Where Have All The Good Product Managers Gone?

Sometimes I feel as if I am in the song. "Where Have All the Good Times Gone" from Van Halen's classic album Diver Down.

Where have all the good times gone?

Once we had an easy ride an' always felt the same

Time was on our side, we had everything to gain

Let it be like yesterday

Is that me or Happy Days?

Except, I'm usually changing the chorus to "Where Have All The Good Product Managers Gone?" Every week, I get calls from frantic recruiters, friends in startups, VCs, that are looking for 'good' product managers. I generally reply by asking a basic question:

What do you mean by 'product manager'?

Do you really want:

A) An Engineering Manager, or

B) A Brand Manager, or

C) A Design Visionary, or

D) A Project Manager

Since in this obfuscated, overheated, hype-laden mushuggeneh Internet bubble 2.0, a 'product manager' can refer to any of the above.

Wikipedia has a thoughtful summary of the various concepts embodied in product management. Such thoughtful approaches are doomed to failure, however. Because, when people are desperate for 'product managers', what they really are desperate for is a clue -- a clue about what product to sell and build.

What ever happened to the marketing discipline of assessing consumer needs, identifying gaps, and designing a product to meet the gap? This has all been turned around (and I know this is heresy for a technology guy) by the latest buzzword ('user generated content', 'community', 'social networking', blah blah blah) or technology ('peer-to-peer', 'Ajax') or combinations of the above ('a peer-tp-peer community collaboration with Ajax based web delivery'). Sound familiar? It should - it describes part/all of the past year's 'breakout successes' on the Internet.

Here's a case in point -- the success of the Apple iPod vs. any other mp3 player. Apple did not invent the mp3 player, did not invent downloading music (even legally), and did not invent cool clients to organize and manage your music (remmber WinAmp?). What did the product people at Apple do? The analyzed where all of the current product offering were weak, and came up with a relatively short list of things that the new product had to do:

1) It had to be easy enough to use so that your mother could rip CD's, buy music, and listen to music.

2) It had to provide an end-to-end solution to the whole musical experience (really, part of objective #1), and

3) It had to be cool.

Yes -- there were some really impressive human-interaction design approaches (the click wheel), cool color choices (you can chose any color as long as it's white), and neat ads showing people actually USING THE PRODUCT (wow -- what an idea). But he core insight was the system (the player, software, online store) that was required to make the music experience better. That was based on a consumer needs analysis -- nothing more, nothing less.

I think all of the 'good' product managers haven't disappeared (or haven't all been hired by Google) -- they never really existed. There really should be Engineering Managers, Brand Managers, Design Visionaries and Project Manager in every company. And maybe a Jobs-like person to insist on excellence at the top. That's what we should focus on -- satisfying consumer needs, regardless of how old-school that sounds.