As I prepare myself to take up my new job as a product manager, my mind is on an overdrive racing in all directions. As a product guy, there are a ton of things that demand your attention when you are joining a new organization and it’s so easy to be overwhelmed by the deluge of all the new information coming your way. For me the stakes are even higher because I am moving to a new country, joining a new team, would work on a completely new domain and managing a product that is new to me too. Hence, if I don't take charge and structure my learning, I would be setting myself up for failure. The initial days in a product manager’s new job is crucial because the actions you take during your first few months will determine whether you succeed or fail eventually. The success and failure during your first few months also is a strong predictor of overall success or failure in the job. The early days of a product manager is when he needs to demonstrate eagerness to learn fast. In around the first 100 days, your bosses, peers and direct reports typically expect you to be getting some traction in your role.
When a product manager joins a new organization, he could be hired either for building a new product/product line or to manage an already existing product. Most product managers join a team which has an existing product, which is also the case with me.
The activities listed below are from collections of my readings and interviewing with experts over the years. These are mere proposals and not prescriptions. Most of what you would eventually do would vary according to the nature of the domain, scale of the organization, your place in the product management team, phase of a product release etc.
Before Day 1
There are a few things product people should begin doing even before joining their new organization. Though wrapping up your existing job might keep you busy, the least you could do is try to stay abreast with the latest developments in the organization that you are about to join. You could do this by setting up Google alerts about your new organization. This way you will receive daily alerts through email about latest news about the organization. This is a great way to be in the know and feel confident even before reporting to work on Day 1.
First 50 days
Week One
This is the most important week in your new organization. This is the time where you are creating your first impressions over your colleagues. Make sure you present your best self because the impression created during this time would remain with them for a long time. You should project enthusiasm and energy during this time. Every employer appreciates energy, enthusiasm, and a sense of purpose to move things fast from a new employee. Pick things faster than what you usually do and show progress. There is no better feeling and a sense of assurance to your new employer to see you picking things faster than they expected.
Understand the vision and business strategy of your organization.
Knowledge is power and the key to making a strong start in your new position as a product manager. You would have already familiarised yourself to the vision and strategy while preparing for the interview. However, this is the time to ingrain it into you. It is of utmost importance for a product manager because all your product decisions in the future are going to be in alignment to the vision and strategy of your organization.
Try to find answers to these questions specifically by interviewing internal stakeholders:
What are the current hypothesis for the business strategy?
What are the data points (customer insights, industry trends, research sources, analysts, partners) used to arrive at the vision and business strategy?
Understand the product, the market, and the culture.
Meanwhile, if the product is already in development, attend the daily meetings, observe the dynamics of software development process like a fly in the wall.
Meet these people and know the dimensions:
Marketing - understand the corporate messaging
Market - understand needs, segments, trends and requirements
Sales, Account Executives, Customer Success - understand customer pain points
Partners
Board/Founder: Corporate strategy
Portfolio/VC: Budget
Engineering/Development: Tech stack
DevOps: Automation
QA: Maintainability
Analysts: Hype topics
In the first 50 days, you are a fly on the wall, soaking and absorbing everything around you.
Understand who the target market is
Who are your current customers, and why do they buy from you? Look for common characteristics and interests. Which are the segments that bring in the most business? It is very likely that other people like them could also benefit from your product/service.
Know Your Product
Use this time to begin learning your product. Depending on the nature of your product and business, create a learning plan for yourself. There are multiple channels to pick your product knowledge from:
Learn from the product videos that are available.
Enroll in internal product training programs
Begin reading all the available documentation ( both user and developer manuals)
Attend every product meeting you re invited to and absorb every piece of information that you can get.
However, the fastest and the most effective way for new product managers to learn about their products that I have learnt through experience is by attending support calls. Tag along your support staff and listen intently to the support questions the teams receive. Through these calls you learn about relevant aspects of your products that impacts customers directly. The other unintended benefits of attending support calls are developing empathy for your customers and understanding product priorities.
Competitive Landscape
Understanding competitive landscape helps you calibrate the current position of your product in the market. Understand both direct and indirect competitors of your product. This helps provide the new product manager the relevant context to take appropriate product decisions in the future and develop or overcome competitive advantages and disadvantages.
Exposure to Domain
If you are lucky, you would have moved into a new organization within the same domain. Else, you have been hired for a completely new domain. If you want to succeed, spend this time to to attain the right amount of knowledge about the domain in which you are working. Domain expertise helps product managers connect with buyers and users to truly understand what they need and not just what they want. Domain knowledge steers marketing communications to effective programs with a clear message for the buyer.
Here are a few things that you can do to attain domain knowledge:
Set Google alerts for topics on your domain be it Fintech, insurance, analytics etc.
Subscribe to popular RSS Feeds for articles and blogs on your domain.
Learn Internal Tools
Try to dirty your hands with all the tools being used by your product team. Seek help in opening your accounts for all the tools. These could include:
Project tracking tools like JIRA, TFS, Trello etc.
Access to build servers
CRM systems if any like Salesforce
Analytics account if any
Review and evaluate a strategic product plan
Set Expectations with your boss
Set up quick goals with the help of your boss: Make sure that within the first two weeks, you sit with your boss and ask for clear marching orders. Set up quick goals for yourself and seek approval from him. This is much needed to set expectations for your manager. Some times, the manager might find it hard to set clear expectations. In that case, you have to take charge of the communication and write it down for him in clear, specific detail and get him to agree upon it. Here's a good article on setting expectations with your boss: http://www.monster.com/career-advice/article/setting-expectations-with-your-boss
Create a job map: Draw a job map of everything you are supposed to do as a new PM. Sometimes your boss is not very clear himself and the nature of PM discipline is such that it is difficult to define a scope. But you must still draw out a map which will help prioritise your tasks.
