So You Want to be a Product Manager

Welcome back! In part one of this series, we covered the differences between true project manager responsibilities and what many PMs find themselves forced to do, or (more often) what they’d like to do but aren’t empowered to accomplish.  

If you didn't score well in the product management self-assessment, take heart – you’re not alone, and you’re not doomed. Nearly every enterprise PM, even the ones who seem to excel, has battled with core skills at some point. What separates those who thrive is the willingness to acknowledge the gaps and actively seek solutions. Modern product management is a team sport and a continual learning process. By openly addressing struggles we can realize these are common challenges with proven solutions. Surveys show the top challenges for PMs include conflicting objectives, insufficient time, and unclear roles. Sound familiar? It’s okay to admit it – recognizing the problem is the first step to fixing it. 

Here in part two, we’ll dive into some of the most common problem areas in attributes of product management. We'll also talk about how you can adapt and evolve, then give some concrete tactics you can use to start moving the needle.  

Product management is not a one-size-fits-all role, especially in large enterprises. Savvy PMs address their competency gaps not only through self-improvement, but also by adapting the role to fit their strengths. A great place to start is to redefine your responsibilities to focus on the strengths you already bring to the job. For example, an enterprise PM who excels in inbound technical work but struggles with outbound marketing might transition to a platform PM or technical PM position where stakeholder comms are less intense, and another team handles go-to-market

Others may formally split duties with a product owner or project manager, if their org allows, so that the PM can concentrate on strategy and user problems while someone else manages day-to-day scrum processes. In environments that misuse “PM” titles for what is essentially project management, a bold PM can push to redefine expectations – educating the company on true product management (perhaps referencing articles like “You Might Not Be a Product Manager” itself) and slowly shifting their duties toward the product work that matters. This kind of change can be slow, but even small redefinitions (like carving out a regular innovation day, or owning a specific KPI) can help a struggling PM play to their strengths. Let’s take a look at five of the biggest struggles enterprise PMs wish they could improve.

1. You’re Not Defining the Product Vision

The Struggle: Be honest – do you truly set your product’s vision and roadmap, or does leadership hand it down to you? If your “strategy” comes from a slide deck your boss made for the year, you’re not actually owning the vision. Too many enterprise PMs are stuck executing someone else’s ideas. In effect, you’ve been demoted to backlog administrator. Product management navigates the strategic direction, while project management guides implementation. If you’re only executing orders, you’re acting as a project manager, not a product manager. 

How to Improve: 

• Assert Your Voice in Strategy: Carve out time to contribute to product strategy. Offer to run a roadmap workshop or present a data-driven proposal for a new direction. Show that you have ideas and evidence to back them. Even if you start small (like influencing one feature’s direction), it builds trust in your strategic chops. 

• Bridge to Leadership: Proactively communicate with your higher-ups about why certain priorities should change. Use customer feedback or market research to make your case. When you back your vision with real data, it’s harder for execs to ignore. 

• Own a Niche: If the big vision is out of your hands, try owning the vision for a subset of the product. Define a clear mini-roadmap for a module or new feature and drive it end-to-end. Deliver success there, and you’ll earn more say in the broader product direction. 

2. You Rarely Talk to Real Customers

The Struggle: When was the last time you spoke directly with a customer who uses (or chooses not to use) your product? In enterprise settings, PMs often get isolated from users – buried in internal meetings with stakeholders who claim to speak for the customer. If your user insights all come secondhand (sales reports, support tickets, or HiPPO mandates), you’re flying blind. A product manager without customer contact is like a chef who never tastes their own food. Even industry guru Marty Cagan says if your company won’t let you talk to users, that’s a huge red flag. 

How to Improve: 

• Fight for Face Time: Make it a priority to engage with actual customers and end-users. Schedule regular customer calls, attend sales demos, or sit in on support calls. If there’s a policy against PMs talking to customers, challenge it (politely) – remind folks that great products start with understanding real user needs. And if all else fails, consider finding an organization that does value user insight. 
• Piggyback on Existing Channels: Leverage your UX research or customer success teams if you have them. Join a UX interview session or ask to review raw user survey results. Even reading through open-ended responses or listening to recorded user interviews can be eye-opening. 
• Empathize Proactively: Don’t wait for formal research. Use tools to gather feedback (online forums, app store reviews, social media mentions). Walk through the user journey yourself regularly. Developing this customer empathy will ground your decisions in reality and help you advocate for features that actually solve user problems.

3. You Struggle to Say “No” (Poor Prioritization)

The Struggle: Your sales team wants Feature X yesterday. Marketing is pushing for Feature Y because “our competitor has it.” Every exec with a pulse has a pet project for you. And you… you say yes to all of it. If your backlog is a dumping ground for every request, you’ve got a prioritization problem. Great PMs know that focus is key – you can’t build everything at once. But in enterprises, the pressure to please stakeholders can turn a PM into a people-pleaser with an ever-growing roadmap. The result: missed deadlines, half-baked features, and a product with no clear direction. 

How to Improve: 

• Set Clear Criteria: Establish a transparent prioritization framework (e.g. impact vs. effort, OKR alignment, ROI estimates, and use tools like this Jira add-on for prioritization). Share it with stakeholders. When new requests come, evaluate them against the same yardstick. It’s easier to say “no” (or “not now”) when you can point to a criteria-based decision rather than it seeming like an arbitrary rejection. (Example: “Feature Y doesn’t align with this quarter’s objectives around improving retention, so we’re deprioritizing it for now.”) 

