Building a Product Mindset

Product management as a role has been gaining a lot of traction in the past few years. With increased technology companies actively hiring for this role, there is rising demand and many interested folks wanting to break into product manager roles.

This article is primarily intended, but not limited to, for folks who wish to transition into product manager roles. Having transitioned from engineering to product role myself, I would like to share few learnings from my own experience and from the knowledge that I have gained from my peers.

While it's true that having a technology + business background helps break into this role faster, it's far from being the only thing. In today's digital economy, it's more about your skillsets and what you bring to the table that can be leveraged. While there are many aspects to it, one of the key things is to have a product focused mindset.

Here's what you can expect from this write-up:

• What is a Product Mindset?
• Why is it important for product managers?
• How to inculcate this mindset?

Before we delve deeper, if you're looking for a sneak peak into the life of a product manager, here's an overview from one of my previous articles: https://bit.ly/2XIYZjQ

What is a Product Mindset?

It is quite literally a way of thinking about product development and execution to create value for your business. It refers to the idea of extracting information about what the consumers want from a product without them stating directly or precisely this thing, eventually developing a product they are happy with.

Some of the key characteristics of such a mindset are:

• Focus on delivering value - not just building features and delivering tasks
• Solving for real needs - being able to address the actual customer problems without being obsessed about the solution
• Strong sense of ownership - doing everything possible you can to own the success of your product
• Decisiveness in the face of ambiguity - being able to make decisions even when things aren't crystal clear and excelling at change when the situation demands
• Empathy - being able to put yourself into others' shoes, whether it's your team, your customers, or any stakeholders
• Growth oriented vision - being able to think the bigger picture and not losing the sight of key objectives and business goals

Why is having such a mindset important?

Many successful businesses like Instagram or Twitter or Netflix, build products to solve for a customer need that wasn't explicitly asked for, but catered to what people actually wanted to make their lives easier. Thinking customer first is the key to identify such needs.

Being a product manager, a big chunk of your time is spent collaborating with others. It requires you to be an effective communicator, empathetic, critical thinker, and a good influencer. You need to work with others cordially and get things done taking into consideration the needs of all the stakeholders involved. Building a mindset that caters to such characteristics is essential.

The aim is to build successful products that customers love which ultimately drive revenue for your business and company. Having a product mindset helps do that.

How to develop this product mindset?

Now that we have talked about what is the product mindset and why is it important, let's talk about how to inculcate this in our lives. The best way to inculcate something is to develop small habits.

Here are a few key habits and traits that help us build this mindset:

• Start with why - When you're tasked to do something, always seek why. Know the objective that you're trying to reach. Once you know the why, it's easier to figure out how.

Why will your customers want to buy your product? Address the need and you can come up with multiple solutions.

• Ask questions - Do you like a particular product? What do you like the most? What would you like to change to make it better?

Ask questions to yourself and to people around you. This can be applied for the products that you use, day to day experiences as a consumer that you think are broken and how can they be improved. Curiosity is the mother of invention.

• Solve problems - Follow what's happening around you. How are market dynamics changing and what are the new first world problems? How would you solve them?

The world has changed in past few months owing to the pandemic that's upon us. What are the new problems that you see, what are the new age needs that arise out of it and how to solve for them. Keep customers at centre of everything.

• Evaluate business sense - How will you monetize your solution? At the end of the day, a business can run only if it makes money. Try making business sense of things around you and figure out how they make money.

Today, we see technology giants like Facebook and Google investing in telcos like Jio and Vodafone. Amazon recently ventured into food delivery. A lot of these businesses are expanding horizontally and venturing into multiple domains. The world is changing fast, and so are the business models.

• Embrace failure - Nothing teaches you more than actually doing something and failing at it. Try small things. Fail at it, learn from it. Try again.

Create sketches, mock solutions, talk to people to gauge the need of your idea. That learning helps you decide what to do next, what to invest in, and what to abandon. 

• Constant learning and feedback - Read more about the industry you operate in, understand your competition, observe how the market landscape is changing, upgrade your skills.

Discuss your ideas with like minded people. Create an environment that's conducive to learning. Debate and have a point of view on things. Everyday, we pick up fascinating details in casual conversations - think of those interactions as interviews, which are a great tool for discovering needs.

• Have fun - Lastly, have fun doing this. It's a lot less taxing if you're enjoying the process.

A mini framework to approach things:

• Observe what's happening around you
• Identify problems you want to solve
• Come up with hypothesis of why do you think it is an important problem to solve
• Why do you think the customers would want it?
• Does it makes business sense? Will it generate recurring revenue for you eventually?
• Build a solution
• See if your solution actually solves the problem that you identified at scale
• Rehash and repeat

Summary:

While there are many things that help you become an effective product manager, building a product mindset is one of the key factors. It provides you a lens to look at day to day things differently and put your ideas to execution. It’s this mindset that allows product managers to swim upstream on strategy and downstream to execution.

This is important not just for product managers, but for everyone who wants to build a successful business in this thriving digital economy. You can succeed in the digital economy by the way you think. A digital product is never done. You keep making it better over time.

Lastly, I am no expert and have shared these pointers based on my learning and experiences that I have gathered from working and talking to people. I have a long way to tread in this journey and I definitely find it exciting. I would love to hear your views and feedback, especially from the Product leaders and experts in my network.

Cheers!