'Seeing the whole,' or being a good strategist and leader, are the most important aspects of being a successful product manager.

It is hard to summarise what great product leadership and strategy is so I’ll start my post with my thoughts on what it is not:

• Getting stuck in tunnel vision. Time and time again product managers suffer from fixating on an undeserving aspect or feature of a product. Ask yourself, regularly, is their value in what I am currently doing? If there isn’t, focus on something else.
• Not recognising when a problem is solved (related to the above.) Some problems need a simple solution, don’t overcomplicate them.
  
• Discarding planning. Working agile is not an excuse not to have a plan. You sooo need a course or a mid- term plan. If you don't, the chances are you will slip in to tunnel vision and by extension overcomplicate things.
• Going it alone. Sometimes this is appropriate but more often than not, it isn’t. Product roadmaps must be tied and woven to overall business strategy and goals. Product management is not about coming up with your own ideas and implementing them. We all know there is nothing more horrible than a vanity project or product.

Conversely, here’s a few of my thoughts on what great product leadership and strategy is:

• The ability to create a vision and define a product to be built. In essence, this is what product managers are there for.
• The ability to plan, prioritise and deliver the vision. Sounds straight-forward, but it is the mixture of visionary and delivery ability that make product managers so important in businesses.
• The ability to assess success and failure and treat them with equal vigour. Product managers need a natural instinct to step back from a product and see it for what it is. If a product is on vision, is succeeding, great. If it’s failing, this should be clocked and dealt with swiftly and appropriately.  
• The ability to continually spot new opportunities and weave them in to your vision. (Not to be confused with scope creep or ideas for ideas sake, all of the above points need to be considered.)
• Finally, products are all about people. People build and use products. You want both the people you work with and your customers to be happy. You are dreaming if you think you can sustain products without having both!!

That’s it. Can you 'see the whole?' Be interested to hear your thoughts on this one...

Just want to get this off my chest:

1) There's nothing negative about innovation in a corporate/business context.
2) There's nothing negative about making a big deal about innovation in a corporate/business context.
3) It's OK to say you belong or reside within and have an innovation team within a corporate/business environment. Innovation is not a dirty word.
4) Creating processes to support innovation in a corporate/business context is not done to, nor should, promote elitism. Quite the opposite.

Overall, it has to be that innovation has a far more practical place within corporations and businesses.

Some observations:

• It's OK to have an innovation team. You have a finance team. It's really no different. I am as confident I can organise my finances as well as our finance guy, but obviously I appreciate we need someone thinking about that stuff all the time on a business level. The finance guy doesn't stop me thinking about finance. Innovation is no different.
• Innovation as a discipline and job spec. There are a few sustained qualities required by innovation. If Innovation were a person, that person needs to be a great networker, have bags of perseverance, be not afraid of experimentation,  be happy (and naturally) question status quo and (crucially) understand the business, what it is trying to do and make associations between different situations and find solutions.
• Innovation and ideas generation. Sure, the innovation team would come up with ideas, duh. But, it is also about capturing and encouraging the development of creativity and ingenuity with whatever person, unit, team or outside influence it comes in to contact with. Your innovation team, if it is a real innovation team, will find a way to empower change and promote ideas from all over the place.
• Innovation and strategy. Products without business cases or strategies are not products, they are projects, ill defined projects. Obviously, innovation has to be strategic and think strategically. Innovation for innovation sake is not viable (mostly), in a corporate or business context, so innovation has to be channeled. It has to fit. There's a gap that needs to be laced up between strategy and innovation, and the innovation team are the ones who should tie the knots.
• Innovation and R&D. R&D is clearly part of innovation, and another very practical reason why you need a team or persons on it. Thinking 5 years ahead on the web is terrifically hard. but seriously, a year ahead should be an ongoing and consistent thread of exploration, theorising and most importantly, visioning.
  
• Innovation and delivery. This comes back to innovation as a discipline. Bottom line, creative ideas that aren't realised are worthless. Another reason to look at how you ring fence persons for innovation.

Lastly, it's pointless to fear innovation, its challenges and what it entails.  Treat innovation the same way as going to the office kitchen. Keep it practical, anchored in the here and now. I'm actually off to the kitchen now. Cup of innovation anyone? It's my round...

(When I get back with my coffee I'd really like to here your feedback on this topic. Particularly on where you think innovation should sit within businesses and corporations?)