“One of the things that I talk a lot about is the difference between what I call a product owner and a product renter. I believe that product ownership leads to better products and careers. I remember growing up in India where I rented a home in Mumbai. However, when I moved to America and bought my first home, my mindset changed. So we’ll go through that analogy because I believe thats the mindset that you have to change.”
In order to change a mindset to be a product owner, this is the road map to follow.
Here are the key points to operating at the lowest level of detail:
When I bought my first house, the inevitable happened. My toilet broke. So, I went out to Home Depot and to get a plunger and a snake. As I bought the items, I remember I had never done that in my life. As a renter, you just make a phone call and someone fixes the problem. Eventually, somebody told me, “Rajat you need to figure it out. You need to learn how to do it because you’ll see where things are broken and what’s going on with the house”.
This mindset applies for product managers too. In fact, I believe that the first value of a product owner is self-sufficiency. When I first became a PM, there were very few analysts. So we had to sit down and bust out our secret skills and all of that.
Nowadays, the PM has a team of analysts at their disposal. However, that does not mean that a PM does not need to know basic analytical self-sufficiency. Therefore, understanding your architecture, being self-sufficient, and operating at the lowest level of detail is important. That for me is the first characteristic of a product owner.
The series concludes with DoorDash Product VP, Rajat Shroff, delving into the importance of optimism for driving product ownership.
Rajat Shroff, DoorDash Product VP, shares his key traits for product ownership and how to be customer-obsessed, not competitor focused.
DFINITY Product VP Brendan Foley joins Products That Count to gives an overview of the key product trends driving the future.