• Practice the Polite No: You can decline requests without burning bridges. Acknowledge the idea, explain your reasoning, and highlight what is being focused on instead. For instance: “I see how Feature X could be valuable. Right now, our data shows improving our existing onboarding flow will drive more value for customers. Let’s revisit X next quarter.” By framing the trade-off, you show you’re thinking about overall product success, not just saying no for the heck of it. 

• Back it with Data: Whenever possible, use evidence to support your decisions. If you have user research, analytics, or market data that favor one initiative over another, share that insight. It’s hard to argue with facts. Over time, delivering results on your chosen priorities will build credibility, and stakeholders will trust your no’s because your yeses are paying off.

4. You’re a Project Manager in Disguise

The Struggle: Look at your calendar. If it’s wall-to-wall sprint ceremonies, status meetings, and project check-ins, you might be living in project manager mode. Many enterprise PMs end up as glorified project managers or Scrum masters, tracking tasks and chasing statuses, while neglecting true product work. Yes, ensuring the trains run on time is important, but if that’s all you do, who’s actually defining what those trains should carry and why? If you never get to do discovery, research, or strategic thinking because you’re too busy updating Jira and putting out fires, this is a big gap. 

How to Improve: 

• Delegate and Automate: Use your delivery team resources. If you have a Scrum Master or project coordinator, lean on them to handle more of the day-to-day status tracking and meeting facilitation. If not, look into tools (dashboards, automated reports) that can reduce manual project tracking. Free up your time from clerical work so you can focus on product strategy. 

• Block “Think Time”: Literally schedule time on your calendar for product work – be it market research, data analysis, or just brainstorming the next big idea. Treat these like important meetings with yourself. During these blocks, ignore Slack and email (the world won’t end, promise). Use the time to step back from execution and consider your product’s direction and opportunities. 

• Rebalance Your Role: Have an open conversation with your manager and team about the product vs. project balance. If you’re in a senior PM role but doing mostly project management, point it out. You might say, “I’ve noticed I’m spending most of my week on coordination. To deliver more product value, I need to invest more time in discovery and strategy. Let’s figure out how we can redistribute some responsibilities.” It’s a scary conversation, but a good leader will understand and work with you on a solution. (If they don’t, that’s telling in itself.)

5. You’re Not Measuring Outcomes (Just Outputs)

The Struggle: Feature shipped? Great. But did it move the needle for your business or users? Too often, PMs rush to the next project without checking if the last thing they built actually solved the problem. If you’re not religiously tracking product outcomes (e.g. adoption, engagement, revenue, customer satisfaction), you’re just a feature factory. Enterprise PMs can fall into the trap of thinking delivery = success. Meanwhile, the real question is: did we deliver the right thing? Without data and feedback loops, you’re managing a to-do list, not a product. 

How to Improve: 

• Define Success Upfront: For every major feature or initiative, nail down the key metrics that define success before you build. Is it increase in daily active users? Uplift in conversion rate? Reduced support tickets? Pick a metric (or a few) that everyone agrees matter. This way, you know what you’re aiming for and can measure against it after launch. 

• Instrument Your Product: Work with your engineering or analytics team to ensure you have the tooling in place (analytics dashboards, event tracking, etc.) to gather data on those metrics. If you ship something and can’t easily see the results, that’s a problem to fix ASAP. Even simple solutions like tracking usage logs or sending out a user satisfaction survey can generate useful outcome data. 

• Learn and Iterate: Once the data is in, actually analyze it. Don’t just pat yourself on the back that a feature went live; dig into whether it had the intended impact. Share the results with your team and stakeholders – even if the feature underperformed. This shows accountability and a learning mindset. Then figure out why the outcome is what it is. Use those insights to adjust your roadmap: double down on what works, and course-correct or kill what doesn’t. A culture of outcome-driven development will set you apart as a true product leader. 

Closing Thoughts: Leveling Up as an Enterprise Product Manager

If you saw yourself in any of these struggles, take a deep breath – you’re not a bad product manager, you’re likely a product manager in a tough environment. These skill gaps are common, especially in large organizations with legacy structures and competing priorities. The good news is you can close the gaps with conscious effort. Start by acknowledging where you need to improve (no ego, just facts), then tackle it head-on with some of the strategies above. 

Being an enterprise PM isn’t easy. You’re navigating big ships with lots of crews. But that’s all the more reason to sharpen your product management skills and break out of the status quo. Push for that vision ownership. Fight for your users’ voice. Say no when it counts. Prioritize outcomes over output. In short, do the real product work that makes you a product manager, not just a product manager in title. 

Remember, progress might be gradual – and that’s fine. What matters is moving in the right direction. With each small win (a stakeholder who respects a no, a customer insight that sparks a great feature, a metric that improves because of something you championed), you’ll feel more in control and more fulfilled in your PM career. Keep at it, stay bold, and never stop learning how to improve as a product manager. Your future self (and your products) will thank you for it. 

-------------------- 

Continued Reading:

If you want to dig deeper, check out our post Product Manager vs. Product Owner: The Hows and Whys of Both for additional insights on balancing strategic vs tactical roles. It can help clarify if you’re stuck doing product ownership tasks at the expense of product management.