"8-steps to Upskilling"
With an exodus of options available over upskilling, the choice itself seeming like a problem most find themselves stuck at “is this course right for me?” & this is how you ought to wade through it...
This is the general perception of the world, although not foolproof and perfect it does seem to make sense largely:
“If you can’t recognize your own pitfalls, up your game, successfully projecting yourself as potentially viable then you probably won’t be able to do any significant justice over that PM job either”
TPW (The Product Web)
Background / motivation
If any of you have been active on social media and are hooked onto the right set of people or enrolled into the right groups, be it the amazing growth curves of some great names in product have witnessed or the number of people a part of those product groups across Twitter, Facebook, reddit ought to suffice as a testament to say in the least.
When a decent percentage of these people across the world are holding active product jobs with positions varying from APM (Assistant Product Manager) / JPM (Junior Product Manager) to CPO (Chief Product Officer), there is undoubtedly still a large percentage of that sample space who are aspirants or business analysts or product owners having some kind of a parallel with and are looking to transition or break-in to a proper product role with a title if not those who hold totally parallel positions and are eternally curious about product roles.
When some them are totally clear over “the G A P” that’s prevalent over their skills and the ones in demand now as expected by those product orgs. in terms of knowledge, application of concepts over the workflow, the one thing they don’t seem to be clear about is exactly what ought to be done to bridge the gap and if there’s a way over achieving it in double quick time.
That was indeed the primary motivation behind starting off TPW (The Product Web) in APR 2022.
Why TPW?
Prior to incepting the entre idea, over the course of the research I asked many aspirants (roughly 200 people from across the world) about their approach and what courses they are taking to breaking into product.
Here are the results:
Selectively drilling further down into an earmarked subset of that whole sample space, the results clearly pointed out one of the main deterrents was how aspirants felt that the time and money was being wasted over the route they chose, when the percentage of people who successfully broke-in was a meagre 2% & how ubiquitous this problem was and resonate well with a really large percentage of people. It was really mind-boggling.
“The main problem that was common across many cases was the significant GAPs, some really large & some relatively moderate that seemed to act as blockers to either breaking in or building a successful career in product”.
These are some of the commonly found GAPs:
TPW’s performance stats – (Apr 2022 – Present)
Here’s where TPW’s mentees were able to find jobs at what could be termed big-ticket product orgs. inclusive of the F-20s like Google & Microsoft. When some others did land gigs at growth / early-stage start-ups, some chose growth-stage start-ups over FAANG.
NOTE: It is important to note that when some of these mentees had some corporate experience over the roles of business analyst / product owner, some were into running their family business when most carried experiences totally tangential to that’s demanded by product roles.
Upskilling - step-wise breakdown
Here’s an 8-step breakdown of how upskilling ought to help recognize & trigger hardcore effort towards converting those aspirations into a reality whilst keeping the flame of learning up, burning at its peak, always.
Let’s elaborate.
1) Aspirations
As I have witnessed there are so many aspirants what want to get into product management. When some may feel that it is enough to act as motivation, I see how that has fallen short in some cases.
By that I don’t mean one ought to carry CPO ambitions to begin with. No, not at all. In reality, titles could hardly matter. But putting an effort to understand the whole ladder, the hierarchy, the individual roles & responsibilities and being conversant with them doesn’t hurt at all. That’s also a good place to start off as one would know how pronounced their growth path could be, improving chances of them embracing it over the course of their journey.
2) Self-assessment
When it is always a good practice to be able to figure out where one stands today, that could be worth its weight in gold over product roles irrespective of whether it is in a start-up or a big ticket MNC product org.
When an assessment could largely pertain to finding an answer to the question “where do I stand today?” over here in this context it ought to include the details responsibilities, workflow, goals, outcomes and all the multivariate skills that are perceived a must have so as to fit In and find solace over the respective role one is aspiring to get into immediately.
3) Identification
Its only but natural to expect that the aftermath of a deep self-assessment session ought to result in an immersive understanding of those green, grey & red areas which ought to lead to enumerating and enlisting the gaps over all those aforementioned headers as relevant to the aspired role.
