Business viability is often siloed to executives or sales, but the product manager and their team ultimately pay the price for failure. PMs must own this risk, tracking metrics like the LTV/CAC ratio to ensure the product is not just loved by users but is also sustainable.

The core job of a Product Manager is not writing specs or talking to press; it's a leadership role. Success means getting a product to market that wins. This requires influencing engineering, marketing, and sales without any formal authority, making it the ultimate training ground for real leadership.

It's not enough to improve engagement or NPS. A product manager's job is to understand and articulate how that metric connects to a financial outcome for the business. Whether it's growth, margin, or profitability, you must explain to leadership why your product goals matter to the bottom line.

Executives and investors care about lagging business indicators like ARR and churn, not leading product indicators like user engagement. It is the PM's job to connect the dots and clearly articulate how improvements in product metrics will directly result in moving the high-level business needles.

It is a product manager's job to understand the company's financial goals. Instead of waiting for leadership to share this information, great PMs take ownership by actively seeking it out. This means building relationships with finance and other departments to understand the metrics that truly matter to the business.

To build trust and deliver value, product managers cannot be 'tourists' who drop in on other departments transactionally. They must become 'locals'—deeply integrated, trusted partners who are regulars in cross-functional conversations and are seen as being 'in the battle' together with sales, marketing, and other teams.

In an organization still running in project mode, the 'Product Manager' title is misleading. The role is often relegated to organizing work and scheduling tasks for engineering. A true product model requires empowering these roles with the mandate, skills, and market access to make strategic decisions.

Early in a PM career, credibility is built faster by executing quickly and demonstrating a clear link to business revenue, rather than trying to come up with the most innovative ideas. Understanding how the business makes money is paramount for new PMs.

Product managers often fail to get ideas funded because they speak about user needs and features, while executives focus on business growth and strategic bets. To succeed, PMs must translate user value into financial impact and business outcomes, effectively speaking the language of leadership.