If the craft of Product Management is often mired in ambiguity, managing product managers is ambiguity². When you start managing PMs for the first time, you are forced up a steeper managerial learning curve than in other functions. This is because the average PM you may manage is already quite experienced, due to the fact that PMs typically start the role after success in other disciplines or entrepreneurship. That’s in contrast to disciplines like engineering or design, where initial management responsibilities start much earlier in a career due to the more established entry pipeline from schools. I’ve directly managed over twenty PMs in my career now, and for the last year have managed manager-PMs as well. My takeaways from those experiences are that while you must still excel at basic m