Types of Product Leaders
Product companies have two types of leadership
Two types of leaders are required to make a successful product and a successful company: a Visionary Leader and an Operational Leader. One of these will be the CEO the other might be another executive, or it might be you: the Product Manager.
Visionaries may be the company leader or the product leader (or both), they usually have a clear vision of either the product that they want to sell, or of the problem that they are trying to solve. Operational leaders are concerned with running or growing the business. As an example, you could think of Steve Jobs as a Visionary leader, and Tim Cook as an Operational one. There are different types of Operational Leaders, such as Strategic, Tactical, and Growth, but for now I want to focus on the roles of Operational Leaders and Visionary Leaders in a business.
At a startup or growth stage company the Visionary is almost always a “Founder CEO.” They are the person with the product vision driving development and feature prioritization. Different people can take on these leadership roles at different times. For example, the CEO might be an Operational/Growth leader whose primary concern is keeping the company stable and growing, and the Visionary is a founder in another role like Chief Product Officer.
As a Product Manager, understanding the types of leaders at your organization can be critical. Different types of leaders will have different expectations of you – possibly unconsciously – to compliment the role that they are filling.
In organizations where the Visionary is defined, you as the Product Manager are there to execute that vision as an Operational leader. This role can take many forms, from managing and prioritizing the backlog to working with the sales and marketing teams to define customers and strategies. Ultimately you will be the one responsible for getting things done.
If you find yourself in an organization without a Visionary, then there's a good chance that it's supposed to be you. Adding a Visionary leader to an organization might happen for a few reasons: maybe the original Visionary has fulfilled their original vision, maybe they left, maybe the company is mature and needs a new Visionary for a new product line. Whatever the case, if you are the Visionary, it's your job to own and understand the problem you are tasked with solving so that you can create a comprehensive product vision and make sure that the Operational leaders have everything that they need to execute that vision.
Once you understand who the Visionary and Operational leaders are at your company, you can better understand how your role as a Product Manager fits into the organization and how to make the biggest impact.