Meet stakeholders
Sit down with key stakeholders in every department that touches your product anywhere from start to finish. Tell them that you are interested in understanding them, the role that they play in getting your product shipped - that could be engineering, business development, marketing, sales etc . Ask them to help you understand what things are working and what's not working.
Having these conversations are most successful when you are talking as little as possible and listening as attentively as possible. They are about building relationships and learning.
These early prestart conversations are your first best chance to make connections with your most important stakeholders by asking for their help in terms of their read on the situation, priorities, and “how things are done around here.”
Because this is about relationships first, your first question will probably be something along the lines of “Tell me about yourself.” You want to connect with your key stakeholders individually. You want to understand their personal wants and needs as well as their business issues.
Because you are here to build relationships and learn, it is not the time to tell your life story or to offer opinions on how things should be done.
Structuring the conversations is useful. Come into these conversations with an open mind, and actively listen to what your key stakeholders have to say. Doing so in a planned and thoughtful way is fundamental to maximizing the value of these conversations.
Understanding People Dynamics
It has been stated ad infinitum on the importance of people skills for product managers to succeed in their job. To succeed in your new role, you would need the support of people over whom you have no direct authority. When you are on boarding into a new organization, you have little or no relationship capital at the outset. You need to invest your energies in building up relationships with people you anticipate needing to work with later. To integrate smoothly in an organization, one needs to be mindful and develop a great sense of self-awareness to observe the people dynamics within the organization.
Become an information magnet
It’s important to remember that your business is not a static enterprise. A lot may have changed since the business plan was written. You must immerse yourself in the most up-to-date information available about the company.
The following is a list of resources that every product manager new to the company should gather and review carefully:
Market research
Customer list
Presentation materials currently in use
Company collateral
Win/loss analysis data
Customer proposal template and signed contracts
Available competitive information
Customer data sources within the organization
Defect reports
Product cost information or a product P&L
Existing product-related materials
Identify Why Users are Leaving
In the first 30 days, identify why users are leaving or staying. Focus on former.
In the first 30 days, identify why users are leaving or staying. Focus on former.
First 50-100 days
Help putting together a customer presentation
Help develop a strategic product plan
Providing your input on a small feature that is going to be implemented. Research how the feature needs to be implemented and write requirements document. This will help you understand the inner workings of your product.
Writing release notes or preview guides for an upcoming release
Updating the product roadmap by incorporating the latest changes.
Testing a new piece of functionality that has been implemented
Helping with usability testing on a new feature
Secure Early Wins. Securing early wins is very precious to build immediate credibility within your organization. It could be anything such as:
Avoiding losses
Along with securing early wins, it is equally important to avoid early losses. Nothing damages credibility more than early failures due to carelessness or lack of mindfulness. The path to a new role is littered with pitfalls. Any misstep can lead to early failures.
Make Customer Visits
Try meeting a few customers and understand their needs and problems and their use cases. Mostly these interviews should be exploratory and qualitative in nature.
Call a meeting with your product team . Inform them that you would want to demo the product to the team and seek feedback because you as a product manager must be able to demo your product when needed.
Do a Product Demo
Building Credibility and Trust
I’ve realized there is really one thing you have to get right if you want to be successful long-term in a new organization.
It’s building credibility.
Credibility is very much like like an investment account. You add a little bit to it at a time, and it starts to grow. And once you’ve made enough deposits, you can start tapping into it without drawing too much from it. But you can’t make withdrawals if you haven’t made deposits, at least not without seriously damaging yourself.
And credibility is gained by securing a lot of early/quick wins. Keep looking for them.
By the 100th Day
Execute on the strategic product plan
By now, you would have developed a strategic product plan. It is now time to begin executing on the plan. Start with a small set of requirements with a clear and easily measurable success metrics. Form a review team to build it right.
One of the best books available on this subject is Michael Watson’s The First 90 Days that provides comprehensive strategies to navigate through a new organization in a new role.
The book provided a 90 days framework:
Accelerate your learning: Efficient and effective learning is a necessary foundation for making a successful transition. The faster you learn about the technical, cultural, and political dimensions of your new position or assignment, the more you’ll be able to accomplish in the critical first months.
Match strategy to situation: A clear assessment of the business situation is an essential prerequisite for developing your transition plan.
Negotiate success: You need to figure out how to build a productive working relationship with your new manager (or managers). This means planning for a series of critical conversations about the situation, expectations, working style, and resources.
Achieve alignment: “Armed with a deeper understanding of the business situation, your manager’s expectations, and the interests of key stakeholders, you can define your vision and core objectives.
Build your team:
Secure early wins: Getting early wins is essential in order to build your credibility and create momentum. Wins create virtuous cycles that leverage the energy you put into the organization.
Create alliances: You need to build alliances to support your key initiatives. That means identifying the most important people whose support you need and develop a plan for getting them onboard.
Manage yourself: Throughout your transition, you must work hard to maintain your equilibrium, manage your energy, and preserve your ability to make good judgements. You need to be disciplined in deciding what you will and wont do, and you must invest in building and leveraging the right network of advisors.
Hey, thanks for this post! I read it shortly before starting a new job about 4 months ago. Aside from being a helpful overview of a wide range of things that make sense to do early into a PM role, your advice to "Pick things faster than what you usually do and show progress" really nudged me to do as you suggest, even amidst an environment with very aggressive timelines and a lot of challenges. In my first performance review yesterday, my manager mentioned how impressed he was with how quickly I'd gotten up to speed, and the focus of our discussion was mostly on what he could do to help support me in making this a sustainable position, rather than shortcomings or areas he'd like to see me improve.