Joys and pains of a product manager in India
I am posting articles on product management on pmtalk.substack.com more than I am on this site. I would recommend you subscribe to my newsletter there so that you can get interesting articles on product management in your inbox as soon as they are published.
–Anubhav
I have started BeyondIIT.com to help students build successful careers without prestigious degrees.
I want to help students discover that there are many paths to success. I also want to acknowledge that the Indian higher education system is stifling innovation and creativity.
The goals to get into an IIT is completely unreal. Less than 1% of students who apply get into an IIT and small fraction of them actually get the stream they wanted to study. This is because we do not have enough good engineering colleges
These are the problems. I’ll share solutions in future posts.
–Anubhav
Please take the coronavirus scare seriously.
Stay away from public places.
Try to work from home as much as possible. Luckily tech workers can.
–Anubhav
Loved this video from the founder of Superhuman – the latest competitor for Gmail. It has good ideas for product design
Hope you like it.
I have been listening intently to Naval Ravikant’s podcast. It is titled Naval.
I will be listening to it again and will be listening to it with my kids who are 13 and 15 this weekend.
I strongly recommend it for these reasons:
Take a listen. Let me know what you liked the most about it.
https://overcast.fm/itunes1454097755/naval
–Anubhav
I presented the following lecture to the Product Management and technology club at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad in September 2018. Hope you enjoy it.
Product Management 101 – Understand what product managers do and how they do their work.
In this talk you will learn
The audio is a bit distant so listen to this over headphones or in a quiet room.
–Anubhav
Tools don’t guarantee your success as a PM but you should know what tools to use to be productive as a PM.
Paper and a Pen
First things first – write and draw out for idea and product flow. Super helpful to do this on paper before you get fancy in a design tool.
Work tracking
Just use outlook or Gmail if you do not want to get fancy. Work often comes to you via email and is delegated via email so master your email tools. Learn how to set reminders and schedule your work.
Track your own work using Google keep or Trello
Both Outlook and Gmail have plugins for Trello.
https://blog.trello.com/tame-your-inbox-new-trello-add-on-for-gmail
https://help.trello.com/article/1075-outlook-add-in
You can also use Airtable. It is a modern version of excel with useful widget and better collaboration
Collaborating on documents
Use Google docs. Their collaboration capabilities are great.
https://docs.google.com
Product roadmap planning
Use Trello and Excel.
Presentations
A key part of your work is telling stories. Use Keynote to make your presentation look good. You can also use powerpoint. If you are collaborating on a presentation with someone – drop all other presentation tools and use google slides
Design skills
Its important that you have a basic understanding of graphic design and UX design. This will help you build better presentations and have better conversations with Designers if you work on products that need design. That’s a trick question. All products need design. Play around with Adobe XD. Its free for individuals and great tool for Product Managers.
Tracking team’s work
Software teams use JIRA or some other tool like that to track feature work. Use it. Trello is fine for small teams <10 in size
Email me. I’d love to know what you are struggling with and how I can help.
Warm regards,
–Anubhav
anubhav.rohatgi@gmail.com
Product managers need to read a lot. Reading gives you better context for your decisions. It also helps you argue for your idea and sell it.
If you read only one book on product management, read four steps to an epiphany. If you don’t the money to buy this book read this free PDF:
Steve Blank has posted many videos on youtube to help you learn skills like:
If you read only one book on negotiation, read Getting More by Dr. Stuart Diamond
Here are the free blogs to follow on product mangement
There are so many skills a PM needs to master including digital marketing, especially if you work in a small company where you do both product and customer acquisition. I love:
First of all, you are aiming too low. If you do everything I ask you to do below, I’ll be surprised if you still want to be a product manager.
Secondly, I get asked this question a lot so I’ve decided to come up a course for this over a long term but here is an actionable outline in the interim. If you want to transition to a PM role in your company or otherwise, you need to excel in these skills to get noticed.
So, how do you build these skills?
Immerse yourself in the world of your customer. Seek time from your manager to spend a day or two with each segment of your users so that you can represent them in meetings in the office. Empathetic customer representation will get you noticed at the office.
Start building your network of users that are open to taking your calls respond to your emails to discuss your product. Get to 10 such users within 30 days. Make sure these 10 folks are not all from the same segment.
