Principles of Product - Just Be Useful
As a new product manager to a team, I want to bring value to the team at large immediately, so I can be viewed as a top performer by my org at large
As a veteran product manager, I regularly get to watch these young, Gen Z employees get their first crack at real product work.
It warms my heart. I remember my early days simply trying to get a one-shot at product work to prove I belong.
I used my incredible hunger to compensate for what I lacked in experience. That hunger led me to a seat at the big kid’s table.
Today, I control budgets, resources, and employees of my own small but profitable fiefdom.
It’s with that in mind that when I watch someone who’s getting a shot completely and utterly mess it up, I feel a visceral sadness.
I’ll even try to help! I’ll tell any younger employee what I would do in their situation, and I’m generally an open book. (This entire substack is indicative of such).
The ones who listen get my support both with the work and politically. The ones who don’t - I slowly disengage and quietly watch from the sidelines what they do next.
You don’t need my advice, however, if you can embody the one, perhaps most important principle, of being an effective product manager.
Just. Be. Useful.
That’s it!
Identify ways to be helpful and contribute to the fast-paced chaotic environment that makes up modern software development, and you will become an invaluable asset to the team. The goal is to be viewed as a net positive in any situation you are included in.
For someone new to a product team, it’s a means of establishing credibility during a period when you likely have no clue what is going on. A great place to start would be to:
Figure out who are the most important individuals, and make their lives easier.
Figure out the most important tasks, and help make sure they get done.
At scale, effective product management is installing systems that make the entire company’s life easier.
The principle can even help you break into product management by being useful to the product team.
On day 1 of any product management role, you should be asking yourself - how can make a useful contribution to the current dev cycle at hand?
How to be helpful to the highest levered Product Manager on the team
Most important for when you join a new product team is to understand who really is delivering work. It’s never evenly distributed.
This could be your boss. For new product hires, this is typically a director-level employee. Good directors are the workhorses of the product org.
Conversely, it could be a sharp IC1 Product Manager on your team who is carrying the highest of everyone.
The easiest way for you to identify this person is to observe “Who do the developers actually listen to?”.
PROGRAMMING BREAK
The rest of this article is for paid subscribers only, where I’ll give specifics on how to make yourself useful to developers and product managers alike.
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