12: Adapting to Changes as a PM

In this episode of the How to Succeed in Product Management Podcast, marketing professor Jeff Shulman and The Product Management Center advisory board members Red Russak and Soumeya Benghanem collaborates with Women in Product members Parul Shorey (Compass) and Rekha Raghu (Smartsheet) to talk about adapting to changes, dealing with changes in processes, management, or system, managing teams throughout the new structure, and just use change as an opportunity to continuously learn.   

Support for How to Succeed in Product Management is brought to you by Apptentive, which enables product managers to measure shifts in customer emotion and gather actionable feedback across the mobile customer journey. To learn more, go to Apptentive.com/UW.

What to Listen For:

• 00:00 Intro
• 02:03 In collaboration with Women in Product, let’s talk about why adapting to change as PM is important
• 06:27 For PMs to survive and for the company to flourish, you need to learn to adapt to change
• 11:41 Changes can be internal, customer, market, and product
• 12:39 What to do when upper management wants to change strategy or direction
• 18:08 Tips for PMs on adapting to changes
• 23:52 Identify the product’s mission and goals when dealing with changes
• 28:08 When is it time to change the north star?
• 30:10 Your metrics are going to tell if you’re progressing in the way you want to
• 35:26 Coaching teams to navigate through changes
• 37:58 Managing teams is not a scale game
• 41:16 Take a break to think about the situation before acting on the change
• 44:07 PMs on evolving best practices and management terminologies 
• 47:32 If there is change fatigue, there is something wrong with the process
• 49:25 Look at change as an opportunity 
• 51:06 Pms shouldn’t overuse the sense of urgency
• 52:57 Change is what you really want other people to achieve