This post is a personal reflection on the excellent post written Rohini Vibha and introduced earlier on Hectic Pace.

4. It’s not about being a star — It’s about managing a universe.

Part 3 of this post might have left you with the impression that failure to launch rests squarely on your shoulders. Even though Vibha reminds us in her own story about QuickBooks that “the launch” was her responsibility, she was also relieved to realize that its success or failure was not 100% her responsibility.

A good product manager gets the right people in the room. A great product manager listens to the advice and counsel of those around her. Impostor Syndrome runs rampant in the library profession. The bigger risk to a product manager librarian is the feeling that you’re not using your degree enough, feeling like a task-master or a project manager instead of whatever it was we were trained to do (what was that again?). Vibha puts it well:

I had and have my set of ongoing worries as a product manager — feeling stupid when I talk to engineers, wishing I could design websites, hating myself for being a taskmaster, wondering if I’m seen as nothing more than a JIRA transcriber, accidentally stepping on my researcher’s toes, convincing myself that this job is thankless — but at the end of the day, when I’m sitting there watching a user smile as she engages with my product, I know that it’s all worth it.

At the end of the day, making good product is a job well done.