If you are a product manager and you really want to make your life  complicated, then what you should do is decide to develop a health care  product. 

This is going to make your life complicated in a bunch of  different ways. First off, any product that you create is going to have  to be approved by federal regulators before people can use it to solve  health care issues. Next, you’re going to have to find a way for  people’s health care insurance to pay for it. Somewhat amazingly, there are still some product managers who choose to work in this market.  

These product managers now think that changing their product development definition and adding artificial intelligence (AI) to their products just might be what they need to do.

Just imagine if you were a product manager for a jewelry store.  

Your business would rely on people passing by, being drawn in by  something that you had in the window, talking with a sales person,  trying jewelry on, and then, with a little luck, buying something. Then  the Covid-19 virus strikes and all of your customers start to stay at  home – nobody is walking by any more. 

What’s a product manager to do?

Let’s face it: the Covid-19 virus has changed just about everything in  our lives. 

Product managers for liquor have seen a dramatic change in  their lives as bars and restaurants have had to close down. Customers  who might have drunk their products at home have all been quarantined.  

As you can well imagine, this has been a big setback and the plans that  these product managers might have had for the rest of the year have had  to be shelved and new plans are quickly being put together.

With the arrival of Covid-19, the world of restaurants has been turned  upside down. 

Restaurant product managers are scrambling to change their  product development definition and find ways to keep the doors (virtually) open even as their customers are being urged to stay home.  The good news, if indeed there is any, is that customers still like the  food that restaurants serve and they would like to eat it. In our  modern society with services such as Uber Eats, DoorDash,  and Grub Hub home bound customers can simply order restaurant food  online and have it delivered to them. 

However, this is starting to cause  some problems for the restaurants themselves.

Can you think of any job that would be more delicious than being a  product manager for a pizza chain? 

The product managers at the Papa John’s pizza company probably thought that they had the best job in the world for a very long time. Then things started to change for them.  It seems as though almost overnight what had been a pretty easy product manager job suddenly became very difficult. 

What  do the Papa John’s product managers need to do to change their product  development definition and turn things around for the company?

Ok, so there really is no pride here: I’ve been fired. 

Not only have I been fired, but it turns out that I’ve been fired a lot.  Like a total of seven times. Now, in my own defense I’ve worked for 14  different companies, but seven is still a very big number. I must  confess that I really don’t quite know why I’ve been fired so much. As  my sister has told me, you know there is one thing in common about all  of the jobs that you’ve been fired from – you! I’m a nice guy. I don’t  drink, do drugs, I show up for work on time and work the whole day, I  get along with people, etc. And yet I still seem to keep getting fired.  The good news for you from the flaming car wreck that is my career is  that I’ve learned a lot about how to avoid getting fired (don’t do what I  did). 

Let’s talk about what you need to do as product manager in order  to hold on to your job.

So I really enjoy driving my car. 

I get in, fire it up, hear the rumble  of that motor (ok, so it’s a 4-cylinder motor – it’s not that much of a  rumble), I pull out into the street, press the gas petal to the floor,  and I’m off! Well, it turns out that over in China, they love their cars  too. However, electric cars are currently all the rage and it turns out  that the best-selling electric cars are not what you might think that  they would be. In my country, the U.S., the best-selling electric cars  are the wonders of modern technology created by Tesla – big cars that have every convenience that you could possibly think of. In China, it’s almost the opposite. The best-selling electric cars have a unique product development definition and are tiny and come with almost nothing. 

What are these Chinese product managers up to?

As product managers, it is our responsibility to use our product  development definition to create products that our customers will want.  

With a little luck, they’ll discover our products, decide to buy them,  and then place an order. You might think that a product manager’s job  would be over at this point in time. However, the good folks at Amazon  have succeeded in making our lives just a little bit more difficult. The  Amazon Prime program provides Amazon customers with free two-day shipping for anything that they order from Amazon.  What this means is the product managers are starting to discover that  their customers have been programmed to expect to be able to receive  anything that they order within two days. 

Are you ready to deliver on  this expectation?

Could there be any better job than being a product manager at a pizza company?  

I mean, you have the ability to fully understand your product (and eat  it to!), you know who your competition is, and your customers clearly  want and desire your product. What more could a product manager ask for? Oh, perhaps more market share? Pizza companies have been locked in a  battle for market share since the market was invented. 

As the future  starts to arrive, they are now looking at a game changer that could  change their product development definition if they can get it correct,  this just might give them the advantage that they have been looking for:  driverless cars.

As product managers, the one thing that I believe that most of us feel that we have a pretty good handle on is how new products are created and introduced.  

I mean, we’ve worked at companies where this was probably part of our  job and so we’ve had to sit through all of the planning meetings, review  designs, work with sales, and find ways to get the product actually  manufactured. 

However, in our constantly changing world, things are once  again changing and how new products get introduced is being replaced  with microbrands.