Issue #1 | 7 Things you must do in the first 6 months of your transition to an early PM role

Practical advice from my recent experience so that you can have smooth transition into PM role

Let’s be honest here, transitioning to any new role can be super challenging even if you have read all the theoretical information available for the role on internet, and it become even more arduous when the transition is to a PM role because of so many layers attached to it. Every PM will tell you different description of what role he/she is doing at a company or what is Product Management to them and it’s not their fault too. The role differs so much based on the industry, size of the company, whether its B2B or B2C. There is just too much chaos about this role.

What then becomes extremely important is to understand where you should really focus on from the beginning, so that you know you are on the right track of understanding the role at the company and later on managing the role better. Therefore, sharing these key experiences, which will help you in moving forward day by day and grow in your role, irrelevant of which industry you are in, whether it’s B2B or B2C doesn’t matter.

1. Completely understand your Product

No brainer here, but you need to understand every inch of your Product. Read all the resources, documentation regarding the product available in company’s knowledge base. No one would be expecting you to be an expert from Day 1, so use these initial days effectively to first understand the product so that you can follow up with what the hell people are talking about in the meetings.

Golden Tip, especially in B2B product, read the contracts that you have with your customers thoroughly, the amount of valuable information you will receive about the product, what values we are providing to our customer and what type of relationship you have with your customer, will blow your mind and take you to the next level in comprehending the product, customer and their relationship.

2. Shadow your senior PM and be an active listener

Initially, Just observe what the senior PM does on a regular basis, but not in creepy way. Simply shadow him! Understand WHAT and HOW behind the daily tasks and meetings because it is important to understand that as an early PM, and you can learn a lot just by watching and listening religiously. Later on, have 1 on 1 meetings with your senior PM if you wanna go deep into it.

Golden Tip, Higly recommend to have a mentor in your company. Don’t necessarily have to be from your team but someone with whom you can talk to and he would understand your pain points and suggest some advice. Thankfully, I have found 3 mentors within my company to whom i seek help on different topics every now and then, although they might not be aware they are mentoring me. It’s an Art what can i say 😁 You have to be subtle 😉

3. Ask lot of questions, Be curious!

As a new employee in the company and in your role, you must have thousands of questions that you want to ask but are afraid of asking because you believe others will think you are stupid and incompetent. However, this is not the case; nobody expects you to know everything, you simply need to ask! You won’t believe the possibilities that opens up just by asking.

Golden Tip, In my company, we arranged a bi-weekly sessions of Q&As and the essence of this meeting is to ask all sorts of questions without being judged, that you or anyone in the team for that matter, wouldn’t ask in general and the senior employees are the host of those meetings & I have personally learned so much in those meetings.

4. Trust your survival instinct to grow quickly

Jump into the red ocean and trust your survival instinct to learn quickly. After the initial couple of weeks, take a big project that you find interesting and just start with it. Don’t think about whether you will be able to complete it or not. You can also take help of your team and they will happily support you as well. You will learn rather quickly this way and it will give you a sense of ownership and responsibility. This will become very imporant as you grow in your role and also in your career.

5. Focus on the problem as much as possible

When we are new and fresh, we want to make an impact. We want to tell everyone who is the real deal. We have so much energy and ideas in our mind to solve an existing problem, that we just focus on the solutions and don’t think deep enough about the problem and that leads to half hearted incomplete solutions. Controlling the urge to come to solution and rather thinkink deeply about the problem and breaking it down to its first principle is a skill and like an other skill, it takes time to develop it.

So always take conscious efforts to think before jumping to solution that have you thought deep enough about the problem and considered all the aspect. This will help in developing first principle mindset, which is very simple yet powerful tool if implemented correctly and i am also learning that every day.

6. Don’t shy away seeking help

Ask for support from your team members, they will gladly help you. We work in a Product team type culture where the team has people from cross-functional departments and there are many times when i need their expertise in a particular task that i am working on. This way when you will involve lots of people in your task or project, you will understand alot about other departments and you will make meaningful relationship with them as well and as a PM, managing your stakeholders is a super important skill that you need to have or develop ASAP!!

Golden Tip, Must read book, How to make Friends and influence People, it’s a beautifully written piece which teaches how to better understand people, human behaviour and how to influence people through leadership.

7. Get regular Feedback from your manager

Continuous improvement should be your end goal in the initial days. Set up monthly or on alternate months, a feedback session with your manager or senior PM and take note of the following:

• What you did right -> This will show your key strengths

• Where could you improve -> This will show your areas of improvement

• Where you should focus next -> This will make sure you keep on growing from your experiences

There are probably few more points that i could mention here, but these were the most important ones to keep in mind when you are starting. I understand I haven’t mention anything about the product resources, templates or tools here because one way or another you will be introduced to those things and also those will be topic for later discussions but above mentioned points will guide you in the right direction in order for you to grow as a PMs.

Please let me know if you find the content useful! It will motivate me to share more such experiences & if you do like it please subscribe as well by clicking the button at the bottom 😊

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