How To Succeed In Product Management | Jeffrey Shulman, Red Russak & Soumeya Benghanem

In this episode of the How to Succeed in Product Management Podcast, marketing professor Jeff Shulman and The Product Management Center advisory board member Red Russak and Soumeya Benghanem welcome Jeremiah Nelson (Motorola Solutions) to talk about becoming a good PM in a difficult environment. Product management is a job that requires teamwork, team effort, and collaborative planning to successfully launch and eventually sell a product. It can become a difficult task and extremely challenging but with the people in the team, nothing is impossible.    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 07:46 When does product management become difficult? 10:46 What is the rubric that customers give you? 11:37 Indicators to help understand the customer’s rubric 15:19 Who should not be a PM? 20:12 Every PM owns the decision regardless of how it's made 27:09 You are not your product 29:49 What makes a better PM for API and technical products? 36:07 Get a detailed understanding of how things function 42:02 Goal-setting methods for a new project 46:24 Take care of yourself first 48:54 Being a PM is about the team you create

In this episode of the How to Succeed in Product Management Podcast, marketing professor Jeff Shulman and The Product Management Center advisory board member Red Russak welcome Marily Nika (Imperial College London) and Matt Hulett (PetMeds) to talk about what it takes to become an AIPM. Do you need a technical background to become one? Do you need to be an engineer? Or do you have to be both an engineer and MBA holder? Our panel today shows us why we need to become ready to switch to a new skill set and learn to take on a different role when we it comes to machine learning and product management.   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 04:22 What does AI or ML mean for PMs? 10:41 You don’t need a technical background to become an AIPM 13:50 How to become ready to switch to a new skill set 18:16 What are the characteristics that makes you a good AIPM 30:45 Which would you  like to work best with? 33:47 Work on things that you’re passionate about 42:26 Do you need an MBA to be a great PM? 45:25 If we are all generalists, how do we bring niche products to life? 49:52 Building confidence to ask thoughtful questions

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 welcome Divya Sreekumar (Meta) and Clay Robinson (Mamenta) to talk about collating information  both from customers and within the organization to unravel hiend use wants and needs. By asking the right questions and having the right people onboard, addressing customer needs can become more effective.   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 08:31 Collating product backlog 10:34 Getting the right data and filtering the noise 16:08 PMs find the unarticulated wants and needs  18:36 Either you’re doing too much or too little when gathering info 26:41 Take yourself up from the HOW and switch to the WHY 34:06 How do you break into the PM space? 40:09 How do you speak up when you feel you’re not empowered to

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 welcome Kavita Kamani (Microsoft) and Howard Ro (Tesla) to discuss the life cycle of product development, where to focus your attention to in whichever product development phase, identifying what should be considered valuable and what’s not, and tackling product management while maintaining a work-life balance.   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 02:27 The importance of the product development life cycle 06:29 Two points of view on the general concept of a product life cycle 09:09 Five D’s of a product life cycle 15:25 Asking a lot of questions help determine exactly where to focus on 17:57 Getting a clear idea if a problem is worth solving 19:47 Initial ideation and operating without boundaries 21:14 When there is tension and no easy answer 27:12 Different organizations have different structures and different expectations 31:11 Within the applications, what is truly valuable and what is not? 34:22 Focus on what's the core problem and what you're going after 39:26 Ensure that everybody is aligned to the common goals 43:16 Find a balance between the user outcome and stakeholder outcome 48:51 Bringing focus back to what you need to do 51:05 Work-life balance: assess or associate your happiness with impact 58:52 If you want to succeed as a PM, own the job 01:00:04 Don’t try to be everything for everyone

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 welcome Tom Leung (Goggle, Fireside Product Management Podcast) to talk about what makes a successful PM. Is it the number of products that went live? Is it the position you currently hold in the company? Is the head count of other PMs under your team? There are several ways to measure the success of Product Managers. What matters most of the time is the skills that you have when take on the role and what will you bring to help scale up the business.   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 08:43 What would success look like for a PM? 12:41 Metrics that matter to your own career success 14:26 PMs don’t have a common starting point but have common qualities 17:29 In order to be considered for the PM role… 23:14 Should you be measured by how many products you push live? 32:47 When its the business that makes the decisions 38:35 Skills to become a good PM 44:26 Misaligned with your end counterpart 50:08 PM is an apprenticeship discipline

