Product managers are not CEOs

No matter how you first heard of product management it's more than likely you found yourself wondering what a product manager actually does. For those of us on the inside it's a running joke that no one really knows how to succinctly describe what we do. Given the breadth of responsibilities we have it comes as no surprise that in a quick search you'll find a ton of conflicting opinions on how to best describe this job. However, there's one popular yet controversial phrase, which is the product manager is like a mini CEO. The parallel to being a CEO here is pretty clear. A CEO is responsible for the success of their company no matter the circumstances. If a company's performance is poor, someone's got to be held accountable. That person is the CEO. You can see the similarities here. However, lately within the PM community there's been a ton of arguments against the reasoning for using this particular phrase. One point in particular, is the most valid in my opinion, and very important to note. So let's talk about it. Think for a moment about which attributes come to your mind immediately when you hear the word CEO. It may be things like leader, decision maker, figurehead, founder, etc. But one more attribute is more important than the rest when it comes to doing business, and that is authority. If you're the CEO of a company you're a lot of things, but you do have one thing that no one else does, and that's ultimate authority. A CEO stands alone at the top and though the best CEOs may do a great job of looking like they aren't forcing anyone to do anything, their core function is to exert their authority over every part of a company, from production to finances. They're even able to control decisions that may be far underneath them, like say hiring and firing. Now as a PM you're certainly accountable for the ultimate success of the product you oversee, but you don't have that ultimate authority, even though most PM roles require you to exert a certain level of authority over product decisions, your authority is different in two ways. First, a PM needs to make sure they do enough upfront research and stakeholder collaboration that they affectively lead their teams to the right decision together as a group. This is completely different than just informing their team of a decision they've made by themselves. And second, any authority you do exert is not ultimate. That is, it can always be overruled by someone above you, whether that's a director, a VP, or the CEO themselves. Unlike CEOs, product managers also don't have any authority over things that impact their products, such as marketing, sales, resources, and research. So the role of the PM is to make the best decisions within their realm, ideally with the full support of their team. In the end I personally don't think that whole mini CEO phrase is as malicious as some may make it out to be. And it's even quite useful to help others understand the role. However, using that phrase when describing your role to others or thinking about your own day-to-day work requires that you fully understand that major difference in final authority between an actual CEO and your position as a product leader.