Rob Grady

One of the challenges of Product Management, especially for new folks entering the field, is understanding the broad scope of the discipline. And, depending on the sophistication of the organization a product manager may be required to wear a lot of hats. It is important to spend time teaching junior product folks about the different hats they may be required to wear.
Product Management as a discipline can be rather ambiguous. In fact Pragmatic Marketing reports of those polled:

• 21% report to the CEO
  15% are in Marketing
  12% are in Development
  5% are in Sales

Each of those areas will certainly have a different perspective on the product manager role and while product managers may tend to be generalists with broad skills, most will have tendencies toward certain areas of the discipline. Given the broad dimensions of the Prod Mgmt role, I often counsel junior folks to look across the field to find areas within it they like. Some will gravitate toward strategy, others toward more tactical requirements development, and other toward user experience design, and yet others find themselves most comfortable with project management. Additionally, we find the roles often blur depending on the organization.

Pragmatic Marketing has done a great job providing a framework for the profession which is clear to understand and a recent article by Sean Van Tyne shows another dimension to the discipline. The article describes how Product Design bridges Product Management and Product Development. Again, depending on your organization, you may find yourself filling the product design position as well (which I enjoy as well).
Overall I believe it is important to understand the breadth of the discipline and the opportunity specialize within it. While everyone may not be a rock star in all areas, product management provides a number of areas to explore.
[ADDITIONAL NOTE]: Given the breadth of the product management field, while everyone is a generalist, there are sub-specialties whether defined or not. In fact as executives begin to perk-up when they hear the phrase ‘User Experience Design’, many of us have been doing it for years under the umbrella of product management.