'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...