In the previous post, I walked down memory lane and reflected upon how I would choose the right product team as a new product manager. In today’s post, I would like to share 3 skill sets I believe product managers should deliberately practice in their foundational years.
Before diving into it, it is essential to understand how expectations for product managers change with seniority.
Expectations of junior vs senior product managers vs VP of Products
Junior product managers
Usually, a junior product manager is expected to be able to execute, with guidance from senior team members. Given a specific pain point, they should be able to expand it into product requirements, and work with designers, engineers, and data analysts to have them developed, launched, and iterated. The key point is to experience the product development cycle.
When you go for your next job interview, it is important to have concrete examples of how you have gone through the product development cycle to deliver specific features and their impact on the business. Strong junior product managers are those who can execute well with little guidance.
Becoming a senior
As the product managers become more senior, the expectation goes beyond execution. They are expected to take ownership of a product area and are able to direct the team’s efforts in solving the right problems.
For instance, a senior product manager in a video streaming platform like Viki might own the content discovery journey. They need to identify areas of investment that move the needle for the business, lead the team in coming up with the right tactics, and define what success looks like for the team.
As you can imagine, the more senior a product manager is, the bigger the ownership area. The expectation is to have the right vision and rally people behind it. They should be able to answer the team’s question of which direction we are heading in, and why. At the same time, they also need to guide junior team members in their execution.
When product managers choose to become people managers, a.k.a team leads (still the more common career path in the Southeast Asian product scene in my opinion), it is about building a team. Product manager leads need to have a vision of how they will structure their team, what skillsets are required, how to hire the right talents, and how to help their team members grow.
VP of Products
At the level of a Chief Product Officer or VP of Products, the principle remains. But the scope is the entire product organization. Fundamentally, they need to set the product vision and lead the organization in the right direction. But they are also concerned with having the right organizational structure, building a product culture, acquiring and retaining talents, as well as succession planning.
Back to Basics: 3 Skillsets Product Managers must build in their foundational years
Skill set 1: The ability to articulate problem statements clearly
This skill set has 2 layers. Firstly, product managers need to be clear in their own thoughts when they think about (1) what problems they are solving and (2) what quantitative and qualitative evidence they have to demonstrate that the problems are painful.
It is a skill set that is relevant in every job. But it is the bread and butter of being a product manager. Though it sounds like common sense, it is not the case. It requires conscious efforts and lots of cognitive power to consistently achieve clarity of thoughts in face of ambiguity and overwhelming information.
If there is only one thing that you will take away from this post, just remember this one. Forget product requirement document formats or presentation templates. Every company will have its preferred method of conveying ideas. But if you are not clear in your thinking process, you cannot expect other people to understand what you try to solve and why.
My recommendation is to write. When you attempt to organize your thoughts around problem statements, writing down your explanation as if there would be someone reading it forces you to be clear with your thoughts.
Usually, a product requirement document template should already help guide you put down your ideas in writing. But if your team prefers things to be communicated mainly through PowerPoint presentations, it is still helpful to write down your thoughts in proper sentences.
This has the additional benefits of being turned into reading materials that stakeholders can read before a discussion. It also retains all the necessary context and information in case you need to revisit the topic after a long time.
Secondly, after you achieve clarity of thoughts, the second layer of the skill set is to be able to express them to an audience convincingly and fluently.
Fret not if the idea of presenting in front of an audience scares you. The most important aspect of a successful product requirement document or presentation is whether people can understand your ideas.
If you have achieved clarity of thoughts on a particular topic, you will also have a logical organization of the ideas. How to keep a reading or listening audience engaged, and even in awe, is the icing on the cake, which are additional skill sets that require deliberate practice.
A Unique Challenge in Southeast Asia
Language proficiency is no doubt part of the equation. I have observed a unique problem in Southeast Asia where product managers might have to use languages in which they do not necessarily have professional working proficiency. This is due to the prevalence of cross-border teams cutting across different language regions.
For fellow product managers who are in this boat, but who wish to continue developing their career in the same language, it is worthwhile to invest your time learning the language. Yes, you heard me right. There is no escaping it. At the end of the day, if you want to write or speak convincingly, you need to attain a high level of language proficiency.
Skill set 2: Get sufficiently technical
When it comes to the topic of technical knowledge, a frequently asked question is “Do I need to know how to code?”.
The answer is no. But there are nuances.
A product manager does not have to write codes. But they need to have a conceptual understanding of how different components of the product works.
Again, there are two layers to this. When it comes to software products, there is a pool of general knowledge of how applications work, which is common to all products. And there is domain-specific knowledge.
For instance, a mobile payment app like GooglePay and a video streaming app like Netflix are both applications that are hosted on the cloud. The concepts of backend and frontend service connected through API calls or how databases work are the same. But a mobile payment app will have key areas of knowledge related to flows of funds whereas a video streaming app’s key domain knowledge can be how to stream videos on demand over the internet.
For most junior product managers, getting a conceptual understanding of how applications work in general is critical.
While knowing how to code is not a must, I personally think it makes your life much easier if you do. The better informed you are, the higher the quality of the questions you can ask the engineering and data team. A good foundation also helps you flatten the learning curve when you change to a new domain later on.
My recommendation is to learn a programming language in the context of building a cloud application and learn how to use SQL to summarize data. There are plenty of good online materials out there with no prerequisites required. Below are some online courses for your reference.
Udemy: Learn how to write SQL queries and understand relational databases
Skill set 3: The ability to manage trade-offs
For product managers, there are always competing priorities from different stakeholders with a multitude of constraints imposed by different teams. There is never going to be an optimal solution that satisfies all. It is always a balance of trade-offs, a.k.a. prioritization. By choosing to do certain things, there will be other things you say no to. As a result, there will be stakeholders who might not be happy.
It comes back to skill set number one: the ability to articulate problem statements clearly. In your thinking process, you need to identify competing priorities and limiting constraints, and then weigh them against one another. This is critical as you need to have an informed opinion first.
The next step is how to engage stakeholders who also have a say in your prioritization. Many times, this is an area where guidance from senior team members is important.
My suggestion is, to actively run through your thinking process with the senior product managers in the team. They can help call out considerations you might miss, as well as give you feedback on your trade-off weighing process. Ask them specifically how they would approach certain stakeholders. Over time, you will develop a sense of how to best manage your stakeholders in different situations.
Level up: Acquire an investor mindset
As explained at the beginning of the post, the more senior the product managers, the more strategic thinking is required. To be able to know which areas of investment the business should focus on requires perspectives. It could be a perspective on the value proposition of the business, its competitive advantage over other players, and the industry’s technology landscape.
From a personal career progression standpoint, these perspectives matter because product managers have to decide whether to develop expertise in this domain. That depends on whether there is a promising future in that industry. Also, which company is the most successful in the domain? That can help inform future career decisions.
I guess you can see where this line of thought is going. It is pretty much the mindset of an investor.
If you are to invest, would you invest in this industry? Why? And if you have to choose one company, which one will give you the most return on investment? What would your company have to do to survive/ do well in the industry?
How to acquire an investor mindset
There is no easy way to acquire an investor mindset. To form a perspective, you need to process lots of peripheral information from books, blogs, videos, etc. Some of my personal favorite YouTube channels that help me keep my peripheral information up to date are CNBC, The Fifth Person, John Oliver Last Week Tonight, Jonny Harris, etc.
Closing Thoughts
There you have it: my recommendation on the 3 skillsets a product manager should focus on building in their foundational years. Before you go, check out my 4 revealing interview questions to ask interviewers or how I validated a product idea with less than 50 bucks.
