Developing as a Product Manager

Hey MTPDigital attendees! Nice to see you over here! Please feel free to download the role description canvas, the PMwheel and the future self template for your personal use.

Slides of from my talk

About the session

It takes competent, passionate, skilled product people (and a cross‐functional product development team sharing the same characteristics) to deliver a successful product. And becoming this kind of a product manager takes time, effort, and commitment. It ́s a long journey and a hard one if you are not having a kind of compass that helps you find your way. Too few product people are having a line manager helping them with all of this and you're probably having to manage your own development and don't know where to start. Come to this session to learn how to take control of your own skill growth.

Still lost? Get in touch.

If you are still lost and want to talk to me about your product management development plan feel free to get in touch to see if it makes sense to book a coaching session: info@petra-wille.com

Transcript of the talk

Did you know that only about 25% of PMs do report that their company values & supports self-progression? This means that, conversely, around 75% of all PMs are not optimally supported in terms of their personal & professional development

And I think this needs to change. So much potential not well cultivated, so many organizations that remain mediocre because they are not helping their employees to grow, so many employees frustrated because of missing (career) opportunities.

Wouldn´t it be nice to change all of this for the better?

My name is Petra Wille and I am a Product People Development Coach. It´s my mission to help Heads of Product (that´s how I will call people that are managing product people in this talk) to become the best product management coach their employees ever had and to help product people to take control of their own product journey. 

This breakout session is focusing on the second part: It will help you to figure out what it needs to become an even better product manager.

I will share the 3 main ingredients you need when it comes to growing as a product person, I will talk with two valued product management colleagues about their development tactics to spark some ideas how you could approach all of this and I will explain my framework for PM Development so that you can start your journey tomorrow.

But first: let us share our status quo: Let´s do a quick poll:

• Does your manager care about your personal development?

• How good is your company in facilitating learning?

Oh wow.... so the description of the talk did its job and brought a lot of people into this session that actually are in this self-progression desert. I am glad that you all found your way into this breakout session. Because it shows that you are interested in developing yourself and I am sure that after this session you will know better where to start!

Let´s start with the 3 main ingredients:

It´s important to find the time for personal development & development of your PM skills

Ok, this one should be obvious: If you don´t invest some of your time on your personal development nothing will change. And you will not get any better. But in fact, I see so many Product People that have understood this lesson and still remain passive.

If I ask them why they are not making some time for their development answers usually are:

1. I don´t know where to start

2. don´t know what to learn

3. I do not know it´s my job / I am waiting that my boss/company takes care of that and

4. I don´t know how to find the time.

I kind of understand 1 and 2 and this talk will help you with that. But #3 and #4?!?! C'mon!

Waiting for somebody else to help you grow? That is just a waste of time because if the company or your line manager would care they would have already started to help you here. And even if they do it is up to you to do the heavy lifting. Waiting for others and hoping for them changing you in the blink of an eye is as asking somebody else to exercise on your behalf. You don´t get the abs from other people’s push-ups!

And you can´t find the time? I know your schedules are busy... but you are Product Managers. You should know how prioritization works. So if you can´t find the time, work on your prioritizations skills first and then start prioritizing your personal growth.

And to make sure you have some good reasons to do so here are some arguments:

• Investing in yourself is completely portable. You carry it with you wherever you go, even if you are learning shows up in different, indirect ways. There may not be a direct line between your physics degree and your PM career, but I will bet you’re applying the critical thinking skills you picked up at University and benefitting from the connections you made. And the biggest gain from training for a marathon may be the second-order effect of building confidence and not just cardiovascular fitness. When you invest in yourself, the skills, experiences, and connections you make are all yours to keep and assets to build on, leverage and share in an endless variety of ways.

• When it comes to preparing for the future, we are often told, or we often read, that we should begin investing as soon as possible. The context is usually that of financial investing, but you could use the same metaphor to think about investing in your personal and professional growth: you are benefiting from investments you made early on your career. And finally, …

• We overestimate what we can achieve in a week and underestimate what we can achieve in a year. Consistency beats intensity --> so rather start with a small-time budget but be consistent! I usually tell my coachees to start with 20Mins a week and see where it takes you. It´s easier to make more time in your schedule for it once you have seen the positive impact this small amount of time spent on the right things has.