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 welcome Pooja Ghera (Providence) to talk about inclusivity in leadership. The golden question, when it comes to inclusivity is, do you need to have a value of inclusivity before you start hiring or should hire a team that will create an inclusive culture within the organization? What does inclusive leadership truly mean?   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 07:54 What does inclusive leadership mean to you? 11:08 You need to be inclusive first before hiring an inclusive workforce   15:34 Collaboration and cultural intelligence  20:58 Inclusive leadership when you do and don’t have authority 24:15 How you’re listening is also diverse 25:49 Finding a pocket of ignored customers 31:37 Resources to learn user segments to build user buckets 39:54 How do you justify the impact for only one user? 42:15 Focus on diversifying your own team 44:48 Ensure that hiring is about alignment of values 48:57 Be humble and aware of your bias

In this episode of the How to Succeed in Product Management Podcast, marketing professor Jeff Shulman and The Product Management Center advisory board member Soumeya Benghanem welcome Liang H. (Airbnb) and David Kim (Stealth Mode - Edtech Company) to talk about facilitation skills. It isn’t just about facilitating meetings, programs, or teams. Facilitation, in general, is about a PMs ability to hold together the different roles involved in developing a product. It is the ability to successfully collaborate with multiple teams and departments and make it as seamless as possible.    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 02:01 Why facilitation skill is important for PMs? 09:17 Define facilitation  12:23 What meetings PMs get to facilitate? 15:37 Failures in facilitation and the lessons learned 26:26 There is always an aspect of competitiveness 37:14 Feedback: the closer to the customer, the better 43:47 What role do people play in the collaboration? 48:53 Processes that can help facilitation for product 51:39 2 tips for facilitators during facilitations

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 welcome Lennon Liao (Atlassian) to talk about accounting skills that are useful when breaking into product management. There are skills that are helpful and can play a big role when it comes to becoming a product leader. There are also skills that one will need to unlearn to become a more effective PM. What matters the most is you know how to prioritize the end user and their experience with the product.  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 05:53 Accountancy skills that are helpful in product management?    11:51 Unlearning skills to succeed in product management 21:49 How ego can play into or potentially hurt a product manager succeed 30:35 Consumer product versus enterprise product management 34:21 Resources for accountants trying to switch into PMs 43:16 Always put your end users first 44:22 The indicators of successful experiment

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 welcome Chelsea Alexander-Taylor (Redfin) and Jonathan Pappas (Connect the Dots) to talk about how PMs struggle with imposter syndrome often at the early stages of their career. A lot of new PMs find it difficult to adjust in a new role, a new working space, or in a new organization. And it doesn’t help that they are expected to overperform and carry with them experiences they currently don’t have. As product leaders, how can we create a safe space where confidence is boosted and psychological safety is prioritized?  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 09:51 The imposter syndrome in tech and in product 12:31 Becoming an imposter in the early days of your career 19:10 Never point fingers, always assume the responsibility 24:04 Why psychological safety matters 29:46 Helping and empowering women in the PM space 35:29 Ways to allow and encourage a safe space  39:00 What can you do to deal with imposter syndrome? 44:15 Conversations on Twitter 50:11 Not all self-doubt is bad 52:25 Find communities where you can share your experience 

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 welcome KJ Famulegun to talk about leadership through influence. Authority is often the power that is used by leaders to manage a team, an organization, or a business in its entirety. Yet, the most effective leaders are seen to focus more on leading by example and inspiring others to be productive in what they do and be a team player that aids in the success of any product.   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 05:36 What does leading by influence mean? 09:46 What can you do to strengthen your influence muscle? 22:43 PMs often work with tension and discovering a path ahead 26:00 The association between manager and management 30:34 Leading and influencing without authority 36:16 Build trust and then show competence 39:57 Managing PM network and community 47:53 The best PMs create community within their team