Mastery
Does mastery exist for product managers?
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I’m Mikhail and I'm excited to share my learnings to help you navigate the complex waters of product management, leadership, and corporate dynamics. Subscribe to unlock the full value.
Over the past 10 years, I’ve done a bunch of stuff.
Did a bit of coding, design, marketing, sales, business analytics, project management - you name it. Worked in multiple industries. Did e-commerce, advertising, classifieds, mobility.
Dived into b2c, a bit of b2b, and even b2g (business to government).
I might have stayed in one company but oversaw extremely versatile projects. In other words, I was continuously skill-hopping.
Exposure is great, but what about depth? I’ve never really had a chance to dive deep into any area. Frankly, I can’t call myself an expert on anything.
As my manager says, “Product manager has great job security. You can do anything, but at a shitty level”.
This made me think. What is mastery for a product manager? Does it exist?
If a musician or artist can polish a craft with practice, what does it mean for a product manager? For a product manager, the context is always changing. There’s nothing specific to master. There’s no traditional craft.
Let’s dive into this together. This will be a short read, I promise.
🎓 What is mastery?
There’s widely publicized research by Anders Ericsson about mastery from 1993, most notably mentioned in Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.
In a nutshell, he claims that 10k hours of deliberate practice will give you world-class mastery. A little less, around 8k hours, means you’re just good. With 3k hours or fewer, you’re an average joe.
If one spends 3.5h a day practicing, it amounts to ~9.5 years. Anecdotally, famous jazz pianist Bill Evans noted it took him “13 years to express exactly what he felt on the piano.”
Later studies, such as one by Brooke Macnamara, claimed that skills and time invested in practicing are not perfectly related. There’s a variance of 18-30% depending on the field. On the extreme end, a study by Fernand Gobet found that different chess players needed between 728 and 16,120 hours to achieve similar mastery levels.
Yes, the 10k number might be arbitrary, but the conclusions generally hold. You must invest an unreasonable amount of time to master anything.
Except for a few exceptions, most product managers never dedicate that much time in a single domain or skill. Recent stats show the average tenure of a product manager is between 2 to 3 years.
🤷 A calling or a happenstance?
Many pop fiction authors claim (e.g., Robert Greene) that to achieve mastery, you must discover your true calling.
The concept of vocation, popularized since the 1970s, has largely proven to be a myth.
In “So Good They Can’t Ignore You”, Cal Newport debunks this with case studies from famous people (including Steve Jobs). He concludes that mastery and job autonomy are more fulfilling than a fictitious “vocation”.
Most people don’t know their vocation or rethink it multiple times throughout their careers. I’ve asked ~500 product managers in interviews why they pursued the profession. None said they were born for it. Most transitioned by accident, lured by the promise of greater influence. Nothing really inspirational here.
I’d argue there’s no such thing as a calling for a product manager; it’s mostly happenstance.
That makes the whole concept of mastery for product managers even murkier.
🌟 How do you know you’re a master?
Same fella Robert Greene claims mastery provides absolute clarity and intuitive creativity.
I’ve noticed some concepts are transferable. For example, UI/UX experience across mobile/web apps is largely similar, allowing me to sometimes think in shortcuts.
However, many concepts fail to survive between organizations.
In the “Innovation Stack”, Jim McKelvey (co-founder of Square) notes that each organization has a unique stack of qualities (e.g., technology, talent, brand, scale, network effects) that can create moats and shape culture.
Organizational cultures are unique. Mastery in one organization doesn’t guarantee success in another. Every time you join a new company, you must re-learn its product, social dynamics, and culture.
💼 What does it mean for product managers?
❌ You are never an expert
Mastery is elusive. You remain an apprentice, learning from your team and peers.
Once comfortable in a company or domain, you will likely switch to a new challenge.
If you commit 10k hours to one industry, you might become biased, unfit for other roles, or extremely bored.
🚫 There’s no such thing as vocation
Dream calling is a myth. Most product managers enter the profession by happenstance.
A lack of clear vocation makes the whole concept of craft mastery very blurry.
⬇️ You can perform any job at a subpar level
To discover and execute a project, you must invest time to build foundational understanding.
Talk with customers, engineering, and support functions. Maybe even do the first sales to work out a playbook.
But this is as far as you’ll get because another high-ROI project will be waiting.
Rarely will you log 1k+ hours mastering any of those skills.
You’ll end up with a high-level understanding of most professions, able to execute at a junior level.
🧠 You master abstract concepts
Due to constant context switching, product managers learn higher abstraction concepts.
How to identify a problem? How do you problem solve? How to size up the ROI? What’s the value proposition?
These higher-level generalizations are transferable between contexts. That’s why there’s so much fascination with frameworks. They seem to provide a magic shortcut to success.
However, true abstract concept mastery starts when you understand their constraints. Any new domain of knowledge has its own variables you’ll have to digest and understand.