The Death of the Glorified Project Manager.

Brace yourselves for a reality check: The days of dressing up project managers as Product Managers or Product Marketers are officially numbered.

It's time to wave goodbye to the days of fancy titles for what's essentially project management, whether they're dressed up as Product Managers or Product Marketers.

These managers have been way too focused on the details of internal processes, ticking boxes on delivery, requirements, and metrics like it's just another day at the office. Marty Cagan, a respected authority in the product domain, dropped a truth bomb a while back. He called out the so-called feature team product manager as pretty much a project manager with a more substantial paycheck. And the delivery team's product owner just someone keeping the backlog tidy.

Don’t get me wrong, no-one is dismissing the value of a solid project manager. They definitely have their place. Yet, it's pretty obvious how a good tech lead, product designer, or engineering manager could also do that job if resources are scarce.

Let's talk about Airbnb for a sec. Brian Chesky, the CEO, did something pretty radical. He cut off the traditional product management role altogether. Instead, they've got product marketing managers pulling double duty, echoing a move similar to what Apple's been up to. This move is a game-changer, blurring the lines between product management and marketing to create a more cohesive strategy.

Now, let’s look at product marketers that find themselves stuck in the middle of product, marketing, and sales teams, always reacting instead of leading. That famous diagram that puts Product Marketing at the epicenter, with Product, Sales, and Marketing orbiting around it, and Customers way out on the edge, irks me. It seems like a project manager handling requests and timelines could easily fill this reactive role.

So, what if you're aiming to be more than just the go-to for coordination or backlog management?

If you're a Product Manager, you probably don't need to dive deep into developing your design or engineering skills—that's what your team's for. And Product Marketers might not need to become a wizard at generating leads or crafting killer presentations.

Your true value lies elsewhere. Strengthening your business acumen, getting comfortable with data, and really getting to know your customers — That's where the gold is.

Make sure you're also at a place that embraces a product operating model, or have strong leadership skills to be the one to lead change towards it. This model is all about aligning the team's efforts towards a single purpose, blending the why (strategy) with the how (process) to achieve the what (operating model). It's about being customer-centric, not just focused on the product. Customers are at the heart of a successful product operating model.

This is where Product Managers and Product Marketers can really make their mark—by bringing the organization together to deliver something that truly matters to customers. Moving beyond just making a sale, to building lasting relationships with customers.

I've always believed that Product Marketers focusing only on the outward aspects of the role are selling themselves short. Same goes for Product Managers who only look inward. The leaders of tomorrow are those who obsess over both the inbound and outbound sides of their products, no matter what their title says. They're the ones who understand the full picture of what they are building, who it's for, and the impact they are aiming for.

Product marketing is so much more than just executing marketing strategies, and product management is way beyond just keeping stakeholders happy and releases on time.

For those of us who embrace both the vision and the execution, I believe the future is about not being boxed into either the marketing or the product organization. We are an organization.

This structure promotes efficiency and focus, steering clear of the chaos that comes from misaligned teams each pushing their own agenda. I've seen the mess it creates: overloaded feature roadmaps with no clear customer outcomes, dumped on marketing to somehow spin into compelling narratives. It's a disjointed mess, all because of a lack of context and shared goals.

To wrap things up, it’s clear we need to change how we think about product and marketing roles. The world is changing, and so should the way we see our jobs in product and marketing. We're at a point where being customer-focused is more than a buzzword; it's the core of everything we do.