
New Product Position
Starting a new job as a product professional can be intimidating. Whether it's your first PM gig or you're a seasoned veteran, optimizing your impact in the first 100 days is critical. This "initial period" often sets the tone for the next 24 months (and these 24 months often set the tone for your tenure at the company).
​
After years of coaching aspiring and practicing product managers and leaders, Coach PMs has developed a framework for maximizing your impact from day 1 based on the following dimensions:
​
Planning
It is critical to think about your specific context, plan key activities and track them to completion. Our members can use our New PM Position Activity Backlog tool but almost any task management system should work.
​
Performance Management
Setting a clear definition of success during your "initial period" and managing to it is one of the most common oversights we see from people who are onboarding. Our members can use our proprietary career management tools (like our Career Motivation template) to set objectives and address gaps over time.
​
Product Knowledge
You need to collect important product information such as product strategy, the roadmap, value propositions, etc. as quickly as possible, analyze gaps, and create a plan for addressing them as quickly as possible.
​
Market Knowledge
The key to having a strategic impact on your product is a deep understanding of the market you serve, including target market segments. Understanding customers, who are part of the market, is critical as well.
​
Stakeholder Management
It takes a village to make a product successful. In your initial period, you should focus on key internal stakeholders like engineering and sales. You should also begin meeting important customers, partners, and even seek interaction with prospects. Coach PM members can use our Stakeholder Relationship Assessment Matrix to help them approach internal stakeholder analysis strategically.
​
Organizational Analysis
You should be analyzing the organization to understand coverage for critical disciplines and who influences and makes important decision. The product management function's maturity should be of special interest. Our members can use a simplified version of our Product Management Maturity Assessment framework to derive important organizational insights.
​
Business Risk Assessment
Actively managing business risks is an underserved accountability in product management. Identifying potential disruptive risks early in your tenure is a great idea. Our members can use our Business Risk Management Matrix to identify, prioritize, and manage business risks.
​
These topics are covered in more detail in a briefing available to site members. Most often, I help product professionals via personalized career programs negotiate their initial with the primary goal being to make it as impactful as possible. I also help organizations improve the impact of the product management function.
​
To discuss how Coach PMs can help accelerate your career (with or without a personalized program), schedule some time with me at no charge.