Most people (even if they don’t admit it) have a few words or quotes they live by. Little mantras to help them get through hard times either personally or professionally. And that’s okay, sometimes all you need is that inspirational quote to get you through the day (hence Forbes “Quote of the Day”).
To help all you PMs stay calm and focused take a look at these 10 compelling quotes:
“A good product manager is the CEO of the product. A good product manager takes full responsibility and measures themselves in terms of the success of the product. They are responsible for right product/right time and all that entails. Bad product managers have lots of excuses.”
— Ben Horowitz, Andreessen Horowitz
“The “P” in PM is as much about ‘PEOPLE’ management as it is about ‘PROJECT’ management.”
— Cornelius Fichtner, The Project Management Podcast
“You want to be extra rigorous about making the best possible thing you can. Find everything wrong with it and fix it. Seek negative feedback, particularly from friends.”
— Elon Musk, Tesla
“If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.”
— Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn
“The utmost thing is the user experience, to have the most useful experience.”
— Marissa Mayer, Yahoo!
“The value is in what gets used, not in what gets built.”
— Kris Gale, Clover Health (previously was at Yammer)
“My biggest regrets are the moments that I let a lack of data override my intuition on what’s best for our customers.”
— Andrew Mason, Founder of Groupon
“The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn’t said.”
— Peter Drucker, “The Founder of Modern Management”
“A great product manager has the brain of an engineer, the heart of a designer, and the speech of a diplomat.”
— Deep Nishar, SoftBank Group International
“We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better.”
— Jeff Bezos, Amazon
While these quotes won’t solve all your product problems, they might help give you a little extra momentum during the day.
We then spoke with some of our favorite PMs and they gave us the quotes they hear every day (and which continually give them a head ache).
“That’s in our pipeline.”
“We’ll be launching next quarter.”
“So…are we pushing the release date, again?”
“Yes, I will make sure to take that into consideration.”
“So a product manager walks into a bar. Prepares the food, serves drinks, washes the floor, and totals the night’s tips.”
If you have any other quotes you live by or that you say on a regular basis to get through your day, we’d love to hear them — comment below!
