How are you growing strong product makers in your organization?

The beauty of Product Management is that you never stop learning. One should always be staying on top of new techniques,  new methods, new technologies. In addition to keeping up with the latest trends, it is also key to always refine and improve skills to be an effective product leader. For my team, career growth is a key focus. I empower my team by ensuring they are received constant coaching and feedback in areas such as:

1.  Oral and Written Communication

2.  Customer Engagement/ Discovery opportunities 

3.  Stakeholders management and alignment 

4. Prioritization techniques, and the art of saying no

5.  Product adoption and maturity

6. Backlog mananagement

7. Understanding voice of customer  

We meet often to ensure they are happy with their job, that they feel passionate about their products and ensure they get the support and coaching they need from me.

We attend at least 2 product webinars at least per month to ensure we stay in tune with the industry, as a team every 2 weeks we meet for continuing education, we also started a monthly book circle where together we choose a book and chat about how it can apply to our team.

We ensure that we have a very open conversation with multiple departments. I’m of the mind that “product makers” consist of everyone from the development team to the executive team. We’re all trying to deliver successful products and features to our users - both to grow the company and to empower our users. While I work to prioritize the bulk of features that are coming down the hill to our development team, we also communicate the features that are a blend of “best bang for buck” and “most fun to work with” - as developers need to keep things fresh, just like product managers (or any other position, for that matter).

Personally, I do have a fair amount of flexibility around joining webinars and events. Not just product-minded events but those that focus specifically in the industry that I’m currently part of - to have a better understanding of the market, our competitors, and our overall “product space.” I encourage additional team members to join, as it improves the understanding of our users and their needs (from any department). Purely optional, but definitely helps discussions further down the road (and improves solution building from product managers and developers!).

Struggling? Mostly resources. Hiring developers and product management-focused positions are both difficult in the modern day. Primarily because there’s an abundance of positions and it allows for a wider net for potential candidates (both a positive and a negative, depending on which side of the fence you’re on).

Not struggling? Definitely communication. With how many organizations have shifted to remote/hybrid work almost seamlessly in the past year (for very unfortunate reasons), even those who aren’t too used to the model are starting to be more familiar with communicating in such an environment.