A lot has happened over the past year. My team has grown, my title has changed, our core product has gained traction in the B2B space we serve, and my life both personal and professional has been incredibly full.

A lot has changed in the world in the past month. So far I have been mercifully spared any direct impact of the global pandemic as our company shifted to working from home and my family has remained healthy.

One result of this move to working remotely (and therefore not commuting to the office or visiting clients) has been more time to think about how I want to work and lead as a product manager. Out of these thoughts I am trying (once again) to reinvigorate my blog. I started this blog almost 8 years ago with a series of posts using scenes from Monty Python’s Holy Grail as a way to talk about key elements of being a product owner; I recently revisited many of those early posts and while a few of the links have expired most of the material fits with my current thinking still – so either I’m not learning much or I had some good ideas a few years ago.

My plan is to go back to a weekly blog post (with occasional other things shared) that allows me to talk about my own thoughts on being a product leader and to share some of the good things I am finding from other people. The latter is what I want to do today.

There are a number of ways to sum up what it takes to be a good product manager. I tried to distill much of my thinking into five key questions product managers need to ask and answer (you can find that post here). There are also many great summaries from other people, both written and in video format. I want to share today a recent video I saw in which Dave Wascha gives a talk to the Mind the Product conference on what he has learned about product management over his 20-year career. I found his thoughts humorous and insightful and so I am happy to share them here.

I hope you also gain something from watching this. If you have any comments, feel free to post below or reach out to me on Twitter @asbiv. There are a lot of varied ways to work as a product manager and to summarize the key aspects of this role; I liked Dave’s comments but I know that in truth it’s not simple.