Blazing Fast Onboarding for Product Managers

Mirela Mus at UXDX Community: Colleague Experience and PM Onboarding. Video: https://youtu.be/5JkE4lJSI2c

Readable transcript: edited from the recording's captions for readability (fillers and false starts removed, punctuation and section headings added). Wording is the speaker's own. Timestamps are positions in the video. Names marked [?] could not be verified against the audio.

Outline and about Product People

[00:00:00] Mirela: Cool. So it's blazing fast onboarding if you are joining the company, and, for people who are line managers here, how to not freak out your new hires in their first week, because I think this also goes both ways. The outline would be: what is onboarding and why is this hard as a product manager? The ideal scenario, which is, of course, not necessarily happening in practice. For product managers, how can you onboard and deliver value in two weeks? For companies, how to not freak out your new joiners? And a summary of this.

[00:00:37] First, a little bit about myself and how I came to this insight. I'm the founder of Product People. We're a 41-person company doing interim product management as a service. Through our engagements with our clients, which are about 100 or something per year, we onboard as often as every three months with a new company on a new assignment. So we've come up with certain observations and tactics that help us ramp up in about two weeks and start delivering value, because as contractors we don't have a lot of time given to us by our clients compared to regular employees.

[00:01:20] Through Product People, I've supported Zalando, Tier Mobility, Scout24, the World Health Organization and a few other incredibly exciting companies. I also give back to the founders and the startup scene within Berlin, and generally in Europe, by mentoring at Techstars, Founder Institute, Intel Ignite and a few others.

[00:01:43] Now about Product People. I talked a bit about our interim product management services. We also have something that we give out for free. Similar to this community, we have a product management community of about 20,000 people. You will see all our talks are live streamed on YouTube every Tuesday, and we invite very insightful product leaders to share their knowledge generously with the world. And that is all for free. There's no marketing. You don't need to put in your email and get upsold to some course or anything like that. It's just giving back to the community and making it better.

[00:02:29] And the way we make money, of course, is through our interim product management services. Sometimes we also do product ops at our clients, or product leadership. For example, this is our colorful and lovely team. And some stats about us: we have 200 cross-functional teams supported in different engagements, and about 70-plus clients from Series A to publicly listed companies, a large number of those being digital-first and/or product-centric. We have our team in-house and full-time on our payroll. We're not a recruiting company, we're not a marketplace, and it's all product managers. We're also very proud to have 60% women in our team, including 66% in leadership.

Why onboarding is hard for a PM

[00:03:20] All right. So now to the gist of this talk: what is onboarding, and why is this hard as a PM? First, onboarding. If you're interested in the topic in general and also other tips, I would recommend The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins. This chart is from the book, where an employee is considered to reach a break-even point at six months. In the first three months, they're considered to take value from the organization, and then they start slowly giving that value back within the next three months.

[00:03:51] Of course, as I mentioned earlier, sometimes our engagements are three-month stops, because, for example, an employee leaves the company and it takes three to six months to hire a new product manager, while we fill that gap for them. So for us, we need to onboard incredibly fast, because in three months we may be already out. We need to have delivered something for our time there, served the purpose and achieved an outcome.

[00:04:22] Aside from onboarding fast being hard, it's even harder for a product manager, for these five reasons. We have a huge surface area, touching business, tech and operations. We invest everyone else's time. If a product manager starts pointing you, or the development team, or someone else in a direction that is not useful, then they haven't just wasted their time. They've also wasted the whole team's time, and potentially missed out on an opportunity that would have 10x'd this time investment.

[00:04:57] They also make or break the information flow. Sometimes when you have a very good product manager, they can go into a completely confusing meeting or situation and come out having sorted everyone out. Whereas one that is less competent will manage to confuse everyone even in a very normal, clear setting. In some cases, they also need extensive domain knowledge, which we also have in our company through the engagements we did with fintech and medtech clients, as it's a heavily regulated industry. There are some things that are unintuitive but that you need to do there. And of course, PMs also need to understand the strategic context, and how what they're doing contributes to the top line or other goals the company has.

