Jehan Lalkaka

Many product marketers get hung up on 'owning' messaging or 'owning' whatever. But ownership and being the sole decision-maker on anything doesn't make a stellar product marketer. After all, a company is a collection of minds; not one mind. Unless you're the CEO or founder, thoughts of ownership can lead you astray. They often result in frustration as an individual and/or sub-optimal teamwork as an organization.

Instead, acting like an owner looks very different for PMMs. A stellar PMM knows how to manage various points of view, timelines, priorities, and nudge the organization in the right direction, one step at a time. As a PMM, it's healthier to imagine navigating a large ship powered by many rowers who can't turn on a dime rather than piloting a 2-person fighter jet. 75% of the job is knowing how to influence the other rowers, including the ones steering the ship.

Influencing, not ownership, is the path to promotion and driving killer revenue results. The hardest part is this: influencing can't be learned from the neat frameworks you read in books or the catchy stories from 'influencers' jockeying for attention on social. And, sorry, I don't have any game-changing answers either. But maybe start by accepting that your success and happiness in PMM depend on being pragmatic, not dogmatic, having an opinion, and knowing how to gather support. Practice that, enjoy the process of learning through experience, and abandon the fallacy of ownership and control.