The Silent Strain of Solo Product Managers - Follow Up Story

When brilliant product management work breaks down

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This week’s backstory is about collaborating with other product managers:

The Silent Strain of Solo Product Managers

What Prompted This Article?

This article is about a real product manager, “Vivek.” He is a brilliant product manager who has technical depth and business savvy. Vivek moves fast, and most of the product managers on the team struggle to keep up with him.

His response to most problems was “I’ll take care of it.” But after handling many problems this way, the rest of the team stopped trying to join Vivek in finding solutions.

I can see why Vivek operates this way:

• stakeholders want growth right away

• flattening organizations

• workforce reductions

Product managers everywhere need to balance collaboration with getting things done. Vivek chose to do most work alone, and the rest of the team wasn’t able to help him.

I wrote this article to explore different approaches Vivek could take to be productive and bring the team along with him. Here are the recommendations to keep other product managers involved in your work:

What Happened After This Article?