The Search in Ambiguity - Inevitable for Product Management

You hear Product Management and the first thing that comes to your mind is, road map creation, sprint planning, or feature definition, then you are misguided. Product Management is a very broad area. A product manager in a start up does not work the same as an Enterprise or Data Product Manager. A startup product manager starts his day by analyzing a database, conducting customer interviews and end by thinking about customer churn. While an Enterprise Product Manager has all the resources and team to give enough research, data and reports to act on. But one thing that remains common to each one of them is, they collect information, analyze results and make decision from ambiguity. The tools they use, availability of resources or the source of information may vary, but one thing remains constant, "What do we do next?". The answer to this question can be achieved only using Analytical Thinking and finding answers in uncertainty. Hence this becomes an inevitable skill for every Product Manager. This mindset is independent of the department, company, industry, market or the location that the Product Manager works in. As we always say, everybody has to have a third eye for information that is not presented. And Product Managers definitely need to have that.