14 habits of highly effective product managers

Lenny Rachitsky answers a reader's question about what makes product managers great by sharing 14 habits he has observed and refined over years. The core argument is that effective PMs build habits around clear communication, reliability, alignment, customer contact, and team morale, and that new PMs should practice one habit at a time.

01Key takeaways

• Clear, concise writing and speaking is the most fundamental PM skill, since people judge your thinking by it.
• Build a reputation for reliability by being selective about commitments and communicating priorities explicitly.
• Hunt for misalignment early by asking what problem the team is solving and keeping a shared source-of-truth document.
• Talk to customers regularly, since confident assumptions about what they want are often wrong.
• Practice one habit at a time for about two weeks rather than trying to master all of them at once.

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.