Five non obvious skills for product managers in 2023 to know
Five non obvious skills for product managers in 2023 to know
vs. 10 years ago
Running your team with outcomes instead of agile processes
Knowing how to set intelligent goals and outcomes means you can let go of control. It sounds counterintuitive but in today’s remote world and fast-changing markets, agile processes are not the saving grace to get a team productive.
Well, it might be productive but not necessarily productive where it should be. Knowing how to identify outcomes that are meaningful (not financial outcomes) is actually what unlocked me to let go of a lot of processes inside of teams.
This includes most agile processes from SCRUM frameworks or - sorry if you're in it - SAFe. And this is not only relevant if you’re a product leader that has control over the organizational structure. It definitely is a must-have skill for any product or growth manager to get this under control.
And it’s not as easy as it sounds, but that’s exactly what makes it a differentiator the bigger your clients become. Setting meaningful outcomes in B2C vs. Enterprise are totally different ballgame for different types of PMs.
How to learn it
My Growth Guide 3.2. Outcome-driven goal setting:
Crafting business cases
Knowing how to structure, write and challenge a business case is more than just creating nice slides.
If there is one gap that I see most PMs have in recruiting calls that’s the one that gets most of them
It’s about knowing when, how deep, and more importantly how to validate a business case. This is more than just doing qualitative research it’s about knowing before you dive into deep qualitative research whether it’s worth it.
And it goes hand in hand with the next item on the list: Understanding how companies actually work on the financial side.
How to learn it:
“Superforecasting” by Philip Tetlock to understand the fundamental problem of trusting your sense when creating any case/prediction
My article on the topic:
Understanding company valuation/investing
Knowing what drives a company’s value from the next funding round to who and how investors work.
This is specifically true the smaller your company is but probably still more relevant than most think. This knowledge can really unlock how you strategically prioritize your work and argue for what's coming next in the roadmap.
It’s a common misconception that this is “just” a C-level job. I mean it is, but you can really unlock better strategic opportunities if you understand what it “means” for the business.
There’s no one size fits all solution here and I had many failures before I felt I started to understand the topic well enough but I can tell you what didn’t work. Acamedia and University as much as it pains me to say. Too much time and money wasted.
Great resources that actually brought me forward:
Investing / Business Substacks like 101 Investing by Kyle Harrison
Valuation (Seventh Edition) by McKinsey (Big brick to read but worth it)
Understanding Sales & Marketing
Especially if you work in Growth you are starting to “mess” with other silos. Understanding what they do is going beyond just some fluffy stakeholder management. You *really* need to understand some basics about sales functions and how marketing works.
Just claiming “PLG IS THE WAY SUCKERS!” is not working. Also if you succumb to the usual reflection of “your [insert silo here] sucks and product/growth rules” is probably part of the problem.
You cannot do everything without specialized marketing or sales functions. There is a reason why they exist and a lot of enterprise markets can still only be closed by dedicated salespeople.
Understanding these silos together with everything else on the list helps you find big opportunities and escape dangerous silo thinking. You don’t need to be a proficient salesperson or top-level marketeer but get some fundamentals in your head at the very least. Or ask them to show you with genuine curiosity.
How to learn it:
Sales: https://www.foundingsales.com/ → Great book to get started
Marketing: “Marketing 4.0” by Philip Kotler
Learn how to learn
The main problem we are running into is that we won’t know what there is to learn in the future. Everything changes so fast and everyone tells you something else is important in the future.
The one thing that you can definitely leverage in the future already though with 100% accuracy is learning how to learn.
Find the forms that work best for you and then have them feed into each other. Me writing things like this is reinforcing my learning. That in turn makes it easier for me to grow other PMs inside my organization. That in turn means I can advise my clients better on what good product and org design looks like.
It’s a cycle. It looks like I’m distributed, but everything I do is with the goal in mind to become a better product leader, manager, and advisor. Every day.
The “likes” are a byproduct. I don’t need an audience to learn. I need material to learn from. Take your time and curating for instance whom you follow on LinkedIn and sitting down to learn a topic that you feel is constantly haunting you…
That’s learning.
If it’s not uncomfortable, you’re probably not learning.
“If it’s not uncomfortable, you’re probably not learning” - is probably a line that will end up:
1. in a post it, stuck on the wall in my line of vision while I work
2. using in my 1:1s with my team
3. i will say to myself out loud over and over again in the next days, months, more.
🙆🏻♀️