Today marks the third week of my product adventure with my new company. Congratulations on my survival! Whether you are new to the product area as a product manager or you just embarked on a new position in your well-established product management career, the first few weeks in your workplace can be exciting and sometimes, quite hectic.
Joined as a newbie, you have the opportunities to discover, explore and question everything to help you settle in and ramp up during the first 30 days. Whilst you can make full use of company orientation, team induction and basic training to get familiar with company policy, team organisation, internal processes, and product as well as services, it’s also important to have a knowledge framework to guide you through this learning period so that you can advance all your learnings by getting involved in the work.
Rather than sharing tips, I would like to introduce a structure that I have used in approaching my first month. The structure focuses on five areas, organisation, business, product, operation and people. It can be used to navigate your learning journey and help structure your one-on-one call with key contacts within the organisation. Additionally, you can regard it as a checklist to assess your understanding, which would be tremendously helpful in setting up your personnel and expectation right at the beginning. After all, once the pace of your job picks up, it’s easy to get lost in the shuffle of the day-to-day work. Try to use this downtime by learning as much as you can!
Knowledge Area 1: Organisation
You might acquire the organisation information from the new hire orientation session, including the company history, company culture & values, organisation structure and the basics of each department. Apart from these common aspects, I would also suggest taking some time to memorise the organisation chart and your broader team’s organisation chart. This way, you will know people’s names and roles so that you will have a good sense of who you need to turn to for coordination. Additionally, it’s also a good idea to read through internal communication documents such as company announcements, key people’s talks and strategy decks to build a foundational understanding of your organisation’s operating principles, business goals and human capital management strategies. Having walked through the organisation — department chart, you should be also able to identify your team’s position within the organisation and the level of impact it can make on organisation operation as well as development. This will help you to define your role in the organisation so that you can act more strategically throughout your tenure. This is particularly important when it comes to upward mobility and dealing with tricky situations gracefully with cross-functional teams.
Knowledge Area 2: Business
Some companies will provide a business model canvas for new employees to catch a glimpse of all key strategic factors, customers the company serves and what value propositions are offered through what channels. In the visual presentation, you can surely immediately know how the company makes money and what drives the business to stand out from its competitors. If there is no such thing in your company, ask the following questions when arranging the introductory call with contacts on the business side.
- What segments do we serve and the customers in each segment?
- Our customers’ profiles and how we reach, engage and retain them.
- What products and services do we provide for our customers and how do they differentiate from our competitors’?
- Who are our business partners and what engagement do we have with them?
- What’s our revenue stream?
- What’s our business strategy and business objective in the next 6 to 12 months?
- What’s the alignment between regional and global (This one is optional only if you work in a global company)
- What role does my team play (both functionally and strategically) to help achieve business goals in the long term?
Knowledge Area 3: Product
Regardless of the product type (B2B Vs. B2C), spending time learning core features of the products and the problems the product aims to tackle for its’ users comes in the rule of thumb. Chances are you will never ever touch every feature comprehensively if your product is a complex one, especially those products that are one-stop-shop solutions integrating inter-related modules together, for instance, the accounting SAAS product and human capital management software. However, understanding the co-relation between each module, the basic functionalities, the product area that you are going to work on and how it relates to or impacts other product areas would still help you picture an image of product architecture. It’s also equally important to resonate with your product users by going through users’ profiles (persona) and sitting with them just observing how they interact with your products if possible.
Knowledge Area 4: Operation — Product Delivery
If you are hired as a mid-level product manager, you might divide your time into two parts: half of it will be spent on product strategy, planning and road mapping; the rest of it will be centred on product delivery. Following the steps below may shed some light on your operational process so that you can get your hands on the work quickly.
- Read the documentation of idea discovery and SDLC in your organisation.
- Understand the whole process of feature shipment.
- Navigate yourself to the project management and collaboration tool.
- Get an overview of the current status of the developments and priorities.
Knowledge Area 5: People
Try to speak to your colleagues in cross-functional teams as much as you can, before you are getting busy! Make the most of the first month by speaking with your peers in the product team, the key contacts in the development team, operation team, sales and marketing team, and regional leaders and increasing your exposure within the organisation by asking these people to introduce you to their team and other colleagues. After all, product management is all about relationships. Chatting with everyone gives you an opportunity to get an overview of the current dynamic by asking questions, listening to suggestions and assessing what’s working and what’s not.
Originally published at http://chrissylovesmarketing.com on July 30, 2022.