How to measure a PM, and why context matters

[00:05:47] And how do you measure that a product manager is doing well? Also three ways. You look at the outcomes they help drive. You look at the processes they set up or follow along the way. And at the speed at which they impact the above. Because you can, of course, do something very well if you spend a lot of time on it, and many times in our cases you don't have a lot of time, and you need relatively fast reactions in a lot of situations.

[00:06:19] It's also worth pointing out that the initial context matters. We noticed that when we join a company that's very well established and has a very well functioning product department that's large and stable and has developed very well on its own, then it's harder to make an initial impact, because there's no fire to put out. There are not necessarily people unorganized and running around like headless chickens, or anything super unclear to clarify at that moment to get everyone going. So most of the outcomes we achieve there are an effect of what was established before.

[00:07:04] And you can see in these setups that a new PM is helpful if at least they carry on with business as usual. Of course, then they start adding to the day to day. This process was good: are they making it better? They're following this, but are they also improving it, or contributing to do a little bit more than just being a cog in the machine? It's less visible from the get-go, but you can then start seeing who is the driver there and who's making a hard impact.

[00:07:36] If, of course, the situation we get brought into is completely chaotic, and the product team has been left by itself for two months and everyone is confused, including stakeholders and the development team, that's pretty easy to fix. Just by bringing a little bit of structure and leadership, everyone is more relaxed and happy, and you start making some progress, even in the first few days, and you can secure a lot of quick wins. But of course, you don't necessarily want to end up in those places, because it's probably not the only thing that is not working out.

The ideal scenario: The Founder

[00:08:17] All right. In most companies, everyone, in their ideal scenario, would like an employee to deliver value before they join. One of the cool examples we have is from the movie called The Founder. I recommend watching at least a few of the scenes on YouTube. One of them is with Harry Sonneborn, a consultant that the McDonald's founder ends up hiring, where he reviews their data, discovers a problem with their business model, and proposes a change that is credited with having made McDonald's the world-spanning corporation that it is today, basically by buying real estate and then using that real estate as leverage for more loans and expansion.

[00:09:06] But at the same time, being able to drive out the operators that don't abide by compliance standards. That was the whole problem they had before. They didn't have enough cash for expansion, and operators sometimes didn't abide by their quality and brand standards, but couldn't be forced to with stronger incentives. I'm not sure if this works. Let's see.

[00:09:33] Film clip: "You have a minuscule revenue stream, no cash reserves, and an albatross of a contract that requires you to go through a slow approval process to enact changes, if they're approved at all, which they never are. Am I missing anything?" "That about sums it up." "Tell me about the land." "The land?" "The land, the buildings, how that whole aspect of it works." "Oh, pretty simple, really. Franchisee finds a piece of land he likes, gets a lease, usually 20 years, takes out a construction loan, puts up the building, and off he goes."

[00:10:09] Film clip: "So the operator selects the site." "Yeah." "He picks the property." "Right." "You provide the training, the system, the operational know-how, and he is responsible for the rest." "Is there a problem?" "A big one. You don't seem to realize what business you're in. You're not in the burger business. You're in the real estate business. You don't build an empire off a 1.4% cut of a 15-cent hamburger. You build it by owning the land upon which that burger is cooked."

[00:10:46] Film clip: "What you ought to be doing is buying up plots of land, then turning around and leasing said plots to franchisees, who, as a condition of their deal, should be permitted to lease from you and you alone. This will provide you with two things. One, a steady upfront revenue stream. Money flows in before the first stake is in the ground. Two, greater capital for expansion, which in turn fuels further land acquisition, which in turn fuels further expansion, and so on, and so on." "Land."

People and problems

[00:11:22] Mirela: All right. So I will continue with this. I hope the sound was good. In the end, product management deals with people and problems. So whenever you are in a new location or in a new company, you can look first at who the people are, mapping those people, and at what the main problems are that you should be dealing with at that time. For people, there are different tactics to do it. The simplest is mapping them. Who is your champion or boss? Who are your stakeholders, peers and potential troublemakers?

