Most of us have felt it at some point in our product careers. That nagging feeling that you’re a fraud. That the successes you’ve experienced have essentially come down to good luck, good timing, or aligning yourself to competent people who carried you through.
Impostor syndrome is remarkably common among product managers. And it’s easy to see why. We don’t code, design, or sell. We do somewhat amorphous things like prioritize, position, articulate tradeoffs, and conduct discovery.
Other roles often have more tangible, immediate results. Product managers rarely get such clean feedback loops. Metrics move slowly, markets move quickly, and we’re expected to understand buyers, users, business and technology trends, competitors, and a dozen other things while routinely making decisions without complete information.
It’s easy to feel like everyone else knows something you don’t. It’s easy to doubt yourself.
But not knowing everything doesn’t make you an impostor. Good product managers aren’t the ones with all the answers. They’re the ones who know which questions to ask, how to find the answers, and how to bring the right people together to act on them.
Bonus Content
You’re not an empty suit. But the Gentleman Ghost definitely is. James “Jim” Craddock is an intriguing Batman villain that the caped crusader has been battling since the late ‘70s. Marvelous Videos explains Gentleman Ghost’s history in this video.
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