After tons of of errors, I lead a group of product managers
I was a awful product supervisor. The concepts under had been principally overseas to me.
Then inside a yr, I led the corporate’s foremost product UI, and after one other yr I began managing a group of product managers.
I made errors, tried new behaviors, iterated, learn books by the masters, watched product talks on YouTube, and was coached by my colleagues. I additionally, sadly, learn a slew of rubbish recommendation on product administration.
Should you’re a PM wanting to fast-track your profession, then these 34 concepts are for you.
1. Take excessive possession
Fear much less about drawing up precise boundaries of your duty.
As a PM, you do what must be completed. You’re a chief, no matter whether or not you’re a folks supervisor. Hearken to Jocko Willink, a retired US Navy SEAL and writer of Excessive Possession:
“The chief should personal all the pieces in his or her world. There is no such thing as a one else accountable. The chief should acknowledge errors and admit failures, take possession of them, and develop a plan to win.”
2. Learn broadly
How are you going to take excessive possession, with out publicity to areas like advertising and marketing, gross sales, and engineering administration?
Ebook suggestions:
- Cherished by Martina Lauchengco (a part of Marty Cagan’s Silicon Valley Product Group) to find out about product advertising and marketing
- Buyer Success by Nick Mehta, Dan Steinman, and Lincoln Murphy
- Promoting to Large Corporations by Jill Konrath. A bit previous (don’t take all the pieces it says as reality — as one shouldn’t for any e book), nevertheless it exhibits how enterprise gross sales are vastly completely different from shopper gross sales
- An Elegant Puzzle by Will Larson to find out about engineering administration
3. Do teamwork, not solo work
Engineers are sensible — contain them all through consumer analysis.
Interact (don’t simply inform) colleagues from buyer success, product advertising and marketing, and gross sales in evaluation and decision-making; they’ve actual perception into what acquires and what retains prospects.
Assist the builders and designers in your group really feel like heroes. Allow them to current their work once they need to. Communicate extremely of them to others. Have a good time progress.
4. Be the professional on the client, the info, the area, and the product
Develop these habits:
- Set a minimal variety of consumer interactions to have per week.
- Schedule a time to overview utilization knowledge every single day.
- Use the product your self recurrently.
- Learn deeply in regards to the area. Should you’re working for Salesforce, then study what salespeople do and in regards to the newest tendencies inside gross sales. (Trace: If the area doesn’t curiosity you, you’re on the mistaken firm.)
5. Ask your self, “which knowledge would make you modify your thoughts?”
Retain a scientific mindset, at all times.
Achieve this even when you get invested in an thought you got here up with, even when a buyer tells a compelling story, and even when your stakeholders are pressuring you to prioritize a particular function.
Should you’re not probably the most evidence-driven, who will then be?
6. Understand that you just’re at all times promoting
Perhaps you detest gross sales. Nicely — recover from it.
The profitable PM is at all times promoting. They’re promoting their group on transferring ahead with a selected thought. They’re promoting the product imaginative and prescient internally. They’re working with gross sales and advertising and marketing to promote the product to prospects.
Lean into promoting and learn to be a persuasive evangelist.
7. Floor all the pieces in a product imaginative and prescient
The product imaginative and prescient describes the longer term we are attempting to create, sometimes someplace between two and 5 years out. For {hardware} or machine‐centric firms, it’s normally 5 to 10 years out.
— Marty Cagan in INSPIRED.
It is advisable to carry your colleagues alongside to assist understand the product imaginative and prescient. Which means it’s essential talk that imaginative and prescient.
These are a few of Marty Cagan’s ideas for imaginative and prescient:
- Begin with why.
- Understand that it’s a leap of religion.
- Flip it right into a persuasive easy-to-understand piece, comparable to a storyboard or a visiontype (a visible prototype, supposed as an instance a future that is likely to be, the place the massive image issues however the particulars don’t)
8. Begin with the end result in thoughts
As PMs, we shortly study to deal with issues over options.
But, consumer issues aren’t what issues probably the most; enterprise outcomes are.
The start line ought to be, “Let’s revisit our OKRs. What are concepts for a way we will drive this particular key outcome?”
