Short Stuff: Onboarding Tips and Tricks for Product Managers
Some tips and tricks to survive your first 90 days plus a little thank you message.
Hi there,
For product managers starting at a new company, the onboarding experience can be unpleasant.
Common mistakes made when onboarding product managers range from leaving the onboarding process to one person to not providing enough information or context into what is required from the product manager to deliver value to the users and the company. These common mistakes could affect the impact of a product.
I’ll like to offer some onboarding tips that will help you, the product manager, transition with ease.
Whether you are a day old, a week old, or several months old in the company, these tips will help you steady the ship.
Tips and Tricks
1. Never stop asking Why. Essentially, that is the holy grail for PMs.
2. Get access to all the research, data, past product docs, presentations, advisories, tech specs, sales materials, blogs, etc. Read as much as possible and quickly too, and it is (very) possible you may need to read all the docs at least two or three times within the first month to understand it. Ensure you apply yourself and learn all you possibly can.
3. Playing around with the product before you talk to everyone else about it can give you a diverse view of the product. That way, it is easy to gain a clearer picture of what you need to do over time to improve your products.
4. If you are joining another team, talk to other existing team members. Ask how the process was with the previous product manager. What did they like and dislike? What worked for them and did not work for them? With questions like this, you get insights into how the team works and how you can contribute to its growth.
5. Get as much context as you can on the other parts of the business. You can do that by sitting in management meetings, meeting customers or speaking to them on a call, shadowing the sales team when they make their calls, etc. Whatever you need to do to get a holistic understanding of how the business works outside of the product, make sure to do it.
6. Shadow your line manager or another product manager for a few days to understand how they run meetings and what the various teams expect from a product manager. Shadow other cross-functional teams (engineering, design, sales, marketing, etc.) and learn how they operate.
7. Discuss short and long-term expectations with your manager from day one. Get detailed goals, expectations and metrics to aim at. Without the proper definition, it is easy for you to lose track and be less effective to the team and your company.
8. Finally, be at peace with yourself that this is a new role and mistakes will happen. When they do, try not to be so hard on yourself, reflect on it and do better than before.
A good or a bad onboarding experience can determine how the first 90 days of a product manager would go. Make the most of that experience.
I will like to say thank you!
The Product Gist crossed over 100 subscribers this month!
I am so grateful to you for subscribing and reading. It means a lot to me that you have been supportive of this newsletter. It may not be a major milestone, but it's a start and I'm thankful for that!
I'll keep trying my best in this newsletter to give you more nuggets on product management and lessons learned from my product journey and hopefully continue to get your support!
In Other News
This Saturday, I will be speaking at Enover Lab on demystifying the roles of a product manager and product owner. If you are interested in joining, you can register here.
I hope to see you there.
Rooting for you as always,
Fumnanya.
Thanks for writing this! I'm in my second day of a new job as PM at a startup, and this gave me a good reference for how I'm spending my time this week. Keep up the good work :)