The Mistakes I Made Starting Out As Product Manager / Strategist

At that time, I had worked for months on a release as a product manager with our development team. 

Overnight the release went live on the app store. We were all incredibly excited!

The next day I passed our CEO in the corridor. 

“Did you see the release went out?” I asked. “Now the app does A, B and C!” 

“Yes, I saw it,” she didn’t look all that impressed. “I thought it was going to do X and Y. When’s that coming?”

In what should have been a high moment, I felt as though I’d completely missed something. I really felt as though I had let the team down, because I hadn’t done what would allow our CEO to celebrate the release with us.

I learnt a valuable lesson that day. This and other lessons have stuck with me over the years as I’ve worked in various digital product and strategy roles. 

In this post, I share some of these lessons, and how they’ve shaped my approach today.

The moment I just shared with you shaped lesson 1.

#1. I overlooked the value of over-communicating

Communication only costs us time, but when it’s not done well, it can be far more costly.

By the time I saw our CEO in the corridor all those years ago, she should have already known about our release and what it delivered to marker. She should have known not only what was in the release, but what was coming next. 

Key Lessons

• As a Product Manager, if you have a roadmap, share it. Many Product Managers I know are cautious about sharing features and releases before they’re locked in. But there’s nothing wrong sharing both what is confirmed as well as what is ‘pencilled in’ for a future release.
• We can use many different ways to communicate what is being worked on. Whether that’s via showcases, sprint plans, key results….whatever the tools are at your disposal, think about how and where they’ll be used best. 
• People are busy. Hearing something once might not be enough for the information to sink in. So don’t be afraid of over communicating. 
  

#2. I was not able to take on multiple perspectives

Being a Product Manager or a Strategist requires us to take on multiple perspectives.

We need to understand what our designers and developers want. We have to see what’s important to culture to make a team succeed. We must uncover what will drive value for our customers through our products. We can also benefit from becoming more comfortable thinking like a strategist.

Initially, I wasn’t able to grasp multiple perspectives. Then, I thought I had to take on other perspectives, rather than just ask others to share their views.

A fifteen minute conversation with a developer, a designer or a customer, to ask for their feedback on a topic, is the most direct way to gain rapid insights. We don’t have to create these insights ourselves. Asking for the help of others is far more effective and fast.

Key Lessons

• Be aware of the incredible value of taking on multiple perspectives. Creating great products and strategy requires us to become systems thinkers and to look at problems and opportunities through interconnected viewpoints.
• Ask for advice and feedback. There is no better way to understand a perspective, than to ask for direct feedback from the person/stakeholder/group who represents it.
  

#3. I did not understand the value of diverse benefits

A lot of what I did early in my career is what I would call ‘busy work’.

I thought the work was valuable, but how could I have known, because I never made any attempt to connect the work with a benefit driver.

So much of what product managers and strategists do can be connected to a measurable result. 

A new feature in a product can make it faster to improve operational processes, increase customer usage of a platform and, most importantly, solve a customer problem or pain point in a fundamental way.

All of these changes in behaviour can be measured. In fact, absolutely anything we work on can be connected to a benefit. On this topic, one of my favorite books is How To Measure Anything by Douglass Hubbard. 

Benefits can be quantitative (ie. will increase revenue by X%) or qualitative (ie. increase customer satisfaction with a feature). Benefits can also be incredibly diverse, whether it’s improving brand perception or the time taken to load a page. 

Some benefits will be more impactful than others. It is this impact that can also be used to assess the true and relative value of our work.

Key Lessons

• Anything we work on can be connected to benefit drivers. 
• While it takes effort, connecting what we work on to benefit is one of the ways we can measure the value and impact of our work.
• When we connect features with benefits in a transparent and logical way, decisions also become far simpler for us and our teams.
  

#4. I failed to understand the first problem, may not be the real problem

In any given day, we are given many problems to solve. These might come in the form of a question from a department, a consistent theme in customer feedback, or from our manager. 

Initially, when provided with problems to solve, I took these at face value and started the work. I didn’t understand the value of problem framing!

Problem framing is the art of assessing whether the first problem raised is the right problem to solve. Many methods look at how we can deepen our awareness of problems and opportunities, in order to understand what is the true driving force of an issue or opportunity.

The Five Whys method is an example. Amanda Rosenburg, Staff UX Researcher at Google, suggests another framework. Rosenburg shared a ‘tip of the day’ on Linked In proposing that researchers write down stakeholder questions on Post It notes, then use these notes to order and prioritise which questions can be solved by research.

I came to realise if I didn’t start with the right problem, I would not get the right answer. What’s more, I would waste a great amount of time in the process!

Key Lessons

• Making sure we start with the right problem is key to optimizing our time and the overall value of our work.
• Being able to bring problem framing skills to stakeholder meetings is a way we further add value for our teams, by sharpening focus. 
• Problem framing is an important activity, and any method designed to deepen our understanding of the problem or opportunity, will help us as Product Managers and Strategists.
  

#5. I focused on the release and not the long game

Releases are exciting! The idea of a team pulling together to ship something new for customers can be a real rush. 

Early on I spent most of my time focused on the release I was working on. I would enjoy the high of putting something to market, only to find myself exhausted at the end of it. Then I had to pick myself up to work on what came next.

I didn’t realise that true value comes from incremental and continuous change, delivered in an aligned way, over sustained periods of time. 

To do this, we have to do three things: 1) allow focus for the current release, 2) devote attention to fostering releases that will be coming in the future, and 3) ensure we manage ourselves so that we sustain high energy over the course of the year (in other words, replenishing our energy and avoiding burnout).

In the early years, I was so focused on the first of these (giving focus only to a single release), that I completely neglected the other two areas.

Key Lessons

• True value is derived from incremental and continuous change. 
• As Product Managers and Strategists we need to do three things: focus on the current release, foster future releases, manage ourselves and our energy.
• Our role is a critical input to how all releases occur, so if we do not manage ourselves and our energy, the overall system weakens.
  

#6. I tried to do everything, without prioritizing anything

Fantastic Product Managers and Strategists help their teams by bringing a clarity of focus and decision making that allows better work to get done, faster.

We see everything as a question of priority. What will we work on today? What feature is most important to deliver next month? How will we outshine the competition by delivering great work?

Early on I was not aware how important prioritisation is. Or, that one of my most important roles as a Product Manager and Strategist, was to bring priority to my own time as well as help others prioritize their work, by leveraging frameworks and methods to do so.

Here are three simple priority frameworks I’ve found invaluable:

Key Lessons

• Being able to prioritize is a fundamental skill of Product Managers and Strategists.
• We should think about prioritization not just for the teams we work with or features for our products, but also for ourselves and our own time.
• Leveraging various methods to bring clarity to prioritization efforts is incredibly helpful for this task.

I hope these lessons give you ideas to improve your own day-to-day work.

If you have your own lessons that have boosted your effectiveness, I’d love to hear them; you can leave a comment below or get in touch directly.