The Difference Between Product Managers and Product Leaders

Last month, we did a post on how to get into and navigate a career in product. It got some great buzz because it hit on the unique nature of product professionals. But it also yielded questions from several of you about the difference between a product manager and a product leader, and what it might take to be successful as you progress through your product career.

In most employment situations, there is a general hierarchy that, from the bottom up, looks like this: employee, supervisor, manager, leader, executive. In product, the titles LOOK similar, but those kinds of hierarchies are actually anathema to a successful product team. Product leaders may have product teams they are accountable for, and may even have product managers reporting to them in an HR structure, but that is the least interesting part about being a product leader.   

So, What’s the Actual Difference in These Roles?

A product leader’s focus will lean more toward the strategy and vision across a broader collection of products. This role requires business acumen, leadership acumen and product management expertise in equal measure. They are actively navigating internal and external stakeholder relationships, likely at the executive level ,and helping product teams navigate the balance of business demands and customer or user demands. In addition to coaching and mentoring those on their team, product leaders also work with executive leadership to determine team size and structure, as well as funding approaches. 

A product manager owns the roadmap for a specific product, and ensures the product owners and their teams are working in concert to deliver the desired outputs. This position is often a lynchpin in making sure there is balance between theory and application. Besides being an expert on the product, they need to also be the primary expert on the customer, competitors and market landscape. 

How Do They Work Together?

I often talk to teams about a series of balance points that are essential to effective management of a product and delivery of value to the customer. It’s tough to explain to someone new to product how important it is to be able to turn the dial up or down in a variety of areas as needed. Product management is not about more than checking items off a task list — it’s about constantly balancing, assessing, then rebalancing a number of unique items across the team.  

I like to think about these balance points as the tuner on a car stereo. You can adjust it in any number of dimensions — front, back, right, left, treble, bass, etc., until the sound is reverberating perfectly around the car. And it’s different depending on the car, the music, even the weather. Think about blasting “Born to Run” with the windows down, vs. Beethoven's 9th on a chilly winter evening. The adjustment isn’t just about the music (the product, in this case), it’s also about the environment and external factors.

So it is with product teams; they have to find the sweet spot on the dial for a number of factors, and it’s not really about being equal on boths sides, it’s about finding the right point for what the team, the business context and the product itself needs. 

Why Does All of This Matter?

So what does this have to do with product leadership? Well, many product managers — really GREAT product managers — have a tough time moving into leadership roles because they can’t understand how their balance points have to shift to ensure the right amount of strategy and vision across multiple products (usually a product group or product family). That span of control now includes how priorities are determined across a broad swath of product delivery teams, and they have to be able to drive accountability for delivering that work without actually being in the delivery process at all. 

They need to shift toward the problem space, but still know enough about the solution space to understand dependencies and risk.

They are going to spend more time in vision than in detail.

They are going to focus on ensuring teams have access to the inputs of customer research, business context and market factors. And, they need to lead product owners and delivery teams through context, trusting that those people can and will deliver the agreed-upon outcomes.  

How This Changes From Organization to Organization

There isn’t one right way to do product roles within an organization. These are general product positions, but roles and responsibilities within these positions may shift depending on whether an organization is using Scrum, Kanban or some other Agile framework. Regardless, if roles aren’t clearly defined for the specific company context, chaos ensues, timelines slow, customers get frustrated and goals aren’t met.  

How are you navigating your career in the product space? What question do you want me to answer next? Hit me up over on LinkedIn — I look forward to the conversation!