You have a healthy network of users and you can list a day in their life as a user of your product. You can list their problems. You can quote their response to, why they like your product. You can draw a flow chart describing their workflow. You can list the folks they work with day to day and their titles. You can list other product that users tried before using your product.
Start your own business online.
Get an audience of 2000 people interested in your opinion before you build anything.
If not, learn about software businesses by listening to podcasts or reading blogs. Pay attention to numbers being shared on these blogs. For example: In June 2016 ConvertKit had a monthly recurring revenue of USD 100,000 and a margin of 50%.
How are software product sold?
What is the role of marketing? How do they do it?
What is the role of sales? How do they do it?
Learn how to validate ideas in the shortest amount of time.
• Create a kickstarter campaign for your idea
• Build a landing page for your idea and drive customers to it.
• Build a video for your idea
• Learn how to create wireframes to explain your idea
What’s the difference between a B2B business or a B2C software business? Why does the GTM difference drive different behaviors for the product team? How do the normal business metrics differ?
You can quote specific numbers and metrics in meetings. Instead of saying, “A lot of users want this feature” you say, “Between 10-20% of our users in segment “A” will find this feature useful based on conversations I’ve had with users”
You will get noticed at the office.
Get reading.
Learn about the business world and how software businesses compete. Its much better to read about small businesses than large businesses. Buy and read HBR case studies in your domain.
Know that all business have to worry about Customer acquisition, engagement and retention. So, what are the most common tools that help business owners in these areas?
Understand normal what numbers for:
1. Click through rates on emails
2. Click through rates on web CTAs
3. Typical retention and conversion numbers of different software businesses
4. Software business models that work and why
a. Freemium
b. SaaS
What pricing strategies have been tried and work in your industry?
You have a point of view on product strategy and roadmap that you can defend. Since this is the highest value add activity in a business, its hard for a new person to claim mastery here, however, having a point of view on the world and is based on more than opinion helps get you noticed.
Do lack of writing and language skills coming in your way?
Most people are not going to call you out for bad grammar, wrong choice of words, and for rambling on and on unless you are really bad. So, if you are being called out already, you have a lot of word to do.
Few other questions to answer:
Most normal Indian folks like to speak fast in English. For a long time, speed of delivery was the only measure of language competence in our country. This has led to bad behavior. Slow down and be careful about the words you choose. Ensure people understand what you are saying before you rattle off another sentence.
How often are you misunderstood? Are you able to influence the outcome of a meeting? Do you feel good about what you write?How consistent were you on your blog. Did you publish at least 80% of the dates you said you would?
This is a big blocker in India. I’ve always said that educational qualifications are the new caste system in India. It’s a bit harsh to say this but in a country with a large workforce, people are trying to separate the wheat from the chaff. Educational qualifications are a good, quantifiable, defensible in a large company.
So, get an education that matters. If you don’t have a bachelor’s degree from a Tier 1 college, get a Masters from a tier 1 college. If you can’t get a master’s from a tier 1 college, get a part time masters, if you can’t get a master’s degree even then, then get a degree in the US. Its easier to get in US universities and it can really broaden your horizons.
If you can’t solve for education, get a mentor that believes in you and move groups, companies with her so that you can get the opportunities you want.
In career conversations, people do not quote your educational qualifications as a blocking issue. Or, doors that were closed yesterday are open today.
If you do all the above then chances are that you would get more interested in starting your business than becoming a product manager. That is a good thing. If you still want to be a product manager, then know this. It’s a lot of communication and selling your vision internally and monitoring metrics.
Most product managers dream of working on a 1.0 project. They are unencumbered, new and yours. I am working on two 1.0 projects and the going has been slow and frustrating. If you do a good job as a product manager, you should constantly question your assumption before you put any resources
I was sharing my frustration with an influencer over a long walk in Hamburg when an interesting thing happened. I told him how I was confused about the path forward. I told him that I was getting conflicting messages from different stakeholders and customers. I told him that I wish I can really see these projects through and that I was worried.
People are normally happy commiserating. He did not. He heard me and then at the end of my rant, he reminded me what a luxury it is to be able to think big about your industry without any personal risk. He reminded me that I should enjoy the process of product discovery and not link it to an outcome. He reminded me that there is joy in doing what I was doing regardless of whether it was successful or not.
This was so refreshing and so needed. I had forgotten what it meant to be in the present.
Thank you Christian Glanzmann
–Anubhav
