 Hello everyone. Good morning. Good evening to wherever you're joining in and welcome to yet another webinar by Product School. Today, we are going to talk about a 30, 16, 90 plan for product managers. Before we begin, a quick introduction about myself. So my name is Zafir Reis. I'm currently working as a senior product manager at Solando, the leading fashion e-commerce stores based out of Berlin and in Europe. Moving on to the topic. Well, when you hear 30, 16, 90, I know it may sound like the angles of a triangle, but in reality, what is a 30, 16, 90 plan? So 30, 16, 90 represents the number of days and a 30, 16, 90 day plan is a set of objectives for new employees to achieve in their first 30, 60 and 90 days on the job. So basically, it's a three month plan for any new employee who is joining in as a product manager. The plan is meant to smoothen the transition into a new role. Now, this can be if you're moving from some other domain into product management or in a new role as a product manager, it gives you direction to what can be a very confusing time, the initial days of starting a new job. It also allows the employee and the managers to set expectations and monitor their progress. As any good manager, you should always have a set of metrics that you want to be measured on in these 90 days. And finally, it's a personal definition of what success would mean for you in the first three months at your new job. Now, this method, this plan, this 30, 16, 90 plan is something that should be used when you're joining in a new, when you're joining in a new company. And it is most often also used as an evaluation criteria. So this question could be asked as part of your interview process as well. It could be a take-home assignment to come up with a 30, 60, 90 plan, or it might be a question posed by the interviewer during the selection stage where you can be asked, what's your three month plan if you're selected and if you join as a product manager? So let's see from my experience as to how do you make that plan and how do you go about it? So these three months as part of the 30, 60, 90 plan are divided into 30, 30, 30 days period of every month. And as I like to see it, each of these 30 days can be divided into a specific focused area, something that you can do in these 30 days. So the first 30 days, that is days one to 30, are the observation stage. So in this phase, you're supposed to observe, you're supposed to grasp as much as possible, learn new things, which will help you excel in your new role. When it comes to observation, there are different areas or rather different streams, which I would want you to observe to be successful. The first one is the people. So observe the people that you're going to work with. Now stakeholder management is a very important skill that is required to be successful as a product manager. So what you should be doing in these 30 days is meeting as many people as possible in the company. Now these could be important stakeholders that you will be working with through this journey. It could be the engineering team, it could be the success management team, the sales team, other product managers. It could also be the marketing team, the support team. So all the different functions that you think are important. So first 30 days, in terms of people, it is very important to get that relationship building going, improve your stakeholder management skills. As already mentioned, the stakeholders, you also should be setting up casual one-on-ones to know everyone. So if you're working remotely or if you're working in an office, it's great. You can meet them up for lunch. You can take people out for coffees, set up that personal wrapper before you get into a professional, before you build a professional relationship with these individuals. But setting up casual one-on-ones, getting to know each other, an introductory call is very important in these first 30 days. Invite them for coffee or, you know, another interesting thing you could do here is have lunch with different sets of people every day. I know as humans, we tend to form our groups very early on when we are in a new setting, but I think if you really want to improve your networking skills, try to ensure that you have lunch with a different set of group every day so that you get to know more and more people and you keep increasing your networking skills. We're going to quickly look into what is called as the Power Influence Grid. This will be very helpful once you're familiar with the people in the organization. So this is what I call as the Power Influence Grid. If you see it's a grid, it's divided into four quadrants. The four quadrants talk about keep satisfied, engage and consult, monitor and keep informed. If you see the X and Y axis, it is divided into the influence or the power. On the Y axis, you have the influence or the power which is exhibited by the individual and the X axis is the interest in the product. So based on the interest in the project or the product that you're working on and the influence or the power that they command, you're supposed to keep them informed, satisfied, you're supposed to engage with them and finally you're supposed to monitor them if they have a sphere of influence which is less than yours. So what does the Power Influence Grid does? It helps you identify how each stakeholder should be engaged. Another important thing over here is you need to know your manager. So when we talk about observing people in the first 30 days, know the style of your managers working, the likes, the dislikes, what is important to the manager, etc., etc. An important growth tip