Making Impact From Day 1: What to do in the first 30/60/90 Days of your new job as Product Manager

In this panel discussion, three Product Managers share what they had to think about in their first 30 / 60 / 90 days as a Product Manager in their respective organizations. Raph, John, and Max represent the varying perspectives of a Product Manager (new PM, experienced PM, and senior PM) as they help paint a clearer picture of what to think about in varying stages of the career path.

What was common between the three PMs was that they all “fell into” the role. Raph was an operations manager at EduCredit when he first discovered the fit between his expertise with the role. Similarly, John and Max, coming from business backgrounds, stepped up into product roles when they saw a need within their organization.

How did the transition happen from your previous position to your PM position?

Raph: In his previous job, he started to question his role as he saw himself do tasks beyond operations management such as market research and customer experience. Over time, as he assumed the Product Manager role, he had to teach himself design thinking, customer relations, feedback collection processes and etc. His ability and interest to learn was what made the decisions for transfer easier for his bosses.

When applying for Zennya, he noticed that what they wanted was someone who was a problem solver and who could articulate their problem solving process. He felt that, because his hobby was teaching himself how to code, being able to think systematically enabled him to express his line of thinking more clearly.

John: Coming from Business Development, he understood that communication is key. Talking to users, gathering feedback, talking to production team and shareholders — being a good facilitator was a key role that the Product Manager plays. PMs needed to be well versed in technical lingo as well so that they can properly act as a bridge between engineering and business. Because of this, John had to re-learn coding and joined various UX events to gain more technical knowledge that will help him communicate better between teams.

He is also grateful that he’s had years of experience in different departments at it allowed him to understand which metrics each department is looking at and can use this awareness in getting stakeholder buy-in.

Max: As a manager of other PMs, he expects new PMs to exhibit critical thinking in their work and not only be able to explain the pros and cos of a solution but to also be able to debate their position with peers and stakeholders. Empathy is also an expected skill to have to enable the PM to understand the position of the customer. Interest in business while being eager to learn about the technology solution being implemented by the company is also just as important for a new PM.

What did you need to think about in the first few months of your job?

John: Because he joined the company just as the pandemic started, learning how to assert himself virtually was more challenging than real-life relationship building. His first 30 days was spent learning everything he could about the organization; how the company works and the roles of different departments and how they benefit the entire organization.

Raph: He advises to do activities that help you gain the trust of the people you need to work with. You can do this by consistently showing up and communicating that you know you’re not the expert and are humble to ask for help from your team mates as, at this time, they are the expert of the product and not you. It is worth noting that silo-breaking activities are important at this stage and making the effort to align with the leadership on where they want the company to go will reap you benefits later on.

To build product knowledge and credibility, he would make it a point to involve inter-department stakeholders when solving complex problems. Raph admitted that he used to go at it alone but quickly realized that collaboration is always the best and easiest way. Admittedly, he is still having trouble collaborating online, considering the pandemic, but they try to meet virtually every day and create moments where they we can talk. What those moments are are not important, just that they happen daily.

Max: Coming into the team as a leader, it was challenging because many in the team were older and more experienced than him. Their perception of him as Head of Data from his previous role was also something he needed to work around as he now had to get them to trust him as a Product Manager. One of the challenges he faced was that he was expected to develop a one-year strategy within one week and that experiences allowed him to speak to mentors that accelerated his learning.

For Max, the first 90 days was about learning, learning, learning. He read books and reflected a lot on his past mistakes so he could do better in this role. He also spent a lot of time talking to Head of Design to educate himself about their process and mindset, and he needed to learn how to build a strategy and communicate that to picky investors.

How did you manage the turnover when you had to take over for a previous PM?

Max: When taking over a team, you have to rely first on the people that are already there. Start by asking a lot of questions and understanding what was good and not good before making changes. One of the problems that he encountered in the past after asking enough questions was the lack of direction of the team. Because the direction was not defined, the team felt like they should accept all the requests operations asked of them.

So, after being assigned to the team, setting the strategy and focusing on executing on it was a critical priority that had to be coordinated by the Product Manager Lead. After identifying the strategy, making sure there is collaboration across teams, especially while in the middle of the COVID-19 crisis, was the next immediate priority.

What were your performance metrics as a Product Manager?

Raph: At Zennya, a “lite” version of the OKR system is used where PMs need to coordinate with both their team and other stakeholders on what metrics are deemed important for a certain period of time. It’s a very collaborative process and it varies from quarter-to-quarter.

Since they are actively hiring more Product Managers, the way how Raph envisions accountability and distribution of tasks to these managers is through Zennya’s different products. Meaning, one PM will be responsible for one of Zennya’s core products so accountability and responsibility is clearly identified.

Max: The OKR methodology is also what Max’s team uses. He mostly evaluates himself with regards to day-to-day performance but upper stakeholders keep him accountable by monitoring the health of his team and ability to deliver on strategy; being able to generate fresh idea, and being able to successfully collaborate with and involve the executive team in building said strategy.

What would your advice be to new product managers or as someone transitioning to a new team?

Raph: Be hungry to learn. Being a Product Manager has many aspects to it and if you’re not used to handling all these skills and information, then your transition will be really hard as many people expect you to be good at many things.

John: Keep learning. Don’t be afraid of taking on the role as most of the PM principles like making decisions and prioritizing are things that you’re already doing the moment you wake up so it’s just a matter of placing these things into perspective.

Max: 1) Structure your learning path 2) Find mentors 3) Know how to manager your own and others’ expectations. What really helped Max was being able to understand what he knew and did not know and being able to find the right mentors and resources to help him fill the gaps. Knowing how to manage people’s expectations is important as well. The learning curve will be very steep as you will need to learn a lot of things in a very short amount of time so knowing how to communicate your work load and being able to tell people what you need to focus on will give you space to gradually improve your skills.

The Q&A session of the event is not included in this article. You can start listening to it through this link or jumping to the timestamp 44:50.