7 weekly must-do's to succeed as Product Managers
Product Excellence: Compounding successful growth for Product Managers
Product Managers are constantly pulled in a lot of directions. To ensure we build successful products that provide value to customers, we have to consistently do a few things every week. Like the power of compounding, time spent in these activities will begin to pay off.
While you don’t have to do each and every sub task, finding time on each of the 7 themes below will pay off in just a few weeks.
Plan thoughtfully: Minimum of 30 mins on a Friday for next week. I prefer to plan for the following week on a Friday, revisit it quickly on Sunday night, and readjust plans as needed on a Wednesday. Total 60 mins
Don’t let your week go by without meeting your goals. Plan your week thoughtfully every single week.
Make it every more effective by planning for a year, quarter, month, and then each week in a way that your long-term goals are met.
Prioritize your tasks effectively and plan your week accordingly.
Learn from and with your customers: Always spend time with your customers every single week.
Meet and interview customers.
Shadow your research colleagues when they interview customers,
Read research reviews published about your customers,
Listen to podcasts where your customer personas are interviewed,
Observe customers when they experience your products or when they are solving their problems
Read reviews of your products from your customers
Listen to customer service calls to identify what friction they might be facing
Work with your team: This is probably what all PMs already do. But don’t just work with your team to go through requirements or stories.
It is important to work with your team closely in gaining empathy for customers,
Product discovery together with your team to identify the right problems and the relevant opportunities
Designing the right solutions
Iterating on your products with your team through a test and learn approach
Building a strong team
Learning about your product
Dog flooding your product: This should be more common than weekly but at the minimum try your product. This will help you identify bugs even before customers.
Learn about the market: Spending time understanding the broader market that your product operates in is critically important for innovation and growth. Learning about financial trends, policy shifts, regulation updates, pricing changes, inflation or any other market shift that affects your product is important to keep up with.
Observe competing products: Trying out competing products and understanding competitor strategy, and customer reactions to their products is helpful in understanding more about what might or might not be working for customers and the context. This task should be done carefully as it is easy to get caught up in wanting to copy competitors and that is the worst thing a PM can do since you can’t know the context of why a competitor built that product or even if it is successful or not.
Deep Work: Ideally 3-4 hrs/day. PMs who do not make time for deep work will not be able to grow after a certain point. Focused undisturbed time to think about the customers, opportunities, strategy, next steps, reflection, iterating on solutions, etc., t
Upskill: Product Management is a craft. Product craftsmanship is a pursuit of excellence that is ongoing and never complete. The goal should be to not just keep up with the industry expectations of a PM but to keep ahead and excel at the craft. To do so, it is important to
Continuously learn about different skills needed for PMs
Going deeper into skills that you might already have
Observing the skills of fellow PMs or leaders you aspire to be
Following thought leaders on various relevant as well as adjacent topics to keep learning.
Connect and Support: Taking even 15 mins a week to do this will help build your network. Activities like sending a kudos or thank you email will help you feel good while building social capital.
Connect with people in your teams, with leaders, with fellow PMs in the industry or industry thought leaders. Finding time to meet at least one person a week will help you spend a minimum of 26 hrs connecting with others.
Supporting those around you with their goals. Helping them with a need, mentorship, gratitude, or simple words of appreciation
If you liked what you read, before you go, please
1) Share this article on 7 weekly must-do’s for PMs with others who might benefit from this
2) Like or comment below to share your ideas.
3) Subscribe to receive future posts directly in your inbox if you haven’t already done so!