[00:12:05] People most of the time want to focus on troublemakers. These could be political opponents of your champion or boss, keyboard warriors, disgruntled employees. When you're new there, you need to preempt potential frictions that you may encounter from this category. And then for the other ones, there are relatively obvious things you can do to make it work. Visibility is also a key factor for a PM, so figure out what that means in your context and do it. And of course, I cannot stress enough communication, and being proactive with it, to be known and be in the flow whenever something comes up that pertains to your topic.

[00:12:53] Going to the problems: this could be the problem space, certain issues the company or the product is having, or the opportunity space that you're in. I would suggest in the beginning you figure out what your main quest is. What is success in your first two weeks, one month, three months there? Make a strong start on that, and get into side quests only after you feel you're on a good track with it. If this quest changes, and priorities are bound to change many times, then reassess and restart from this goal. This will also prevent you from getting overwhelmed, because as a PM you get pulled in all directions.

[00:13:38] There's a lot to be discussed on the product context: understanding what's the job that your company exists to solve? Where are you in the product journey? What are the customers choosing if they're not choosing your product? This is also a topic on its own, but you should get a very good feel for what you're doing, for whom, how successful you are, who is paying and why, and so on.

[00:14:06] Another part that's relatively underrated and under-discussed is that the company culture can hinder you or enable you a lot. So understand how things are done there. How can you operate properly? How do people act when their boss is not around? How does the communication go? What anecdotal stories come from the past that can help you navigate the organization very well? What are the real rules versus what they say the rules are? And of course, especially in these times, what does the market look like? As we've all seen in the current months, with the market shifting drastically, that also makes founders and CEOs pivot strategies and wind down different product lines relatively abruptly, compared to the last two years, when there was a growth-at-all-costs narrative.

For companies, and summary

[00:15:08] All right. For companies, it's actually the same, but in reverse. Understand who your new hire should meet. What are the expectations you're setting for them? Consider having a one-pager with these expectations, so that they have something to go back to, and create a few documents. Consider an onboarding document with all the relevant links, info and people, so that you can give them that to run through in their first days there. Not necessarily just the HR one. I've noticed a lot of people get something from human resources that's broad and generic, but it should be something that's exactly for the product they'll be running, or their team or squad they will be in.

[00:15:52] And then I suggest in the beginning having recurring meetings with them, maybe even small daily check-ins, depending on how fast the person is getting up to speed. Move those to weekly or every two weeks. All right. So we're down to the summary. By the way, this deck is also available online afterwards, and I also have a Medium article with the same title, so you can go and check it out anytime.

[00:16:19] As a new joiner, find the people and problems pertaining to your scope. Secure a few meaningful early wins and build credibility, so that you can have larger wins, get more context on how things work, and have a few feedback sessions. After you gain trust, you can move towards riskier propositions or more strategic goals. And as a company, help your new joiner figure out the right people and the key problems you expect them to handle. Set onboarding expectations and follow up on those. And agree on the early wins that they can deliver, to help them gain trust and credibility, and for you to also get a sense of how they're working, how they react whenever they have a certain setback, and so on. So thank you so much for listening.

Q&A

[00:17:15] Host: Excellent. Thank you very much, Mirela. I guess it's nice just to put into words what people often get. They're just, "Here's your pass and your computer, and good luck."

[00:17:30] Mirela: And then you have a performance review, right?

[00:17:33] Host: Exactly. If anybody has any questions, please do post them in. Ivan has posted in, just congratulating you on the share of women in your organization, so Ivan's obviously impressed. I'll kick off the questions, but if anybody does have any questions, please do post them in as well. One thing I was thinking of: I'm trying to picture myself when I was joining a place. Somebody shared with me the people, but it still took a long time for me to get into their diaries, to meet them, to really understand what each person was needing. How do you think you can short-circuit that? Is that a document type thing as well, or is there another way?

[00:18:23] Mirela: Yeah, absolutely, there's a way. You can, for example, force the new person to reach out and meet with new people. At Product People, it's a bit of a self-guided thing. In their onboarding document, people are encouraged to set up 10 or 15-minute coffee chats. We had someone who in their first week just went ahead and had coffee chats with everyone, a few people in a row. And there are others; you see them in their second month, they're still going through the list. Us being a consultancy, we definitely give points to the people who do the coffee chats to begin with, because then they're also most likely not allocated to a client, so they have their calendar way freer than they will once they get onboarded and ramped up on a client.

