Because a Product Manager’s impact is ill-defined, we end up being judged for the products we ship. And by extension we start thinking that Product Managers should be evaluated by the solutions we propose.
But that’s missing the point.
Thoroughly understanding and defining the problem we’re trying to solve is far more important than producing a good solution. Rather than prescribe our solution, we should articulate the problem extremely clearly, then rally our larger teams to synthesize the solution together, iteratively. After all, Product Managers are Jack of all trades, not the Master of one.
I see this daily because I manage a team of PMs in a rapidly growing company. Short turnarounds and each PM going deeper into a feature group becomes our excuses for losing sight of the wider problems. It is so tempting to parade a quick solution instead of saying that we don’t know yet and we’re still exploring the problem space.
So it is incredibly helpful to always ask yourself as if it is Day 1 - what exactly is this problem we’re solving here? If we can’t agree on the problem, we’ll never agree on the solution.