#55 Starting a new PM Position
Starting a new job as a Product Manager can be very challenging. Especially, if you don't have a mentor or someone who guides you through the process of becoming a PM. Shaun Russel made it to his mission to support people on that journey as a product coach.
In this episode, the Product Bakers and Shaun discussed the challenges people are facing when starting a new PM position and how to overcome them.
Follow Shaun & his links:
Podcast Minutes
Table of Contents
00:30 - Episode Intro
02:30 - Intro Shaun
05:30 - Starting a new PM position
08:15 - Common challenges PMs have
10:20 - Understanding the organizational structure
13:00 - Crucial methodologies to learn
17:30 - Managing stakeholders
19:10 - Being stuck in a position
25:10 - Product Management is like learning a new language
32:15 - Why Bootcamps suck!
34:46 - Passion > Theory
How is being a product coach for you?
Shaun: For me, it's a really interesting and challenging job. You can learn the ideas of products and you can experience being a Product Manager.
But it's another thing altogether to transfer that knowledge or those abilities to people around you because product is such a complex job. It's such a personal job. And this makes it a really big challenge, but it's also the reason that I was drawn to it is that it's people-focused and it's really interesting.
So when that problem, how'd you get someone from where they are now to where they want to be.
How do you help people who just started in product?
Answer: There are different routes to this. Roughly, you can imagine two different kinds of people that are being coached. One kind whether they're actually quite experienced by this point or just in their first job. This kind of person would have a pretty clear idea of their development goals.
In a coaching engagement, they say I want to achieve this. I want to sit at the top table with management, or I want to be giving better presentations or being able to break stories down, whatever it might be. And in those cases, the coach is really leading the way, and as a coach that is the ideal situation.
But then of course the reality of starting off as a Product Manager is that you have really the other half of people who probably feel pretty overwhelmed by the situation and possibly a big reason why they're in coaching is they need a bit of direction. Someone who can help them look in the right places and help them understand what to achieve as a Product Manager.
Like what even is this job is probably like one of the most fundamental questions. I'm sure you hear it many times as well.
What are the problems that most of your coaches have?
Answer: Obviously, there's a really wide range but maybe the most fundamental thing that exists in every organization with Product Managers is that there is some kind of like a deep struggle in the organization between the Product Managers who want to do a certain approach. They want to be by the book. They want to really have a strong customer focus. They want to work collaboratively… all these things… Maybe they've read some Marty Cagan or whatever it might be but they have often quite like strong ideas of what they want to do, or they're being told they should have strong ideas. And then they exist in an organization that by the nature of business and organization pulls away from this.
Which is why you have the Product Manager in the first place to solve some of these problems where an organization without the right kind of oversight and facilitation for a Product Person will drift towards the wrong things. But then if you're a junior person put into this position this is a really big ask.
So you have new Product Managers who know that they should be representing a kind of truth, a way of doing things. But the force is they are fighting against all the power from the C-suite or managers that just want things done. So they're not in the position where explicitly they should be able to solve these problems but they're expected to.
How do Product Managers best manage the balance between expectations from stakeholders and their own agenda?
… tune in to learn more 🎧
