Great Products Have Opinions
Product is a funny discipline. Wedged between design, engineering, and the customer, what makes a great product manager seems difficult to capture. Some argue it’s a mastery of the process. Some argue its a business mind coupled with a keen eye for design. Some believe it’s just the translation of complex concepts across three very different tribes. But these simplifications don’t satisfy. Plenty of great product leaders only scrape by in any of these areas. And plenty of marginal product leaders excel in one or more of these categories.
Why is it so hard to capture? Because great product leadership isn’t about the product leader. It’s about the product. Anyone trying to hire, groom, or manage a product unit needs to understand that the first, and most critical hurdle, for understanding what will define a great product leader is whether they understand the essence of a great product: opinion.
In a world where there is no limit to the imagination in what can be executed, opinion is king. Opinion is what differentiates you from the field. And the funny thing about products with good opinion is that they rarely fit the mold when they emerge. It stems from a contrarian view on the way a system should work in the face of change. That requires original thinking from the product leaders at the helm. It requires the conviction to go against the grain. No good product ever emerged from a scan of an analysts requirements document. No market changing innovation ever impressed the industry pundits early on in its journey.
For decades, we’ve been pushing computing systems to do anything. We’ve done our best to abstract away everything from hardware to networking to operating systems. What’s left looks like magic. Imagine software — and it can be. Powerful. But also challenging for anyone entering the field. Where you used to be able to compete on functional completeness against fairly static requirements, today you’re surrounded by a thousand competitors competing for the same customers. That means functional completeness is no longer the standard by which upstarts win. In fact, it’s often not even a requirement. The more choice that exists in the market, the more that products tailored for specific niches will win without the features required to compete for other segments.
Need proof?
Consider a few examples. Salesforce is a leader in the cloud software world today. Deservedly so. When Marc Benioff started on his journey to build a CRM in the cloud, the prevailing wisdom was that it couldn’t be done for companies at any scale. People had tried. All had failed. And many industry experts were skeptical of his architecture. But opinion drove him to a segment he could please. And opinion guided a roadmap that took Salesforce through years of growth.
Elon Musk is no different. When he took the helm at Tesla, there was still a strong argument in industry about hybrids, hydrogen cells, and a degree of skepticism towards battery powered EVs. Turns out, he was right. But he was also able to use the opinion he had to focus on a path towards success. Starting at the high end of the market (where the cost of batteries were relatively low compared to the rest of the vehicle) on his journey to further develop.
Square. The same. No point of sale was destined for enormous valuation. But Jack Dorsey bucked the trend and built a series of hardware devices that allowed his business to capture payments in a way that enabled a slew of financial services innovations.
The list goes on. Strong, contrarian, opinions are commonplace in the stories that herald industry leadership. It’s the strong opinions that turn out to be correct that define great products. And if you can’t build great products, you can’t be a great product leader. So the right strong opinions are the cornerstone of what gates great product leadership. Then comes the ability to execute. The process, the language, the discipline.
What does it mean for you?
The big question is how do you make sure that you have an opinion worth championing? There is no easy answer here. But there is one rule — don’t go easy on yourself. Use your brain to get there, not someone else’s. Hold yourself to the highest standard as you develop your vision. You want to be bold and realistic. You want to know your competition and why they’re great. You want to look at the trends and understand why they’re true. You want to be thoughtful.
The most important thing you can do is define what your product’s opinion is about the world. It will make all the difference.