over here, set up a weekly or maybe a fortnightly one-to-one with your manager. So you need to have these regular check-ins and take the initiative, be proactive and set this up with your manager yourself. Set a target. So you need to set a target of getting to know X number of people in the first 30 days because you would not really get this opportunity again once you pick up with things, once you're really involved in the day-to-day of the product management role that you've signed up for, it can be very difficult to meet and greet new people. So take this opportunity, the first 30 days, meet and greet new people as much as possible. Before we close this section, I quickly want to give an example of the Power Influence Grid. Now, how do you place people in the Power Influence Grid? Now, let's take the example of a big organization. You have about 50 to 100 product managers and you have the CPU, the Chief Product Officer. Now, the Chief Product Officer obviously would have a very high influence of power within the framework. However, if the product or feature that you're working on right now is not that critical, I would say, or is a comparatively smaller feature, so the interest in the product of the CPU would be less, but the influence is very high. So in this case, you will keep the stakeholders satisfied. At the same time, talking about your manager, so your manager is working with you directly, he's really involved in the project that you're working on or product that you're working on, the interest is really high. At the same time, the influence of the power that they command is also very high. So in this case, you will keep them in the engage and consult quadrant. Now, what each of these quadrants represent is how much, how do you involve your stakeholders? So engage and consult means you would actively keep them informed as to what's happening. You would consult with them, you would take your opinion, you would make sure that they know of every step. Keep informed would be someone who you would keep them in, let's say in the CC of emails and this is just an FYI. When in terms of monitor, this is something that you would look into for people who are your subordinates, maybe you're managing them and they're not really involved in this project. So these are the kind of people that you would monitor and we've already seen the example of satisfied. Moving forward, the next observation area is the product. The product is going to be your bread and butter. So it's time to get familiar with the details of the product. So you need to spend a lot of time on the product, play around with the product, ask product walkthroughs from different people. What it does is it helps you understand how different stakeholders perceive the product. So make it a point to set up these product demo calls from different stakeholders. It could be other fellow product managers or it could be the QA team, it could be the engineering team. So what it does is it helps you get a different perspective every time you go into the product. At the same time, you're getting to know different things about the product. Also, you need to check with engineering on any open box. So this will give you an idea about the overall health of the product, how good is the product performing, what's the kind of quality that the product is delivering. Work with the team to understand the product backlog. Just because you've joined the team as a product manager doesn't mean that there is no product backlog. The team has been working on something, the team already might be having plans of something that they are going to work in the near future. So it's really important that you take a stock of what is the product backlog and what is the roadmap which is already planned. What are the other add-on activities? Rappo building will be really critical. So giving a product demo or spending time with you, explaining the product or building this rapport with you is obviously an add-on activity for the different stakeholders that we've discussed in the previous slide. Hence, people who would be hesitant, they would already have a bunch of things that they're supposed to do. They have their busy schedules and if they're finding time from their busy schedules to help you with this, I think something that will play a very critical role in this case would be the kind of rapport that you're building. Hence, the rapport building is really important because they are dedicating their precious time to all of these add-on activities for you. You can set a target. Now, the target could be to be able to give a product demo yourself at the end of 30 days. At the end, I would be combining the people and the product. I think one of the very important stakeholders that you have in this case are the customers and the users. The customers are the live blood of your business. So try to talk to a few customers, try to talk to a few users. Maybe you can join in as a mere spectator in a lot of different calls. And as you get the hang of the product, you can also engage with the users and the customers on a much more level but make it a point to talk to customers or try to understand what the customers and the users think about your product. Coming down to processes. Now, these processes include all the rituals and ceremonies which are usually conducted in every product team, in every product organization. What are you supposed to know about these processes and the rituals? So what are the processes which are followed and what is the frequency of them? For example, if there's a daily stand-up that happens every day, if there's a monthly planning