General Principles of Hospitality
For product leaders out there, there are some general principles of hospitality that greatly help product development. First, make the customer feel good and important. This lets them know that you will take care of them once you get the chance. Second, when providing hospitality be sure to make eye contact and genuinely listen to the customer. It’s all about making that initial connection with them.
In addition, product managers need to create products for hospitality businesses that deliver on key pain points. At the end of the day, the restaurant is delivering a very personal experience. Therefore, we don’t want technology to interfere with that. We want technology to help deliver a better experience.
What Makes A Great Product and A Great Product Manager?
As I alluded to before, the best products solve problems most people aren’t even aware of. In my opinion, one of the best examples of this is Kindle. Kindle allows you to carry multiple books and magazines all in one place, which saves you storage space. Most people don’t realize how finding space for all those books can be a pain- that’s why Kindle is a great product.
In terms of what it takes to be a great product manager, I think having domain expertise is important. I also think there’s a certain amount of persistence that product managers need as well. Furthermore, emotional intelligence is another important ability to possess. This ability allows you to make tough decisions under pressure. Nonetheless, in product it’s inevitable that we are judged on what we ship from a quality and quantity perspective.
I think failing is somewhat of a blessing for great product managers. Product managers must learn from those failures in order to use that experience for future products. So, if you can learn from failure, it can be as valuable as having great success. In fact, it’s not necessarily beneficial to have a ton of success especially if you don’t know what’s driving that success.
