The "true/false" CEO mindset of product managers

I believe that many people entered the industry because of the phrase "product manager is the closest position to the CEO", only to find out that this is not the case after work. In fact, this sentence is true, but there are some deviations in our understanding; Unbelief? You see what the author says.

Many years ago, there was a saying in the Internet industry:

The product manager is the most CEO-like position;

Or that the product manager is the closest position to the CEO, etc.

This sentence has made the position of product manager really popular for a few years, but when more and more people are getting into the game, it doesn't feel like that's the case.

More people have become archetypal boys, demand boys, and miscellaneous people, and gradually this sentence has become a kind of irony.

I've been in the software industry for nine years, working in common roles such as development, testing, requirements analysis, project manager, pre-sales, and product.

I have been making products for five years, and I have done a lot of products 0-1 and 1-100 of all sizes, and in the last two years, I have been doing more and more program design in the product incubation stage, and I feel more and more that this sentence is not a joke: the real product manager is indeed the CEO mindset.

My point of view may not be convincing, so in this article I will elaborate on the following four dimensions, and readers will see if this is the case.

1. Listen to what the professor has to say

Some time ago, my MBA teacher, the professor of the "Innovation and Entrepreneurship Management" course, mentioned the concept of "entrepreneurial thinking" when explaining the entrepreneurship course.

When the boss is looking for a starting point, he needs to evaluate and analyze the "four feasibility":

1. the feasibility of the product or service (hereinafter referred to as "the product");
2. the feasibility of the industry or objectives (hereinafter referred to as "industry");
3. organizational feasibility;
4. Financial viability.

Thereinto:

1. The feasibility of the product is mainly divided into two aspects: "whether the product has user needs" and "whether it is attractive";
2. The feasibility of the industry is divided into four aspects: "attractiveness of the industry", "life cycle of the industry" (i.e., what stage it is in), "degree of industry diversification", and "attractiveness of the target market".
3. Organizational feasibility is divided into two aspects: "management ability in the team" and "resource abundance";
4. Financial viability is divided into "start-up capital", "financial situation of similar companies", "expected sales" and "rate of return".

Obviously, in addition to the fact that you have to actually register a company and carry out the management of the company, the process of the CEO's consideration of what to do is actually very similar to the thinking of the product manager when he does the 0-1 product design.

The above four points are what we often call industry analysis, market analysis, competitor analysis, team capability analysis, demand insight, product value, product benefits, cost, etc.

It's just that there are a lot of macro perspectives, or management and cost perspectives, that most product managers don't cover.

But when you really reach the product director and above, you will inevitably need to plan and design products with such a global thinking.

Second, most product managers don't have a CEO mindset

Unfortunately, most of the product peers will not be exposed to these perspectives, because they have not done it, so it is difficult to empathize with the thinking logic.

This phenomenon is also due to the fact that the growth of the Internet has peaked in recent years, and it is difficult for the market space to provide practitioners with a vast stage and opportunities to perform, and they can only be executed in the team.

This is a workplace pyramid, if your leader can't get up, it's hard for you to get ahead.

This is also what we often say "the ass decides the head", just like when I was doing testing, I always felt that the development was not good, I wrote bugs every day, and I didn't change them seriously, and I always found reasons;

• When I was doing development, I always felt that the test was nitpicking, finding fault with me, raising the demand indiscriminately, and digging holes indiscriminately before sales;
• When I was a project manager, I felt that the product standardization was too low, and the R&D team was not strong;
• When making products, I feel that no one understands the business as well.

But in reality, we are all blindsided, blinded by our current roles.

One of the things I often say is that we can only move forward if we know where we want to go.

Many people want to improve, but they don't know how to work hard, and often do useless work, the key point is that they don't know where the goal is, and they don't know how to do it is right and better.

If we don't know what kind of thinking is more macro and comprehensive, then we will naturally not consider it from a more macro and comprehensive perspective when encountering things.

Therefore, most product managers have a "fake" CEO mindset, but in fact, the market needs a "real" CEO mindset of product managers.

