Findings

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a product manager stood in the gap between the product and the market to provide long-term vision, as well as tactical direction to keep things moving forward.

a boundless tenacity to build the best products in the world.

To understand the beauty of Clear [or any product], it’s not just important to look at what it is, but also what it’s not.

What makes the product management on Clear so impressive is that they walked through the fire of saying no to potentially great features, and emerged on the other side probably scorched and battered, but also with a great app for listing tasks and editing them quickly.

The 'I' Shape product management: These have their feet firmly planted in the mud of the practical world, and yet stretch far enough to stick their head in the clouds when they need to. Furthermore, they simultaneously span all of the space in between.

In short, PMs are visionaries as well as doers. Managers as well as makers. And they need to move seamlessly between those extremes, sometimes at a moment’s notice.

"If you want to build a ship, don’t drum people up together to collect wood, and don’t assign them tasks and work. Rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Criticism should be focused not on what doesn’t work, but on how you can build on the ideas of others to make it better.

If you just wait for feedback to happen to you, it’s going to happen in meetings when you’re not prepared, you’ll be on the defensive, and the focus will shift off product to politics.

"The sensible answer is to listen, absorb, discuss, be able to defend any design decision with clarity and reason, know when to pick your battles and know when to let go." ~Speider Schneider

Instead of dealing with the political ramifications of not hearing people out, take the time to respond thoughtfully whenever someone gives feedback (no matter how invalid) or sends an idea along.

"Design like you're right; listen like you're wrong." ~John Lilly

The PM’s job is to own a product — and this means owning its successes and its failures. You’ll gain trust and respect if you not only claim the successes, but also acknowledge the failures and commit to do it better next time.

One of the best definition of Product Management I have heard:

The PM role is often referred to as “the great diplomat,” and with good reason. It is our responsibility to balance a variety of needs from inside and outside the business, and somehow turn that into a roadmap that delivers business value as well as meets user needs.

So, user needs research is always the first place to look for how the product can make money.

Consider the slightly offbeat example of Iron Maiden (yes, really). The band has spent a significant amount of time touring in South America, and it's turned out to be a great strategy. They usually play sold out, highly profitable shows in the region. Why has the band been so successful there? If you ask music analytics company Musicmetric, they'll tell you it's related to an unlikely phenomenon: piracy. The company discovered a surge of BitTorrent traffic related to Iron Maiden's music in South America in recent years, particularly in Brazil. By going where people were already fans of the music the band was able, as Musicmetric CEO Gregory Mead put it, to "Lbel rather successful in turning free file: sharing into fee-paying fans."

The Long Wow is a means to achieving long-term customer loyalty through systematically impressing your customers again and again. Going a step beyond just measuring loyalty, the Long Wow is an experience-centric approach to fostering and creating it.

The long wow is built on a four-step process:

1. Know your platform for delivery. Identify the ways you can combine different ways to engage with customers, both online and offline.

2. Tackle a wide area of unmet customer needs.

Based on your user needs research, identify an area where there is a huge need that is not met by your product, or any other products out there.

3. Create and evolve your repeatable process. Combine the company's existing strengths with new ideas to meet unmet needs to come up with ways to delight users over and over,

4. Plan and stage wow experiences. Develop your ideas over time, and introduce new and better experiences consistently along the product development life cycle.

And then, repeat as necessary to make sure the long wow isn't just a one-time thing. This is an excellent way to identify good revenue streams in your product, and ensure that you continue to provide the value needed to create loyal customers who keep giving you money.