[00:19:14] Another part: I've seen it done well at Zalando, where I've had the pleasure to work with Lucy McLean. She had a team assistant book these intro sessions. I was joining to help with a parental cover there on applied science, working with an applied science team and a few others. And basically, this is the list of people you should meet, and the assistant had already scheduled all the intro meetings. There was also a one-pager of what the expectations were for this role, because, being short-term, and Zalando being a very large company, they wanted to get a sense of progress and not have someone start chasing five things.

[00:19:56] That helped me in the conversation: "Hey, I'm here for this amount of time to work on these three topics, and this is what we'll be talking about." And it was very easy, because then they would say, "Yeah, this is my input on this topic," or "I prepared this proposal, can you review it?" or "I have these ideas, can we look at them?" and so on.

[00:20:16] Host: Great. That sounds perfect if the company is set up like you just explained with Zalando. What advice would you give somebody if the company isn't quite so forthcoming with it? How do they find their quest and make sure that they don't inadvertently pick a side quest as their main one, because they haven't learned enough yet?

[00:20:41] Mirela: Yeah, ask the line manager, or whoever is responsible for appraising your performance. Sometimes there's also this ambiguous part where there's a line manager, but the day-to-day work is done with other people. So I would say first ask around the people responsible for you, who will then be appraising your performance, because that will also impact promotions or even tenure within the job. And then start from there. If you get conflicting requests, then put those together and say, "Hey, this person said this, this person said that. Here's my take on it, or here's how I would propose prioritizing it. Let me know if it's fine for you," and so on.

[00:21:29] It can be tricky sometimes, especially for PMs, because let's say their head of product says this, then they talk with the CEO and the CEO says that. But then it will also be on the person to say, "Hey, here's all the info I've gathered from people. Here's my take on it. Do you approve or not?" in the beginning. And then take it from there based on how the initial experiences work.

[00:21:55] Host: Excellent. That's some great advice. Ivan's actually asked another question. He's saying: do you have some experience with people who worked in one industry, for example product marketing in telecoms or FMCG, and they switched to the SaaS industry? So I guess it's people who are moving industries, where a lot of their experience might not be as relevant. What were the main challenges for the PMs, and for you as their manager?

[00:22:22] Mirela: Is the question more that someone was in a less digital industry and now they're moving on to a digital-first product? Because I have a lot of skepticism about the whole industry part, just from seeing it at clients. What I think the observation is: indeed, it was a company that was a bit more focused on physical or other types of work, so it's not a digital-first company for whatever reason. The other part is the size and type of customer they serve. B2C customers are a bit different from B2B. If you're a B2B business at, let's say, Series A, B, C, then you're going to be operating differently than a B2C. So there's this combo of what type of customer you're serving and what size they are at, plus the flavor of more traditional versus digital-first companies.

[00:23:25] Host: Ivan's clarified, saying it's that traditional to more digital move. So what are the challenges there, or do you have any advice?

[00:23:37] Mirela: Understand what's the base of the company and what they really value. We notice people being slow at digital-first companies too, because that would be my first assumption: "Yeah, everything moves super slow here, or it's very political," and so on. It can be slow and political everywhere else. It may just seem like things are moving, but then when you look at it month over month, it's not a lot that's happening. Maybe the language could be different. Old-school companies are super excited about Agile, whereas the more modern ones are talking about product-led growth and experimentation. But again, that's more about updating your vocabulary. They may all mean the same thing. So think from first principles, understand what the problem is there. What are you actually discussing? And don't get intimidated because someone threw some keywords at you. Try to get the point.

[00:24:35] Host: Excellent. I think that brings us up to time. I think that was some really useful advice, and I hope that was useful for you, Ivan, as well as everybody else who's watching. So thank you, Mirela, for sharing.

[00:24:51] Mirela: Amazing. Thank you for inviting me.