Main takeaways:
1. Tips on how to collaborate effectively with your peers
2. How to build strong relationships
3. How to build the right product for your customers
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Tonight's talk is “ [TITLE] ” with [NAME]. Welcome, [NAME].
PMs who don’t build relationships can try to force things to get done
Fail to build successful products
Due to lack of buy in
Two ends to the spectrum
Dont have an opinion with info - base opinions off of others
People who think they are right and have an opinion and don’t listen to others
Problem with the first:
you aren’t able to lead or provide direction
You are easily sayed
Problem with the second:
People dont feel valued
No single person is always right or knows everything
Being this type of PM will eventually take teams down the wrong path
You dont want to be either
You want to be right in the middle
Have an opinon based on what you know
But open to listening to others and becoming flexible
It comes down to two things- relationships with your partners and knowing your customer
I tried to figure out how to split this up to make it easier to understand, but you really can’t have one without the other. They’re too intertwined
Engineering, Design, other PMs, managers,
As a PM you don’t have the power to tell people what to do, they don’t report to you, you have no actual authority
You are the CEO of your product, without the actual power
The only way you get things done is by building relationships
Get engineering and design involved as early as you can
Get to know your teams working styles
Working successfully as a team means you need to trust each other
If there is no trust, you’re pretty much screwed from the get-go
It comes back to the user Know and be the voice of your customer
Your opinion needs to be grounded in your customer
Understand how they think, what their needs are, and how you can make their lives better
Try to go through what they would do so you can understand what their needs are and empathize with them
You should know the needs of the customer better than anyone else
Your job is to constantly be learning about your customer
Have the quantitative and qualitative information about the customer written down
Opinions need to be grounded on the user
It is easier to align with anybody if you make your customer the most important person in the decisions
Don’t lie
A problem can be solved multiple ways- and your way might not be the right way
It is not your job to dictate how things are done
Your partners need to feel comfortable having a discussion and giving you honest feedback and opinions
Your team should give recommendations on how they think a problem should be addressed and why they think your solution may not be the correct one
It is your job to evaluate the information presented to you and choose the path forward you think is correct after evaluation of implementation cost and business impact
Build the right product for your customer
Don’t waste their time
People have opinions and you can’t get away from them
But if you know your customer, have done your research, and believe you have come up with the best solution- you need to put a stake in the ground
If there is an impass- maybe its time to re-evaluate or run an experiment
There are ways to manage opinoins and have difficult conversations
The solution s not to lash back
Lets say you present a spec to your team and you’re ready to kick off- your team needs to know how soon this needs to be released, how you want to approach the problem,
Set expectations early on and work with the team to define milestones and timelines
If a team member is misaligned then it is your job to figure out how to realign expectations
During execution, your priority is to manage blockers for the engineering team
I always tell the people i work with that my job is to make their lives easier so they can deliver the product
It is not their job to manage other blockers, but they can handle the smaller ones- you need to make sure they know you are available to jump in
You need to be there for the big ones so they can deliver the product
If a partner has helped you by providing you with more insight, support, brainstorming time- recognize them
This shows that you value their contribution
You may not have learned what you know now without that person
When you make a mistake, you need to take ownership
Example: forgot to implement tracking correctly, didn’t update a jira ticket properly
Feel free to speak with me and I can point you in the right direction (explain where to apply). Or you can visit www.productschool.com
Have a good night!