And to take that a couple of steps ahead one also ought to be able to arrive at assigning priorities to each of those individual list items and sort them in a descending order to assist the building of an action plan or two to go about working towards overcoming those hurdles / blockers.
4) Proofing
When it natural for aspirants to discern a few areas that one they aren’t at all familiar with given the elementary level of understanding the may possess over a given subject / topic / subtopic / concept, it is very much true that it could be only good enough to scratch the surface, more so given the pace at which the market seems to be progressing, the skills, the knowledge, the expertise required seems to keep evolving into the next level pushing the bar of entry higher by the day.
And that’s where proofing your assessment could be a mandatory step. And I guess it goes without saying that the value a truly experienced professional mentor could add in this regard is never to be discounted for it is natural that they have the knack of reading between the lines, seeing through you and telling you things about your own self that you seemed to be totally unaware of. It is also a great way to reaffirm the problems / blockers that you might have earmarked over your self-assessment exercise.
5) Learning
The proofing of the assessment via an expert coach /mentor ought to make it more convenient to generate step-wise action plans to overcome each of the problems that have been identified and it is only but fair that the very coach / mentor gets down to building those detailed plans for their mentees.
What follows that ought to be a natural course of events targeted at deeply nuanced learning of each of the concepts / skills that matter to and seem totally aligned with and pertinent to the needs and the conditions prevalent in the market. And of course, it goes without saying that there could be tons of courses on offer in the market but not all of them graduating from them would get to taste the same degree of success because it could easily be down to a lot of variables derived from the ability of the mentee to learn and the mentor to teach.
6) Course-correction
Not all fingers in a hand are the same and in a similar vein not all roles, responsibilities demanded as a part of the jobs are alike. Its very possible that some jobs demand PMs to possess deep knowledge of some bit of the product chops or strategy or something totally subjective like say, being able to negotiate contracts with third-party service providers or OEMs.
And, that’s why the course-correction makes total sense to have here as a part of the mentorship programs targeting upskilling of PMs as most of them may have a clear vision and their eyes perched on the role they want to fit into at a given organization. When things get that specific its important to address and help weed out the issues that could be typical of the case and that’s totally niche, even when refers to the current market of able mentorship.
7) Testing
The reason many aspirants feel the courses in the market seem totally ineffective given how it doesn’t aid their stance of getting hired, the problem is not to do with the courses but the alignment of them to the mentee.
Over recent times, when I have had many initial exploratory conversations with my mentee-to-be and popped the question about the courses they have taken so far, I was amazed at how many seem to have taken & finished basic courses but lack knowledge of the very basics, when some seem to have taken multiple courses fitting into the same elementary level.
The problem is clearly pointing to a lack of guidance, lack of expert opinion and advice whilst the numerous ways to upskill does put a lot of questions on whether (x) is the right path forward.
8) Continuous Improvement
If you’re an aspirant who is looking to break into product and are of the belief that you could settle down pretty well post getting into that first job and see this as a one-time affair over having to read a few books or articles and mug it all up, then I’ve got news for you.
Upskilling is never a one-time thing and especially in product it could be deemed as a continuous life-long affair.
I’ve interacted to many product leaders and PMs across the hierarchy on a regular basis over social platforms as much as I do with a few of them who join my sessions to get some help. All of them are of the opinion that the number of hours they spend on reading has gone up 4x per day compared to when they weren’t in product.
So, jump in to it only if you are totally ready and are mentally prepared for it.
To Conclude:
There’s ample empirical / statistical evidence of how the interest in product management hit 300+% YoY back in 2022, which am damn sure would have multiplied 3-4x by now. The acute demand for good product people across startups and big-ticket product orgs is the mainstay and looks like it’s going to be for long in spite of such magnitude of disruption rampant around us today.
When this write-up may as well look like a humble brag there’s a burning need to help people understand how upskilling the right way is crucial which is the backdrop here and reemphasizing that it does go far beyond the books in the same breath isn’t at all and shouldn’t even be surprising to say in the least.