The hype surrounding Product Management began innocently enough. After the pandemic, when markets reopened and investor sentiment was positive, technology companies experienced significant growth. Venture capital flowed abundantly, and PMs were considered the new rock stars. They didn’t code, sell or design, but somehow they were hailed as the “CEOs of their products.” And who wouldn’t want to be a CEO without the risk of running a company?

However, as global uncertainties increased, especially with the war in Eastern Europe and rising inflation, central banks, including the Federal Reserve, began to raise interest rates to combat inflation. This led to a cooling of investor sentiment, and as funding dried up, the tech industry saw a wave of layoffs. Those who had once glorified the PM life soon found that instead of “owning product vision,” they were often assigned to “fixing bugs and updating dashboards.“ Many came to the sobering realization that PMing was not so much about being a visionary, but rather about convincing leadership that the product roadmap should not, in fact, change every two weeks!

The Pitfall of Vague Aspirations: Why Adcoms Cringe at Shallow PM Goals?

Nothing bores adcoms today more than reading about applicants desperate to become product managers. During our routine ding analysis discussions, we go through hundreds of the same outdated essays with empty glorifications of product management aspirants without any depth of purpose.

Applicants need to understand that product management is a broad field. If your application strategy is to vaguely mention a few product management-like projects as an engineer in your pre-MBA career and then propose full-bodied product management goals, you will be very disappointed.

Most candidates I talk to even lack the understanding that product managers in most positions get inputs from the strategy teams and programme teams (including finance, supply chain operations, etc.) to develop systems and products that can essentially scale the company’s operations. In healthcare or health tech organisations, most of the industry knowledge resides with the frontline healthcare professionals and strategists, so the work of PMs here is also focused on enabling systems to support the business, rather than developing the iconic strategies themselves.

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So, what can we learn from these examples about how applicants should pitch Product Management goals?

Product management should not be presented as a glorified technical role with a good amount of vagueness. Rather, aspiring product managers should convey a mindset that refuses to accept inefficiencies as the status quo. The best product managers are not those who wax poetic about how much they “love” product management. Those who see a fundamental problem in an industry and recognize how a technology-enabled solution can change the game are the ones who truly make an impression with the adcoms.

A Few Examples of Solid PM Goals:

How Technology-Enabled Solutions Can Bridge Critical Gaps

Imagine a doctor in a remote clinic being unable to make important decisions due to fragmented patient records. If you have observed this firsthand, you know it’s not just an operational issue, it is a matter of life and death. A mobile, technology-enabled diagnostic tool could bridge that gap.

When done right, Product Management has the power to transform entire populations, as seen in India’s successful battle to eradicate polio, where a complex, nationwide technology-based system was meticulously orchestrated to track every individual, mobilize resources, and ensure no child was left behind, turning India’s polio health crisis into a triumph of strategic management.

Revolutionizing Sectors by Empowering Key Community Players with Strategic Insights

If you think about smallholder farmers who are being squeezed by middlemen and losing a big chunk of their income, an end-to-end supply chain product platform could redefine fair prices and access.

Even more interesting would be to equip farmers with strategic insights on crop diversification based on predictive analysis of demand, estimated prices, and resource expenditures. For example, I would like to inform a smallholder farmer about his return on investment based on the choice of a crop and the resources used, such as water, fuel, and fertilizer, to create transparency about his cost-return ratio.

Financial Inclusion

Even in finance, where millions of people remain excluded from the system due to a lack of credit history, a data-driven alternative lending model could be the key to financial inclusion.
When pitching your product management goals, center your narrative around a problem you are committed to solving. Demonstrate to the admissions committees your deep awareness of a critical gap or challenge in the market, and articulate the far-reaching consequences if left unaddressed. True product management is about creating solutions that drive real change and bring tangible value to the world.

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