Product Manager Skills Assessment

More skills = better Product Manager?

Not exactly. All skills are not equal. Your goals and current state should inform your options. ICYMI - you can approach your own development that same way you think about building product . One mindset, shared frameworks. Another opportunity to do reps and reap the rewards.

So, start with the basics:

• What skills are required to be an effective Product Manager? This is relative to your context - you role, your team, your company. It also has one eye on your future state. 

• How do you identify development opportunities for you or team members? 

• How do you provide create a plan to improve?

It's important to remember that this isn't a sprint. Learning and developing are consolidated through experience (i.e. doing the work). It will take discipline and dedication - but the good news is, it's a relatively simple process. Below, I've stitched together a number of handy concepts I use when developing skills for myself and others. 

A modular learning system

This modular approach is nice because if something doesn't land for you (or you think something is missing) then you can swap in and out other ideas to create a combination that is better suited to your style.

Not all Product Manager Skills are equal

It's important to understand this framework is a guide and doesn't consider your specific context. But in general, it's good to remember:

• Not all skills and data are equal.

• Different skills matter at different levels. What got you here, will not get you there!

• All organisations value different things and as such, I separate skills from titles and role levels. Remember, the best player is not always the captain.

I've provided a list of relevant skills compiled from some great Product Leaders like Marty Cagan, Casey Winters, Dan Olsen and others. I borrow heavily from Marty Cagan's Developing Strong Product Managers article from back in 2011 - I like this framing because it clearly separates three key categories People, Process and Product (3 different ways to solve problems).

A Product Manager's Roadmap

Any half decent roadmap requires at least four things:

1. The destination (or desired future state)

2. The starting point

3. Some options to get from A to B

4. The pathway (some decisions, some feedback and more decisions)

It just so happens that there's a classic coaching framework which follows the same structure and will help you evolve your own practice. It's called the GROW model and it breaks down as:

• Goal

• Reality

• Options

• Way forward

Step 1: Understand what you want (the goal)

For example, you might want to stay in Product (or not) as an individual contributor or as a people manager. This matters because as we describe earlier, not all skills are equal, and understand your bigger goal will help you consider which path to take. Also remember - what got you here, won't get your there.

Step 2: Meet yourself where you are at - Assessing your skills

Form your baseline. Use the Skill Assessment tool below to profile your current skill level. 

Step 3: Deciding what to learn - Product Manager Skills Matrix

By now you know what you want and where you're at. Now's the fun part - generate some options to close the gap. You can do this yourself, with the help of your manager or even a coach. 

What projects can I volunteer for? What current process can I improve? What new tools can I learn? What book can I read? Have some fun with this and be creative! 

Step 4: Creating change - get after it!

The last ingredient is putting it all into action. Set yourself SMART goals to create clarity and a way to measure if you get it done. Create some accountability and even negotiate with your manager for a reward upon success (e.g. a new project or responsibility perhaps?).

Robert Greene outlines what skill acquisition looks like in Mastery.  The process is inspired by The Dreyfus Model and shoutout to Nat Eliason's version which summarises it very well. I've borrowed some of Nat's super simple flows to help you understand the process (all below). 

Because innovation.....I've add some new flavour to labels and descriptions but pay homage to the past adaptations.

Product Skills and Knowledge

• Your Customers – you're able to form a deep understanding of your target users/customer and their needs. From this understanding, you derive and communicate insights across your team and org.

• Your Data – Curious, hungry for data, able to generate insights, always seeking answers, open to being wrong, and shares and acts on learnings. You want to be an acknowledged expert in how the product is actually used by users.

• Your Market – Understanding your industry's trends and market landscape to create competitive advantages aligned with overall business goals. You can develop and explore innovative growth opportunities relevant to your market.

• Your Product – You are the expert on how the product works.  Demo's at a moments notice to a prospective customer? No problem. Training a new customer on how to successfully use your product? Easy. Can you handle live customer support inquiries? You've got this!

• Technical Insights – You understand enough about the technology stack and its limitations to justify trade-offs that accelerate progress while managing technical and user experience risks.

Process Skills and Techniques

• Product Development – You understand the broader product development process including market intelligence, strategy, discovery and delivery, lifecycle management as well as the product manager’s administrative responsibilities as the team’s product owner.

• Roadmap and Prioritisation – You're able to take in a range of inputs and perspectives to clarify and prioritise the focus areas. Prioritisation decisions are clearly communicated and highlight why a focus area was chosen over alternatives.

• Results Driven – You define success through measurable business and customer outcomes. Simply "shipping things" or hitting milestones (output focussed) is not the kind of result you desire.

• Strategy Thinking – You can navigate the abstract nature of strategy and translate loose direction into concrete plans. Most importantly, you can articulate why it matters.

• Metrics Master – You can establish, track and report on metrics for desired outcomes. You grok the inter-relationships of metrics and the difference between tactical vs strategic metrics for your product(s).

• Decision Oriented – Your recommendations are data-informed. You can comfortable sit in ambiguity and understand how to use available information to keep moving forward.

• Discovery – You have developed a deep toolkit of quantitative and qualitative research methodologies. You know which methods as best suited to the task at hand. You build playbooks of techniques for different product settings. You partner effectively with front-line operations, customer insights and user experience teams.

• Delivery – You can get it done. You deliver value to users incrementally with a consistent cadence.

People Skills and Responsibilities

• Communication – Impactful, frequent, multi-mode communication that builds confidence and achieves the desired responses by recipients.

• Stakeholder Alignment – Collaborates with and aligns a broad cross-functional set of stakeholders on the product plan.

• Collaboration – Encourages and seeks our diverse perspectives. Partners effectively with teams across the organisation that contribute or influence the product’s success.

• Creates Focus – Creates an environment that encourages a focused, engaged, high-performing, motivated team. The product team are able to explain where they're going and why it matters.

• Accountability – Owns the outcome (good or bad) and possesses a deep sense of ownership and commitment.

• Professional Development – Takes ownership for their own professional, personal and team growth – embraces feedback from others as a tool to support development.

• Values – Provides influential feedback to others and role models the culture with growth in seniority.

• Advocacy – Advocates and supports their cross-functional teams and stakeholders, celebrating success (and failure) and recognising others.

INSTRUCTIONS

• Make a copy of the PM Skills Assessment Google Sheet.

• Rate your level for each skill
  (Tip: To start, we recommend assessing a skill you are most comfortable rating. Then, complete a relative (more or less skilled) for the other skills - don't overthink it)

• Get your spider chart and use it in your next development conversation.