepreneurs. Here are my insights on why entrepreneurs make great product managers.

1. Vision: Entrepreneurs tend to be big picture thinkers. They have to be visionaries, folks who are driven by the ideas of changing or making a dent in the world. They are on a mission to make something that most folks have not thought of. This is an important trait for a PM without vision it is incredibly difficult to lead a cross-functional team.
2. Grit: Entrepreneurs have grit, they are masters of facing strong opposition. They are good at conditioning themselves in saying every “no” get’s them closer to a “yes”. They are strong minded people who can take failure into their stride, learn from it, and move forward. To be effective, a Product manager should be Not be afraid of failing. He/She should be willing to take risks and experiment constantly.

3. Ownership: They believe in taking ownership in the true sense. Ownership is about doing any thing that you need to do to make the product successful. It is about living and breathing the product and have a pulse on the market dynamics as well as needs of their users. Loving the product to the extent they come up with ideas in the middle of the night. Entrepreneurs have to, by definition, walk this line.

In summary, entrepreneurs are driven folks who believe in making something out of nothing. Where normal folks see problems, entrepreneurs see opportunities. They are dreamers who believe they can swim against the tide and push through every step of the way. Their enthusiasm can be infectious. They could lead by example and inspire folks towards a common goal. Any and all of these traits can make entrepreneurs successful as product managers.

I have faced the challenge of defining a True North many times; As an entrepreneur as well as a product manager at B2C and B2B Companies. I have also been asked for advice on how to define the True North. Here are a few guiding principles that I follow when defining the True North.

1. True north as a metric should symbolize the health of the product. This could vary from a returning user metric to the user taking a certain action in the product. For instance: A content publisher may be interested in views of his content hence might focus on new vs. returning users. Whereas a game developer might align him/her self with users interacting with the game.
2. The metric should align well with the user’s as well as business’ goals. It should symbolize the value that the product is vying to deliver. For instance; An ad-supported video streaming product’s true north could be the number of video plays. This metric aligns well with the business’ as well as user’s goals.
3. True north should take the stage of the product into account. When a product is brand new and has bare-bones functionality in place, it would be incredibly difficult to measure its success by a number of users taking a certain action. For instance: If one were to launch a new eCommerce site in the current market conditions. Chances are that no one is going to buy on day one. The goal might initially be to build a subscriber list. Over time the product team could market the product to the subscribers and convert them to paying customers. As time progresses and as the number of subscribers grow, product team could shift focus to the active user metric, number of transactions per user, and to average revenue per user (ARPU) and so on. The point is, True north evolves with product’s evolution.

True north or north star is a guiding metric of a product. Taking extreme care in defining it will help a product team make progress.

Hope this is helpful. Feel free to share your thoughts, always keen to learn from fellow product managers.

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