9. Generate 10+ concepts per day
Generate dozens extra concepts than you suppose you want.
Two of my favourite instructors from Stanford, who wrote a e book known as Ideaflow, defined how we shortly marry our first thought with out even contemplating different concepts.
They made us generate 10+ concepts per day to construct the concept muscle and see for ourselves how the primary thought was not often the very best thought.
Good concepts come from amount, not from silent contemplation.
10. Concepts and proof come from analysis. Do analysis deeply and share it broadly
Perception is your forex as a product supervisor.
Consumer analysis, knowledge evaluation, and market analysis are sources of perception. Our concepts and selections ought to be based mostly on this perception.
However you gained’t persuade others of an thought or a choice except they get entry to those self same insights. Share analysis broadly alongside the way in which.
11. Construction your pondering like Teresa Torres
Learn to map concepts in an alternative resolution tree, as described by Teresa Torres.
It helps you keep a deal with the end result and separate between alternatives, options, and experiments.
12. Derisk Marty Cagan’s 4 huge dangers
Marty Cagan teaches us that earlier than constructing a function correctly, you need to be certain it’s the proper one.
What if prospects gained’t pay for the concept? What if we’re unable to construct it?
All the time check for:
- Worth / desirability
- Usability
- Feasibility
- Enterprise viability
13. Take a look at the riskiest assumptions first
The most important danger is usually worth: whether or not or not customers or prospects will use or pay for a brand new function.
Why spend time testing usability, if we don’t know whether or not there’s demand?
14. De-risk as cheaply as attainable
We are able to nearly at all times be quicker and scrappier with our testing of concepts.
The Proper It by Alberto Savoia gives a menu of the way to check concepts in hours, not days.
Use, for instance, the pretend door check: Create a button for a function within the UI. When customers click on it, simply inform them that you just’re contemplating including the function and that you just’re in search of customers to talk with about it.
15. Do not forget that completely different strategies give completely different proof high quality
Should you’re testing for demand, what issues most?
(A) 10 folks saying that they want a sure product after you clarify it to them
(B) 2 folks placing of their fee particulars after studying in regards to the product
Definitely (B). Discuss is reasonable. Individuals prepared to pay have pores and skin within the sport. Customers even have pores and skin within the sport in the event that they half with their e-mail tackle or spend time (e.g., by attending a webinar or making an attempt out a function).
The e book Testing Enterprise Concepts describes many extra experiments and the proof power of every sort.
16. Worth-effort tradeoff is nice, however know that we overestimate impression and underestimate effort
As a brand new PM, I naively celebrated the value-effort matrix, excited to have an easy-to-understand framework for prioritization:
We need to prioritize what’s excessive impression and low effort. Then I realized that the massive bets had been really dangerous — the upper the hassle and the upper impression, the much less correct our estimates could be.
Itamar Gilad took it additional. In his glorious weblog put up, he describes how behavioral economists have discovered that we underestimate the hassle and overestimate the impression. Apart from, some concepts result in detrimental outcomes, so Gilad says the matrix seems extra like this:
17. All the time talk proof
Recall that your forex is perception, not opinion.
Persuade your group and your stakeholders by persistently speaking the proof. What did customers say in interviews? What are insights from consumer knowledge?
18. And clarify the method earlier than presenting a roadmap
Stakeholders need to know that you just’ve been rigorous.
- What knowledge and evaluation went into the roadmap?
- Who have you ever spoken with? Has their division been represented within the course of?
19. However don’t neglect storytelling
Evangelizing continues to be storytelling.
Are you able to inform the story of a buyer going by way of a hero’s journey?
“Meet buyer Joe. Joe struggles. He can’t accomplish what they need to do due to such and such. However now we’re planning these enhancements within the product. This improves Joe’s life in these methods. And Joe is only one of many shoppers.”
20. Learn to construction displays
These are some confirmed frameworks:
- What -> So what -> Now what
- Previous -> Current -> Future
- Purpose -> Options -> Evaluation
I wrote extra about them right here.
