Uncovering the State of Product Leadership

Some unexpected findings from our survey of 300 technology product leaders

In every field there are a number of commonly held beliefs — things that aren’t controversial and as a result largely go unexamined. That’s why it’s always rewarding to do new primary research. You’ll always find something surprising. Recently, I had the opportunity to work with the folks at Product Collective on a study of 300 technology product leaders. We wanted to dig into their backgrounds, responsibilities, effectiveness, and career satisfaction.

Last week, we announced the survey results, and as expected we saw some interesting results that challenge the conventional wisdom about today’s product teams.

Surprise #1: Product leaders don’t have a technical background

It’s generally assumed that to be successful, software product manager have, or should have a technical background, and have spent some time in development. Job descriptions regularly require an engineering degree or equivalent for product management postings. Yet, as it turns out the majority of product leaders have either a business, liberal arts, or creative background.

Surprise #2: Product leaders don’t consider themselves visionary (or value visionary thinking)

We think of Steve Jobs as the archetype of great product leaders — constantly coming up with revolutionary, often contrarian, ideas that lead to products we can’t live without. One would assume that all product leaders aspire to this, but no. Actually most product leaders see their role as primarily tactical. What’s more, they feel that tactical skills are more important to their success.

Surprise #3: Product leaders are largely reactive in their decision-making

This may go along with tactical alignment, but we generally envision technical product teams as being closely aligned with customers — talking to them regularly, and shaping the product experience to make their lives easier. However, most product teams say that their roadmap decisions are more heavily influenced by competitive pressures rather than customer needs.

Surprise #4: Most product teams report to the CMO

We think of technical product teams as being tightly aligned with engineering, and often a part of engineering organizations, but the days of pms as glorified engineering project managers seem to be over. Product teams today are much more likely to report to the CMO or line of business leader than the CTO.

Admittedly not everything we uncovered in the survey was shocking or surprising. Some of the “surprises”, however, are pretty shocking when you think about it. Product experiences, more than anything else are what differentiate companies in the market, yet most product teams responsible for these experiences see themselves plodding tacticians focused only on the last thing their competitors did. If you lead a product team it may be time for an end-to-end roadmap review.

But first, visit pendo.io/state-of-product-leadership/ to read the full study.