Onboarding is Customer Discovery
A proven framework for new product managers
As part of my job search, I’m sharing a few posts to share how I think about product management.
Let’s start from the top: onboarding. We often hear how important it is for a new candidate to onboard into a new role. There are countless articles about effective 30-60-90 day plans and getting small wins while building a longer term strategy. As a product manager begins a new role, it’s crucial that they start by understanding the people and context around them. In fact, I’d argue that building these personal bridges is foundational to any new product manager’s success.
When a product manager joins any new company, they should already have a solid understanding of the company’s mission, vision and product strategy. They should have taken every opportunity to ask thoughtful questions during the interview process. And if at all possible, they have already explored the product on their own, researched the market and formed early opinions on how the company can differentiate.
Once they actually start the job, a wide, new world opens up. Don’t ignore the unique opportunity to conduct internal customer discovery!
As a product manager gets to know the company, product, tools, customers and data, it’s essential that they also get to know the people around them. Product managers should create a structured framework to understand their colleagues, the challenges they face and how they will work together to get stuff done. Who are these people as humans? What brings them to work each day? What gets them fired up? What is that person’s boss getting on their case about? What about their work right now is particularly painful?
Think about these stakeholders as early customers. Run it as a proper discovery process: sequence the conversations, document the learnings and distill the takeaways. These conversations will build trust, rapport and deeper context the product manager will need to be effective in the new role. And when the going gets tough (and it will), the strength of these personal relationships will be what make or break the team’s ability to solve hard problems on a tight deadline.