Skills + Mindset: the hidden Yin and Yang of Product Management

Developing the right mindset not only complements, but enhances your core skills as a PM. Here are the top 3 you need to prioritise

The principle behind the Yin and Yang philosophy is that neither Yin (negative, dark, passive) nor Yang (positive, bright, active) are superior to each other, and that both are needed to achieve balance and harmony. When I think of this in the context of ‘how can I become a better Product Manager?’, I believe one’s skills and mindset is the yin and yang of product management. It’s important to develop both of these over the course of your career.

When I first started out as a product manager, the emphasis was on building out my core product skills and competencies. Understanding and implementing agile methodologies, defining a product vision and smart objectives, prioritising and developing a sensible roadmap, writing effective user stories, etc etc. And rightly so! It’s built a really strong foundation where I’ve learned a huge range of frameworks and tools, and how to apply them to different scenarios.

While this is crucial, over the years I’ve realised that you can’t always drag-and-drop a framework and apply it to every situation and scenario. Some things simply won’t work if you just try to use them ‘out of the box’. And if you’re doing something greenfield, there typically isn’t a clear beaten path to follow. And so here, I’ve found that having the right mindset is what’s important. Developing the right mindset - your attitude and approach - can help you more effectively apply your skills to a situation. And if there isn’t a clear framework that suits, you can use the principles to define your own approach that helps you reach the same outcome. 

Here are the 3 most important mindsets that every product manager should have.

Be curious and willing to experiment

In my opinion, one of the most important mindsets to develop is that of curiosity and experimentation. Curiosity drives PMs to ask the right questions and dig deeper into the "why" behind user behaviours and market trends. It compels us to challenge assumptions and look beyond the obvious. When we’re curious, it also encourages our team to be curious too. They can feel empowered to voice their own questions and ideas, ultimately fostering an environment of collective learning.

Experimentation is the natural companion to curiosity. It's the mindset that encourages us to translate our questions and hypotheses into tangible actions. It allows us to be more comfortable with failure, because we can appreciate it’s another learning opportunity and not a setback (more on that later). I believe it helps us to design better tests, gather data, and iterate on our products based on the results, thereby driving better outcomes for our customers. 

Be comfortable with ambiguity

Many of us work in fast-paced, ever-changing landscapes, meaning that not all problems come neatly packaged with clear solutions. PMs who are comfortable with ambiguity and understand that it is an inherent part of the process, can be better equipped to navigate it with confidence and creativity. 

This mindset encourages us to experiment and innovate, exploring new solutions that may not have been apparent in a more structured, predictable situation. It also increases our ability to adapt and be more resilient.

Learn how to fail well and fail quickly

I covered this quickly under being willing to experiment, but it’s worth its own mention. Failing ‘well’ means that we look at failures as opportunities to learn and innovate. A recent practice I’ve found super valuable is conducting post-mortems to understand with the team what went wrong and what we could have done differently. As long as these are done with an open mind, and by giving honest but kind and constructive feedback, we always gain really valuable insights that inform future decisions. 

Failing ‘quickly’ prioritises swift experimentation and feedback, and encourages PMs to develop a bias for action rather than perfection. I’m sure you know this already as it’s also a core principle in agile product development, that rapidly testing ideas and features is how we quickly gather real world data, validate assumptions and make better decisions. It accelerates the product development lifecycle, because we can quickly pivot when needed and avoid spending too much time or resources on concepts that aren’t viable or feasible. Embracing failure improves our resilience, agility, and helps us continuously strive for improvement. 

Developing the Yin and the Yang

So how can we encourage, and also prioritise developing these mindsets in our product teams? While this is probably more for the product leaders among us to think about, we can all play a part in creating the right space in our organisations:

• We should actively encourage experimentation in teams, and this can be as simple as running continuous discoveries. Make sure you celebrate both successes and valuable lessons from failures

• Share stories within your practice session of how you’ve embraced one or more of these mindsets in your team, and what you learnt

• Senior PMs should look to coach and mentor others in the practice to develop these alongside the core skills and competencies

Summary 

To me, it is increasingly clear that developing the right mindset not only complements, but enhances the core skills I’ve developed over the years. Being curious and willing to experiment, embracing failures and expertly navigating ambiguity, have made me an all around better product manager. I encourage you to focus on both skills and mindset - the hidden Yin and Yang of product management.