📅 Jun 25, 2021 | ✍🏽 Rahul Dua
Congratulations on securing the job of Product Manager at company X, after the long hours spent in preparation, multiple rounds of interviews, you have finally received the job offer, now is the time to put your foot forward as a Product Manager!!
I hope you are basking in the glory of being selected as a Product Manager ready to kickstart your new role and take the organization to new heights. You plan to set meetings with the engineers, designers, and leaders; you are full of energy and enthusiasm and aspire to be a key decision-maker in everything product. In the first few weeks, you are all pumped up to learn from your colleagues and understand the product and come up with a roadmap, and then slowly, things start to settle down, and you start to feel a little overwhelmed and burn out.
It happens with most of us, not just in Product Management roles but all the roles in general, and it is essential to have a value system to guide you through the initial phase of your journey, especially the first 100 days. If you just have 2 mins to glance through it quickly, then below are the bullet points. However, I sincerely hope that you spent another 4 minutes reading each one of them in detail and implement them in your day to day job as a Product Manager.
# Ask Questions till you Understand
# Become Comfortable in being Uncomfortable
# Seek Help from Experts
# Manage your Ego
# Keep the ball rolling by Making Decisions
When I started my journey as a Product Manager, I went on to read books anything and everything I came across around the PM role. I believe that all the experts were redirecting me to consider the above 5 points not only when I was starting as a Product Manager, but also as I continue working and growing in my career.
Ask Questions till you Understand: Asking questions to understand the problem or situation at hand is the best way to gain familiarity with the topic. Be mindful of the fact that you ask the clear, concise, and right questions which can help you or the team take the next steps in the product development cycle. Meetings you attend with the designers, developers or architects should have a clear agenda and objective as the meeting can quickly get into tangential discussions and leave most of the attendees feeling that it was a waste of time with no meaningful outcome.
Before you start throwing darts at people with your questions which may make or break the product development cycle, you must spend time to understand the details. Any advice you give to the team without understanding the full picture will only look like coming from someone outside the room who has no clue about what he is talking. Another benefit of asking questions is that it will help you build a relationship with the team by putting your point across that you are here to work together and not take credits for their work.
Become Comfortable in being Uncomfortable: At the very early stage of my career, I understood that the PM role is no less than that of a juggler. Every day, you reach work with five items in your to-do list, and by the time it is noon, you will have your to-do list updated to 15 items or more. The personal task plan set by PM rarely gets cast in stone, being flexible and adaptive to changing needs is the way to be comfortable. Of course, you will feel restless, lost, anxious, uncomfortable, and it is completely okay to feel that way. Focus on the end goal that is your product and navigate yourself along to reach that end goal, yes someday will not be as rosy as others but where is the fun when the ride is like merry go round and not a rollercoaster. Great Product Managers (I know a few of them personally) always focus on the end goal, which is the product when faced with uncertainty and come up with an execution plan.
Source: Unsplash
P.S. I am a big fan of rollercoaster rides.
Seek Help from Experts: I believe you have heard that PM is the “CEO” of the product and may feel obliged to fall under the trap and start calling out shots in different phases of product development. Unless the role demands you to be the tech lead, design expert, business strategist, it is always advisable to bring in experts from different areas to make the decision. If the discussion is around the technical solution to a problem, bring in your architect or tech lead into the conversation, for design-related questions bring in your user interface engineers, and so on. Feel free to ask the right questions and challenge them with a user-centric mindset based on data or intuition.
Establishing authority by making decisions on behalf of the experts within the team is the easiest way to alienate yourself from the team. As much as PM’s role is that of an individual contributor, it can easily get misunderstood as someone who just wants to poke his nose in everything, trust the experts in the team and take them along with you in the product development journey. Remember, seeking help is not a sign of weakness, its a reflection of you knowing what your limitations are and what are the strengths of your team members.
Manage your Ego: Yes, there is no doubt that as a PM, you will have a large set of responsibilities and visibility into different areas of workstreams. However, you should be aware and mindful that this shall not catalyze your ego. You will be part of discussions with various stakeholders as the role is very much close to business and marketing, you might get to know things that are happening at the organization level well in advance; the problem starts when you think yourself as someone standing on a pedestal compared to his or her teammates based on the knowledge one has acquired. As a PM, one shall never lose sight of the product, and the problem he or she is trying to solve for the end-users and bringing your ego and a superhuman figure is going to be the last thing you want for your product to be successful. Getting into casual conversations with team members, knowing more about them than just work, humbling yourself from time to time can foster the growth of a collaborative and one-team environment. Sharing information and encouraging others in the team to participate and share back is another way to create an environment of mutual respect and trust.
Keep the ball rolling by Making Decisions: In the world, we are in and especially the tech industry, which is moving at lightning speed, the ability to make decisions becomes paramount. As a new PM, you might feel bombarded with the number of decisions you have to make daily and start getting into an analysis paralysis loop by overthinking simple choices. Both verbal and written communication shall follow the lean approach, and you shall ensure that you communicate to the point and not waste neither your nor the receivers’ time. Keeping the ball rolling by making decisions based on your gut-feeling, intuition, team support, or even factual data is important to keep the product development on track. The PM shall not slow down the pipeline because he or she needs more time to think about things that are simple and binary. The decision around the color, text, or image selection can get deferred.
In contrast, action items that can result in a sequence of events getting delayed must get treatment of utmost priority. Yes, not all decisions will be simple and straight forward and for that, you shall set up dedicated meetings with the right folks to brainstorm over the details and come up with a solution. Time is a luxury you cannot afford to waste, and it is not just your time; it is the time of dependent functions and your teammates. One must always consider the opportunity cost of every hour you spend on getting to a conclusion and manage it as the highest priority item in the to-do list.
By all means, the above 5 points are not the comprehensive list of guiding principles for a new or experienced PM, however, I firmly believe this shall give a good boost of confidence stepping into the role of a Product Manager.
Happy to hear back in comments on what you think are other guiding principles that a new and experience Product Manager shall focus on.
All the Best to the Rebels, Mavericks, and Innovators in You.
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Image Source - Unsplash