When I first started as a product manager, I heard that the product manager is the CEO of the product. That was a long time ago, but I still remember I loved it. I felt empowered, and it helped me understand the untold part of the role.

You have to remember though that these were different times, the role of a product manager was considered a very senior one. People asked if you were senior enough to become a product manager. I managed by myself a product that had 40 developers working on it. The term junior product manager was considered an oxymoron. The first product manager I hired – one without any product management experience – had 15 years of managerial experience before becoming a product manager.

But with the evolution of the role, as product management became more popular and full-blown organizations were built, and with the popularity of agile, which tracked so much attention to working with engineering, the CEO portion of the role kept diminishing. 

In today’s world, when product managers are sometimes (wrongly) perceived as requirement writers and release managers, it’s sometimes hard to imagine what being the CEO of the product really means. So much so, that when people are told by their managers or mentors that they are expected to be the CEO of the product, it seems so far-fetched that people start resenting that statement.

The most common complaint that I hear is that nobody listens to the product manager and that they don’t have the authority to make decisions. But when I dive deeper into it, I often see mis-expectations on the product manager’s side. 

Being the CEO of the product is a great responsibility that comes with the great power you expect to have. It needs to be earned, but you can’t get there if you don’t understand what it means and what it takes.

Here are the three core skills that I see people lacking when they complain that being the CEO of the product is a meaningless statement.

Since it’s not always easy to develop these skills alone, and just from reading, our new program for senior product managers – the Product Leadership Launchpad – will help you practice it in real life until you succeed.

Developing a Wide Perspective

A common complaint I hear from product managers is that if they are the CEO of the product, the CEO should just accept what they think and let them decide. But for the CEO to be able to rely on you and accept your recommendation, you must be aligned at the highest levels, and you must understand how they think and what matters to them.

Being the CEO of the product doesn’t mean applying the product perspective to every decision and letting that dictate what you do. It’s quite the contrary actually.

For example, selling your product to key strategic customers isn’t “non-product nonsense” and automatic defocus. It’s a matter of balance, but you can’t be puristic about sticking to the roadmap and vision either.

Furthermore, if you want to help everyone achieve that balance, you must think about what you would do not only if it was your decision, but also if you had all the responsibility for the company’s success.

It’s so easy to say what needs to be done when you have a narrow perspective. The smaller your landscape is, the simpler it is. 

But being the CEO means that everything regarding the product is your problem. Not just which features get developed when, and not even just what your competitors do. You must be fully aware of how the product sales are doing, what impedes them, what is important strategically for the company, and where it can lead you. 

To become the CEO of the product, you must adopt the CEO’s perspective, and not vice versa.

Leadership, Not Authority

Another common complaint is that CEOs get to tell people what to do, and product managers don’t. It’s a true statement, at least partially, and I claim that it doesn’t matter as much as you’d think anyway.

The reason I say it’s only partially true is that product managers do have at least some authority. There are decisions that everyone expects product managers to make. The problem is that often these decisions are rather tactical, and for the more complex, strategic ones, product managers don’t feel they have this power even if people would love them to lead the way.

That brings me to why I think that the fact that product managers don’t have as much formal authority as the CEO isn’t an issue. It’s true that CEOs can decide on anything and everything (bar some decisions that they need to get the board’s approval for). But good CEOs don’t just decide. They don’t instruct people to do as they are told and that’s it. They guide people into understanding and accepting that this is the right thing to do. They use the authority that they have far less than they could.

Moreover, most CEOs I know, don’t want to make all of these decisions, and surely not by themselves. They want their people to come and lead the way – lay a proposal that makes sense given all the considerations (that’s why you need the wide perspective), and only get the CEO’s approval or feedback. Even when they give feedback, most of them would appreciate another attempt to bring to the table a new suggestion that (1) makes sense (2) takes the CEO’s feedback and perspective and (3) is your plan – not just a copy of what they said in the room.

Making Hard Decisions

Everything I mentioned up until now might sound difficult, and honestly – it is. Remember that with great power comes great responsibility, and if you want the power of the CEO you have to be willing to step in their shoes and accept their responsibility as well.

As you develop a broader perspective, things by nature become more complex. You need to consider multiple points of view (e.g. product, engineering, marketing, sales, finance), and each makes sense when you look at things from their perspective, but they often contradict each other. You operate more and more in realms of uncertainty, where even the facts aren’t (yet) known.

In many cases, there truly aren’t easy or simple answers. You often can’t win on all fronts, and some tradeoffs need to be made. These tradeoffs aren’t trivial either, or you wouldn’t need to intervene.

But you have to remember that the decisions that you need to make as a product manager and a product leader are often the hard ones. Because in most cases the easy ones are figured out by the team without having to involve you. Or they could simply ask Chat GPT 😉

Being the CEO of the product is not an empty statement. It is often needed more than you are willing to admit, and your managers wouldn’t always call you up for it. But it does also take more than you think to get there.

If you feel that they don’t give it to you, remember that they don’t have to. Because it’s not about a formal authority anyway. Bring your leadership, start developing a wide perspective, and help everyone make hard decisions, and you will be perceived as the go-to person for anything related to your product, not just the feature release plan. And that’s what being the CEO of the product really means.