3. Cultivate a business mindset like pre-sales

Because I have been doing pre-sales for two years, many of the solutions I am doing now are actually providing overall solutions for the business from the perspective of pre-sales.

Similar solutions basically include business, industry, and enterprise background analysis, competitive product analysis, current problems (pain points/difficulties), business objectives, program design, implementation steps, expected effects, resource and guarantee analysis, risk analysis and other dimensions.

The specific names vary, but the dimensions are all the same.

So I think that the combination of pre-sales + product manager is more in line with the CEO's thinking:

It is necessary to look outward, have macro strategic positioning, and have meso-business and product planning;

It is also necessary to look inward, with mesoscopic resource and capacity analysis, and microscopic implementation steps.

Therefore, product managers can think more from the perspective of pre-sales and solutions, and cultivate a business mindset that is difficult to access on a daily basis.

Fourth, no matter how small the boss is, he is also the boss

If you don't know the price of firewood and rice, and if your identity and role do not change, it is difficult to grasp the essence only by empathy and empathy.

Whether it's starting a business or doing a side hustle, when you take this step, you will really cultivate your CEO mindset.

Take the side hustle related to knowledge payment done by many product managers as an example:

• Who is the target customer?
• What are their needs?
• What is the core competitiveness of our products,
• What is the value,
• What is the pricing strategy,
• What is the delivery strategy,
• How to do after-sales service,

and so on, you need to think, solve, try, and iterate on your own.

• For example, I am also working on Knowledge Planet, but what are my characteristics of the same model? I have discussed this issue with the four partners many times, and the process of this discussion is very similar to the product positioning and internal resource and capability analysis in the early stage of the business.
• For example, I'm doing a writing bootcamp, how much is the price of the bootcamp set? I have also thought about these questions for a long time, such as whether there are changes in different cycles, whether differentiated pricing is needed, and how to relate pricing to time costs, and even read a book called "Pricing to Win".
• For example, after I started to provide online services nationwide, I met all kinds of people, and more and more people will exceed my imagination and break through my cognition. It's a bit painful, but it's also fun, and if it's just through the original offline contact, I'm sure I won't be able to encounter it for the rest of my life.

It has allowed me to better understand the concept of "customer centricity" and at the same time to build my own service boundaries.

Therefore, no matter how small a company is, it is also the boss, and it will design products and services in an all-round way from the perspective of management, just like the "entrepreneurial thinking" mentioned at the beginning of the article.

Therefore, as a product practitioner, you can really try "low-cost entrepreneurship", and take this step not to go it alone and be financially free, but to experience entrepreneurial thinking.

Migrate this mindset to your own product work, and I'm sure you'll stand out from the team!

Write at the end

So much has been written, and there are many key elements that are not mentioned, but the core idea is the same:

The thinking of senior product managers needs to be in line with the CEO, and learn from the CEO's vision and comprehensiveness.

Design and plan your own products from multiple dimensions such as industry, market, users, resources, capabilities, strategy, finance, marketing, operations, and R&D, so as to make yourself more "transparent".

Of course, because of the information gap and the "identity gap", when facing some key decisions and challenges, I can't really think about the problem from the perspective of the boss, and it is often difficult to understand the boss's decision-making logic, and I feel that the boss is a rare big fool.

In fact, many times it is because of my own blindness, and I can't see Mount Tai.

And once we have a more comprehensive product thinking and entrepreneurial thinking, whether it is work, entrepreneurship, or running ourselves in the future, we will benefit a lot.

Columnist

I don't want to postpone, official account: I don't want to postpone, everyone is a product manager columnist. The B-end pan-financial products that changed careers halfway adhere to the goal of "verifying theories with practice and forcing growth with output". Every bit is precious, and the emphasis is on accumulation

This article was originally published by Everyone is a Product Manager and is prohibited from reprinting without permission.

Image from Unsplash, based on the CC0 license.

The views in this article only represent the author's own, everyone is a product manager, and the platform only provides information storage space services.