And now let me share the various ways to learn something and talk about the time you need to invest, and I'll promise that you are doing much more of these things then you think already:

• Consuming

• Applying

• Reflecting

• Contribution

Ok, now we have talked about why it is so important to make some time. Now let´s have a look at ingredient 2: 

It´s impossible w/o an ally

You need three kinds of people to grow substantially over time that are hard to get when you are all alone:

• people who give you feedback regarding your work/role/performance to improve exactly that

• somebody who knows what a good product person looks like and helps you see your blind spots and

• somebody who helps you to live up to your full potential. Somebody who has a vision for you... they know how far you could come, they see all of your potentials and help you reach the stars.

All of this could be something your line manager is capable of. But if this is not a case make sure you are creating your own growth-supporting environment. Find colleagues that are giving feedback on a regular basis, ask your line manager to help you with the blind spots and find yourself a mentor. Somebody who believes in you. Or you could get yourself a coach for some time helping you with personal development topics or you can join or start a group of likeminded people.

BTW: there is a great twitter thread on how to find a mentor by Gibbson Biddle and it might come in handy when you start to think about this right after our session.

So no matter how you are creating your little development support group: make sure you find those people and make sure you are listening to what they have to tell you.

Ok, so now you made some time and have found your ally.

But you are still lost with I don´t know where to start, don´t know what to learn. And this brings me to ingredient #3 

It´s impossible w/o knowing what you could be thriving for, w/o a blueprint, w/o a clear idea of how the best product managers work

Let´s assume you want to become a professional photographer. Where would you start? With buying a camera? With taking a photo-class?

Well... that´s a start. But what about reflecting on the type of photographer you want to be?

Isn´t this an important thing to decide? You can become a fasion, food, … photographer . So, yes, it is important to reflect on that! Because this influences the know-how and skills you need to acquire, the equipment you need to buy and the way you need to use this equipment. And even if some development areas are super obvious to everyone entering this field others are easier to find if you know what you want to become, and it gets even better if somebody is curating a learning experience for you.

So what I am advocating for is:

• you need to know/figure out what type of product manager you want to become for your current company/context. This is something you should discuss with your line manager and… if not existent, with your team. I will share my canvas for this discussion later.

• And once you've figured that out you need to become, you want to make sure you are learning the things necessary for doing your job well and for getting to a stage where your line manager thinks "wow... great work. I think she is ready for the next bigger challenge" and is assigning you to your next career opportunity. I will be sharing my product manager assessment sheet which you can use as a tour guide for this journey later.

But before we emerge ourselves in Canvases, let´s bring in Lisa Radel and Philip Krehl to hear

• how they are making time in their busy calendars for their growth

• if and how they found their ally and

• if they are having a blueprint for being a great PM

I hope you’ll find it helpful and find some little tips and tricks in what there are saying.

INTERVIEW

Summary: OK. let me sum this up: Both understood the value of personal and professional development and have found ways how to make time for it. They both found people that are helping them along the way and they are both curious about how to get a better idea of their potential areas of development.

Now let us have a look at my framework, the canvases that are helping you to do the homework. Let´s start with the role description because that´s what´s missing in many, many companies.

If I ask for a role description I usually get told yes, we have them. You can find them on our career page. It´s in our job postings. Baduuuum. This is NOT what I am talking about.

By creating a role description, you are aligning expectations (upwards = upper mgmt., line manager, sideward = peers & stakeholders, inwards = team) and it helps a lot to have one because:

If everybody has agreed on what the role is all about it´s much easier to figure out what you should become better at and it´s easier for others to give feedback to you. It´s less personal because they are mainly pointing out where they see gaps between the role description and your current profile.

Here´s the canvas: Role, Purpose, ... as always with Canvases it´s not about filling the blanks. It´s about the process, the discussions you will have to come up with an agreed-on version.

If there isn´t something like this in your company: just start to create it. If you think your line manager or HR folks will not care start small: You could start by only using it with your product development team. It´s pretty interesting how many discussions need to happen to have one of those Canvases filled out for PMs, Designers, Developers and so on. At the moment you put in their people will start to disagree and the magic starts to happen. So please go do this!