21. Report and rewatch your displays to change into a greater public speaker
I took a Strategic Communications class in my Stanford MBA program, the place they made us file and rewatch all our displays 3 times:
i) First with out sound, solely watching
ii) Then with out picture, solely listening
iii) Lastly, watch as regular
Doing so made my fidgeting, “uhms”, and T-rex gestures much more apparent. It helped me assess how I used to be doing on these 12 practices to talk confidently whereas partaking the viewers and enhance 5x quicker.
Strive recording and rewatching your self.
22. Over-communicate
Imaginative and prescient, technique, concepts, and proof are at all times much less clear to everybody else; they’re not swimming within the content material the way in which you might be.
Over-communicate: Do a presentation, an announcement e-mail, a Slack message, one other presentation, an async recording, one other Slack message, repeat it at standup, and extra.
Don’t be afraid to repeat a message 10 occasions in several codecs.
23. KISS: Hold it easy, silly
An advanced message is even tougher to convey the way in which you imply it.
Easy is the very best treatment.
24. Perceive intention, not simply the request
Requests come on a regular basis out of your supervisor, reps from Buyer Success, and different groups.
Whereas others could formulate the request as an ask for an answer, that has two issues:
i) Maybe there are higher methods to resolve their downside?
ii) How are you going to assess the precedence of the request, with out seeing the way it matches into an even bigger image?
Be sure to perceive the particular person’s intentions.
25. Don’t say sure or no to your supervisor: clarify the tradeoff
A supervisor asking you to do one thing expects an excuse in case you say no.
However managers don’t like no’s they usually don’t like excuses.
Right here’s how you can get out of the bind:
“Attention-grabbing proposal! Proper now I even have such and such on my plate. Would you want me to down-prioritize any of the present initiatives to find time for your proposal?”
An specific tradeoff frees us from overcommitting, whereas it reminds the supervisor of our different duties and provides them company to set total priorities.
26. Get full alignment on OKRs together with your supervisor
To begin with the end result in thoughts for day-to-day product work, the end result must be cleared together with your supervisor.
Settlement on the end result provides context for all different communication.
27. Ask for what you want out of your supervisor
Understand that your supervisor desires that will help you — even when they don’t know how you can.
Make it straightforward to your supervisor by asking for what you want.
Bonus: If they’ll’t make it easier to with what you want, at the very least you’ve known as consideration to a problem you’re going through.
28. Do assist your colleagues — simply handle your time whilst you do it
Colleagues are additionally working laborious to make the product succeed; a part of your job is to assist them.
The answer to the product supervisor’s time crunch is to not be a meager collaborator.
As an alternative, insist on requirements for a way assistance is requested for and discover time-efficient methods of serving to.
29. Decline poorly deliberate conferences
Calendar invitations with goal nor agenda are a time drain. Don’t allow them to steal your time.
Ship a well mannered message to the organizer and ask for an goal and agenda.
Nudge your colleagues to make use of these 10 steps to run A+ conferences.
30. Resist standing conferences by asking for async alternate options
A weekly standing assembly for one venture, your supervisor’s weekly group assembly, a weekly sync with a product advertising and marketing supervisor, one other weekly standing assembly, and that’s how your time erodes away.
Ask, “Might this be dealt with asynchronously as a substitute?”
31. Embrace 1:many communication
A single, well-crafted e-mail can provide many the required info whereas additionally repeating core messages (#22: Over-communicate) and changing standing conferences (#30 Resist standing conferences).
Launching a brand new function? Put money into well-written documentation and guides for each customers and internals upfront, and share these sources with anybody who has questions.
32. Use templates as a way to use your inventive ideas the place it issues
Save time with pre-written constructions.
Lenny Rachitsky, the creator of the product administration publication Lenny’s Publication, collected his favourite product administration templates right here.
Save the favourite slides you come throughout as a way to reuse them later to make new displays quicker.
33. Make investments sufficient in processes to avoid wasting your self time later.
Whereas course of planning might be boring, it’s even worse to spend time cleansing up the mess later.
Right here’s how you can run tasks easily.
34. Get entangled in max one or two initiatives exterior your product duty
I’ve mentored high-performers who need to get entangled in all the pieces.
And different colleagues need them concerned too as a result of they’re keen, competent, and take possession.
However by taking over too many exterior obligations, efficiency of their core job falters. Being a PM is already greater than a full-time job.
