How Competition Makes You a Better Product Manager

How Product Managers Can Use Challenges to Advance Their Careers

By: Jim Anderson

Narrated by: Jim Anderson

As product managers, we all want to become better at what we do. However, sometimes we can find ourselves in a rut: we've solved the immediate problems, our product is doing well, and we've just lost that drive that we need in order to reach the next level.

This is when the power of competition comes in. We all like a good challenge. When we are faced with a situation in which we might not be the best, or we might not know exactly what we should do, that's when we can become our best.

What You'll Find Inside:

• To beat the competition, product managers have to do some homework
• How Yahoo product managers are kicking Google’s butt
• Case study: what to do when a large competitor shows up on your block
• How product managers should go about doing business research

Competitive situations for product managers can take on a number of different forms. They can be as simple as placing ourselves into a setting in which we are called on to network with others. Maybe it's as simple as challenging us to pay closer attention to what's going on - easy to say, hard to do.

Mastering competition requires us to become experts at a lot of different skills. These include managing other people, finding mentors, and continuing our education. Throw in things like learning to stop multitasking and how to create an effective resume and all of a sudden you have some fairly challenging tasks ahead of you.

The good news is that every product manager can rise to meet these challenges. No matter if it's learning how to find your next product manager job or how to deal with a situation in which you've been passed over for a promised promotion, your ability to deal with the competition that comes along with your product manager job will be the key to your long term success.

©2014 Jim Anderson (P)2014 Jim Anderson