But the role description itself is not something that helps you to identify your development areas, your gaps, your blind spots. You need somebody who knows exactly what a good PM looks like in your context and… if there is no such person, a framework that is way more detailed.

I have created this something I call the PMwheel. You will understand why in a second. It was originally developed to help HoPs to assess their product people. But many of my coachees found it a helpful tool for self-assessment and that´s why I am sharing it with you for the first time ever. It´s far too detailed to work through it in a session like this but you can just download it and work with it on your own.

Let me briefly explain how it works: On the one hand, it talks about the 5 main tasks that a product manager usually has: Understand the problem,… On the other hand, it names three dimensions that are also important in order to do the job of a product manager correctly: Team, Agile, and personal growth.

I’ve created a set of questions that are helping you to reflect on each of the dimensions. And it helps you to give yourself a 1 to 7 rating (I love this scale, there is no real mean value and you have to choose between 3 or 4) which will lead you to the spider web graphic that is shown here.

Please note: Not all questions might be relevant for you or not all might have the same relevance. This depends on your company’s take on product management (empowered product teams vs. order taking feature teams), on your role description (rather technical PMs might rate low on the UserResearch bits) but this is fine. And that´s why it´s so important to create the role description first. With this in mind, you can just cross out what doesn´t fit your role.  

If you have drawn your very own spider web I encourage you to do the exact same thing with your line manager, peers, team... whoever you think could help you to see clearer on that.

You will end up with 1-5 spiderwebs and this usually speaks a clear language: there are one or two dimensions that are rated not that well and these are the ones you could focus your time and efforts on. To do so you could come up with a development plan. Something that helps you commit to small actions that get you closer to the competent product management personality you want to become.

I like to use the future-self template that origins from the book Traction by Gino Wickmen for this.

• As is: what is the current situation when it comes to “understanding the problem”

• To be: How do I want to be seen when it comes to understanding the problem. What would I like to change regarding this? How could others tell I evolved on this topic?

• Actions: things you can check off your list. Use the consume/apply/reflect/contribute 2by2 to come up with some actions and last but not least the timeframe.

• Timeframe: 3-4 month is usually a good period for such a development plan. You want to invest some time but don´t make it a forever ongoing initiative.

See it as a contract with yourself. I like to do one of them per development area BUT one of them at the time. So pick your battles wisely.

Phew.. this was a lot of input and I want to give you the time to digest all of this by listening to some thoughts Lisa and Philipp are having on that.

• Philipp: How are you making sure you are progressing?

• Lisa: How are you creating the blueprint for yourself?

• Your advise to others when it comes to self-progression

Before I’m doing a recap plz take a minute and reflect on the session: Let us know what was your most valuable insight. (Mentimeter poll) I’m so happy to read all the bigger and smaller things you are taking away from this session!

Time for your personal growth is always time well spent.

And I’m sure we are finding ways to follow up on some of the topics you would have loved to learn more about.

I have created a slack channel in the MTP slack community, and this might be a good place to follow up on this with your fellow PMs in this session. Feel free to join.

Now it´s time to sum this up. 

If you want to put your personal and professional development on your agenda, you have to

Make some time: to consume, to apply, to reflect and to contribute & please don´t wait until somebody else is taking care of that. (because it will not happen), and remember it is in your very own interest to do this.

Find your ally: People that are good in giving feedback, helping you to become a competent PM and people that help you to reach your full potential.

Work on your blueprint: How does a competent PM look like and what are you missing or could be better at to be this strong product person. Feel free to use my role description canvas, the PMWheel and the future self to make this journey a lot easier!

You can download a PDF containing all these templates here: see above

Thanks to Martin Eriksson and the MTP team for inviting me, to Lisa and Philipp for sharing their story and, to all of you for listening in and for committing to your product management growth journey!

Let´s close with a quote from the famous National Geographic Photographer Dewitt Jones: “First we have to train our technique and then we have to put ourselves in the place of most potential.” Please follow his advice because it is good for you if you are progressing, It´s good for the companies you are working for and ultimately good for all of us if you are growing the world desperately needs competent, brilliant and kind product people that help to make it a better place! One tech product at a time!

Take care, stay healthy and enjoy the rest of #MTPCon.

Bey, bey and over and out.