My first month as a Product Manager @ Ericsson HQ

On September 1st, I began a short-term assignment at Ericsson HQ. I had visited the HQ in March for my Early Career Program Graduation when the whole of Stockholm was blanketed in snow. I must admit, as the flight was descending, I was pretty unsure about how the pilot would manage to find the runway ??

This time the weather is much better, and yes, Sweden is picturesque when the sun is shining bright.

A new country. New colleagues. New culture. New apartment. And guess what? A new job role too, transitioning from Machine Learning Engineering to AI Product Management.

Product Development to Product Management

Every business needs builders. I've always been a builder in my career, and I absolutely love that aspect of my work. People who have worked with me would agree that I'm pretty good at it. However, during my Early Career Program at Ericsson, I made a conscious effort to step out of my comfort zone and explore what happens on the other side of the aisle.

It's been a month since I started this new role, and here are my insights.

• How ?? Why and Why Now?

"How to build" is the question a builder always asks. But a product manager should ask two other questions before considering the "how."

"Why" and "Why now?"

This was a thought Christoffer Stuart shared with me during our initial calls.

A product manager's job is to find a clear answer to why a product/feature should be built, and the more tangible that answer is, the better. But the follow-up question is, why now? There will always be things to build, but prioritizing when to build them makes all the difference.

A general opinion about prioritization is that it should be based on customer feedback. Yes, the customer is king, but sometimes, the king could be clueless as well. I don't want to repeat the Ford "can we have faster horses" story here.

Prioritization could come from customers. At the same time, it should align with the overall strategy of the organization, the competence of your team, and, above all, it should be practical.

So don't be afraid to say no.

• It is all about taking reasonable bets

Product managers don't have the luxury of using a time machine to go to the future, come back, and make decisions for their products. Essentially, it's all about taking reasonable bets.

A common belief about taking bets is that it should be based on data. Unfortunately, in practice, you don't always have the exact data you need to make that significant bet.

Many times, it's the mental models you develop from your past experiences, the research you conduct, and your understanding of the product and the market you work on that help you make reasonable decisions.

Each decision you make for the product is based on what you know so far about the customer, market, the team, and the product itself. So, it's a good idea to learn as much as you can. Learning and improvising are key skills in product management.

• Build relationships. You will need them.

Though a Product Manager is sometimes called the "Mini-CEO," it's far from what they depict CEOs in American tech movies.

Product management is not a one-man show.

When you work in product development, you mostly work with people of a similar background. But when you take up product management, you collaborate with people ranging from research to design to engineering to marketing. And it's not easy.

The tricky part is building trust and respect. People from different backgrounds have very different perspectives about trust and respect. Collaborating with a diverse crowd and aligning them with product objectives is challenging.

A product manager is a generalist but is equipped with enough curiosity to dive deep into something if required.

• Learn to be comfortable with uncertainty

When you're on the development side of things, you have to be obsessed with the details and try to minimize uncertainty. But in a product management role, things are more abstract, and there will be an overwhelming number of parallel tracks. You might not have crystal clarity on all those tracks, and most importantly, you might not have great control over many of them.

In product management, and in general, it's good to worry only about the things you can control and let the rest happen. It's good life advice too.

You might miss the minute details sometimes and it is okay to do that. Reach out to the concerned team for the details if required. There are no stupid questions. There are not stupid answers. We are here to learn.

That's it for now. Thanks a lot for making it to the end. I'm on my learning phase and hope to share more as I go forward. What are your thoughts on my insights? Let me know in the comments.

Wish you all a great work week ahead.

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