What are universal product skills? What is the role of particular product skills or flavors? How important is domain expertise? How can you develop your superpowers?
Universal product skills; particular (product) skills; and domain knowledge
The way I frame it, to work in product, you need:
- universal product skills
- particular (product) skills
- domain knowledge
These 3 influence and enrich each other, and while they are all relevant and needed, some may be more important than others.
So what are they exactly?
Universal product skills
Universal product skills are transferable and can be applied across most of the products. Taking a step further, across jobs outside of product. Or even further, outside of work. Marty Cagan says2 “about 80% of the skills and talents of a product manager to be applicable across the different types of products”.
I further organize these universal product skills into 4 groups. Note that the edges are fuzzy, and we could for instance argue if the whole “business mindset” sub-group actually falls under “strategic mindset”.
1. Strategic mindset
All that lies on the ‘strategical side’. Think: Analytical thinking, innovation, problem-solving, research, etc.
2. Tactical mindset
All that lies on the ‘execution/tactical side’. Think: project management, planning for delivery/development, dependency management, experimenting, etc.
3. Business mindset
Think: growth, sustainability, profitability… creating value, capturing value; innovating business models, etc.
4. Leadership mindset
Revolving around leadership in two ways: people leadership (as in people management), or leadership through one’s individual work and expertise (as in individual contributorship).
Think: managing people & teams; leading without formal authority and servant leadership; sharing the vision, getting alignment, etc.
Particular (Product) Skills
Particular (product) skills are depending on previous experiences, expertise, knowledge, and background. They are also about working on different types of products in different ways. I like to say different “flavors of product management”.
Think: product managers with a strong focus on design and UX/UI; product managers with platform, marketplace, or similar mindset; product managers with a focus on marketing, growth, and brand, etc.
Domain knowledge
Product managers come from different roles and industries and it’s a rare situation even nowadays that someone has been PM from the very start of their career. Many times, current PMs used to be subject matter experts or work in an industry their product is serving. For instance, medical doctors can work as product leaders (or start their own startups in healthtech); jurists or lawyers could end working on legaltech or IP products and so on.
For example, some of the interesting domains could be HR, HSE, Legal; life sciences & applied life sciences (agriculture, biomedical, pharmacology…); marketing, PR, media and journalism; education, psychology, pedagogy etc.
How to Develop Your Superpowers
This may be especially true for the product, but I think for any sort of knowledge work, we have these 3 basic statements that are true:
- There’s a set of universal skills (or a mindset) – built over time, valuable and applicable across different contexts and jobs
- There’s a set of particular skills – based on one’s unique skills, and also background, perspective and experiences
- There’s a set of domain knowledges – which is based on expertise, education, research and work in a certain domain
This is where the 4th piece of puzzle comes in play: there is also curiosity, sharp mind and good learning skills. And with that, you can develop your superpowers in 3 steps:
- Maximize the fruitful cross-pollination between universal skills, particular skills and domain knowledge. In all directions.
- Maximize the fruitful cross-pollination between your work life and life outside of work. In all directions.
- Stay curious, sharp, learn how to learn, and keep learning