Yes, hiring better product leadership is essential to get the product succeed and sustain the growth. Leadership has two dimensions 1. Generic 2. Specific. Generic qualities work as a base to enhance specific qualities. A leader should be capable enough to set the direction, a leader should have a vision, a leader should be able to drive the team to achieve goals, a leader should be capable enough to guide the team. These are the generic leadership qualities, then, what are the specific qualities? How to access them? Well, specific qualities of product leadership to consider while hiring.
Who understands the voice of a customer?
Customer is the one who should accept and pays the product. Eventually, product manager should understand customer’s expectation to make the product sellable. Product owner/manager should get into the shoes of a customer to think, act, and understand pros and cons of the product. Actually, business is to create products to reach and accept by maximum number of customers. For instance, a movie can become success commercially when the director thinks as one of the maximum set of audience, if he/she thinks as one of the minimum set of audience, eventually it reaches to very minimal sets of people — movie will be failed. A product is a product whether it is a movie or a building or a software product.
Who is ROI oriented?
One of the essential qualities that product leaders should have is, how to generate maximum revenue on the investment. Who will be ROI oriented? The leader who owns the product, who has the entrepreneurial mindset, who can access each feature which will be developed from customer standpoint, who knows where to invest and where not to invest, who is strategic enough to generate multiple revenue channels is the one who can be ROI oriented. Consequently, create a room to understand his/her sense of ROI.
Who owns the product?
Ownership is heart related not mind related, so, a person who feels that the product is mine, can own it as his/her baby to drive the product matured and succeeded. It is quite simple and clear. This is an essential quality the product leader should have; rest of the required skills and qualifications can be taught. I would suggest investing time to find a person who owns it rather than rents it :).
Who has the vision?
“Vision” is it a long sight or short sight :). Good vision of your eyes indicates that your short sight is good (It is the other way in medical science). To me, ‘the long you can see, the deep you can visualize’ is considered as the vision. So, how long the product leader can visualize the roadmap, how long the product manager can keep the product alive with unique and innovative features, how deeply the product manager can visualize the features to match with changing customer behavior and trends, how long the features are being matched with rapidly changing customer lifestyle –considered as a vision.
Who can negotiate well?
Product leader is a business leader who should have negotiating skills as mandatory because he/she should be able to negotiate with the leadership for budget, features and prioritization with customers, schedule, and efforts with engineering team.
Who keeps learning?
Product leadership should keep learning to get updated with current trends, new technology, customer behavior, domain updates so that they can create the products for the current market needs.
Who coordinates well?
Product manager is the single point of contact for marketing team, engineering team, customers and the stakeholders eventually, great coordination skills are much required. Customer expectation, business, and requirements should be well documented and clearly explained to the engineering team to get the right product developed. Progress of the development, product vision, roadmap should be able to updated to the relevant stakeholders periodically.
Who has great presentation Skills?
Information can be presented in crisp when a person understands the concept well enough. A great presentation can convince the audience in professional way to make decisions. PowerPoint presentation is the best tool to present the data.
Who has quality sense?
Quality of a product will create customer satisfaction and value for the money. Eventually, loyal customer base will get increased, which will help to sustain the product for a longer time.
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He is the Author, Product Specialist, Business Consultant, Entrepreneur, Public Speaker, Thought provoking writer, and Joke writer. Follow him on Twitter
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