Do you believe in product magicians and data unicorns?
Two hot or dare I even say sexy roles are product manager and data scientist. Some make the magician or unicorn metaphor for great product managers and data scientists even. No, I don’t believe in real magic and unicorns and certainly not product manager magicians and data scientist unicorns. But, no matter if coming out of undergrad or grad school these roles are highly sought after.
These roles can be fantastic and extremely rewarding but they can also be infuriating and disappointing. Just like any role you need to line up a person's ambitions, a person's skills, and market's demand and where they align is probably the best fit.
However, product managers and data scientists often express frustration. This frustration is sometimes because of the misguided expectations of the person doing the job, and sometimes because of the misguided expectations of leaders on the purpose and expected outcomes.
This write-up provides a little expectation guidance for leaders seeking out product managers and data scientists. And, it provides aspiring product managers and data scientists guidance on what to expect.
Product Manager the Great
What is a product manager if not a magician? A product manager is responsible for the strategy through execution of an organization's products (digital, physical, and/or service). The product manager does this by identifying customer and market needs and aligns these with organization strategy. Then, the product manager coordinates various teams and resources to develop, launch, and enhance products that meet these customer, market, and organization needs.
Not so hard this may sound like. You couldn’t be farther from the truth. Product manager is a punishing role because of the complexity and demands the role faces day in and day out. Add to this that most product managers have influence but not authority with the teams they need to coordinate but are often held directly accountable for misses of others.
In my experience, the people that are the best product managers are people that are:
Curious: Curious people want to understand and learn more. They uncover what others don’t. Ask questions that others miss. In my experience this is a trait that people must have coming into the role and can’t be trained.
Empathetic: Empathetic people understand and feel others. They are good listeners. They want to understand others. This doesn’t mean that they are pushovers and must make tough decisions but they can do so with understanding. In my experience this is a trait that people can certainly develop but it doesn’t hurt to have natural tendencies towards empathy.
Trusted: Trusted people naturally communicate with others in a way that gains respect from others. People want to help them and will go beyond the minimum for trusted people. They will also waste less time bickering on things that are irrelevant out of a lack of trust. In my experience this is a trait that people can develop. Of these traits trusted person is the trait that takes time to build in the eyes of others but also can be quickly lost.
Communicator: Clear communicators can provide updates, insights, and in-depth analysis to others in a variety of forms. They leverage their empathy and trust and provide relevant messages to their audience. Clear communicating product managers are not rare but often product managers are not good across multiple forms and have a challenge to provide the executive summary.
Team Player: Product management is a team sport and accordingly being a team player is essential. This means understanding your role and how it plays within the team. Working well and supporting other team members. Stepping up when it is your turn to step up and playing a supporting role as needed. Ok product managers can step up when it is their turn, but great product managers also know when to play a supporting role. This includes checking the ego at the door which some product managers have a challenge doing, but not truly great product managers.
There are certainly other traits and skills you want your product managers to have but these five standout for me.
As a product manager these traits become really important when a lot of your time is spent (or should be spent) understanding and communicating with future and existing customers. Understanding customer need and aligning to your company’s strategy is where a significant amount of time should be spent. There is also significant amounts of time building relationships and engaging with internal teams like engineering, design, information technology, marketing, sales, etc. as a product manager.
The Mystical Data Scientist
Are you telling me the data scientist unicorns don't exist? A data scientist is responsible for answering difficult organization questions that require the combination of technical and analytical skills tied with a deep understanding of the domain. A data scientist often coordinates with others ensuring adequate data and other resources exist to answer these complex questions. Further, a data scientist performs this complex question analysis, often as part of a team, and communicates the results of the complex question analysis to others.
In my experience, people that are the best data scientists are people that are:
Curious: Curious people want to understand and learn more. They uncover what others don’t. Ask questions that others miss. Analyze things others don’t. In my experience this is a trait that people must have coming into the role and can’t be trained.
Empathetic: Empathetic people understand and feel others. They are good listeners. They want to understand others. They deeply understand problems. In my experience this is a trait that most data scientists are lacking despite how much value it can add.
Trusted: Trusted people naturally communicate with others in a way that gains respect from others. People want to help them and will go beyond the minimum for trusted people. They will also waste less time bickering on things that are irrelevant out of a lack of trust. In my experience this is a trait that people can develop. Of these traits trusted person is the trait that takes time to build in the eyes of others but also can be quickly lost.
Communicator: Clear communicators can provide updates, insights, and in-depth analysis to others in a variety of forms. This includes skills around visualizing data in a meaningful way. They leverage their empathy and trust and provide relevant messages to their audience. Clear communicating data scientists are well respected because they are anomalous unfortunately.
Team Player: Data science is a team sport and accordingly being a team player is essential. This means understanding your role and how it plays within the team. Working well and supporting other team members. Stepping up when it is your turn to step up and playing a supporting role as needed. Being a team player means not only within the analytics team itself but also the broader team that is tackling business problems and data scientists will have a number of teams they play on at any time.
There are many other traits and skills you want your data scientists to have including good technical skills but these five standout for me.
As data scientists these traits are important so you do the right analysis and get maximum impact from it. Reality is data scientists spend more time data cleaning than anything else. Even organizations with good data engineering practices still have data scientists doing a lot of data wrangling. Certainly great data scientists spend more time up front making sure they are not working on the wrong problems or misunderstanding the problem. Great data scientists also spend a significant amount of time developing and communicating out results in an audience-centric manner.
Lots in Common!
Ok, this might not provide the right message. ;) But, it was too perfect from when I was in Lima, Peru!
The interesting part of course is the key traits that great product managers have are the same that great data scientists have in my experience. There are huge differences in what these two positions are responsible doing and they each would have an extremely hard time switching roles. But, the similarity in key traits is maybe not so surprising because in general great product managers and great data scientists are people that can identify problems, apply information to make a decision, and clearly communicate out findings in a trusted manner.
For both product manager and data scientist you don't notice things like CEO of the product or data, data unicorn, or product magician. But, both of these roles clearly require complex skills and broad understanding of many disciplines. Further, they both require the ability to align and leverage resources across multiple teams that result in making important decisions.
The challenge is since the titles product manager and data scientist have garnered attention by both people wanting to be in the role and leaders that want their organization to be successful there is a belief that these positions alone can deliver value. These roles are merely parts of an ecosystem. And, if delivering successful products then you need successful customer service, engineering, design, marketing, sales, and many more teams working together. Yes, the product manager has an important role in delivering successful products but organizations are only as good as their weakest link. The same is true about data scientist and being able to help make complex data-driven decisions.
Accordingly, if you are a leader setting expectations related to these roles don't look at product managers or data scientists as people to "paper over" dysfunctional organizations and garner success. And, if you are or seeking to be a product manager or data scientist then you should have the perspective that you are part of a large ecosystem and the success of a product or data-driven decision is a result of the team's effort. Being a good product manager or data scientist in a healthy organization ecosystem will often deliver amazing products and make great data-driven decisions.
Hopefully this article has made you laugh a little, think a little, and maybe just maybe alter your expectations for the better around product managers and data scientists. And, if you happen to be a product manager or data scientist reading this then maybe you have a new-found appreciation of your colleagues with the data scientist or product manager title. As always, feel free to reach out and let me know your thoughts.