meeting which happens, what is the release cycle? What is the deployment cycle? All of these are the rituals which most probably you'll be taking over now. So make sure that you follow these, you get a stock of these processes. They might, they will come the right time where you will also get the opportunity to improve on these processes. But for now, what is important is that you observe, you understand what are the processes which are followed in the organization. If there's any kind of release communication which happens. So maybe a demo or a functional training which happens. So you can check these with people. How frequently does it happen? Does it happen with customers or only with the customer-facing team? How are the new releases communicated to the customers is something that you should be well aware of. As I said, start participating as a spectator first. So maybe you can join in on a functional training which is being conducted by someone. And you observe, you see how it is being conducted in the organization, what are stakeholders that you need to, you need to involve, what are some basic hygiene factors which would be important in setting up these kind of meetings and how they're conducted. So start with participating as a spectator first. You know, one of the things that I feel strongly about is you need to avoid saying things like, hey, we used to do it differently in my previous company. Now, you might be doing, you might clearly observe some drawbacks in the new company, in the processes that they follow. But there will be the right time where you can improve it and you can suggest, give out new suggestions. Because no one likes to hear from someone who's just joined in that, hey, you know, I come from such a great background and these are the changes that I want to improve. Change is always resisted. So avoid, you know, giving any kind of judgments to be to the processes or any kind of activities that are already present within the company. Criticism might not be appreciated by everyone. So be very careful when you're giving out any kind of criticism. What you can do in this case instead is you make notes and keep it to yourself. There will be a time when you can implement these and improvise on them later once everyone is comfortable with you. And it needs to be a slow change. It needs to be a slow process because many times people will not take sudden changes, sudden big changes very kindly. Other important processes that you should be aware of, and these are probably the non-product related processes. It would include the company processes. So what is the frequency of performance reviews? What should you take care of? Company conferences. So every company might have a yearly conference to get new customers or a networking seminar that they conduct, any kind of retreats which are there in the company, etc. So make a note of all these other non-product related events and processes as well. Finally, make sure you complete all your HR and onboarding activities in paperwork. So the banking details, getting an iCard if you have to do, just stay on top of these because you don't want these to come and haunt you later on while you get busy with your product related activities. And finally, the last thing to observe in this case is the company. Now we've obviously done our research on the company, why we are in the selection stage. So you must have read a lot, asked around people about the company. Things will be different once you join the company. So an insider look into the company might be very different. Things you might be feeling wow about your dream company might be very different in reality. So this is also the time when you look and observe as to what is the reality of the company. What are the company cultures that are followed? So is it a very open door policy? Is it a very informal kind of company culture or it's a very old school corporate kind of an environment where everything is supposed to be very formal? What are the different policies? What are the different employee policies, product related policies, etc. What is the vision of the company? I think that's very important, that talks a lot. But how much in adherence is the company in reality with the vision of the company which is being propagated outside for marketing purposes? Then comes the financial health of the company. So this can be with the help of recent news with the wave of layoffs which is happening right now. I think it's very important that you understand the financial health of the company. Have there been any layoffs in the near past? Do you think that the company is planning any layoffs? You've just joined in the organization so it's also important that you know about these things before it tends to be too late. Ideally these things are supposed to be done before joining the organization but after joining it also gives you a very different perspective. And finally the product needs should be aligned with the company's current state and direction. Again, taking a very recent example, Amazon laid off a lot of the new initiative that it has been working on. So you need to be careful, you need to have a good eye that hey, have I joined that team which Amazon does not want to invest anymore right now. So these are the kind of things where in the product that you're working for needs to be aligned with the company's current state and direction. Is it a very capital incentive product? Is it something which requires a lot of R&D etc? Cool. The first month is now over. We have gradually moved into the second month of our new role as a product manager. These are the days 31 to 60 and I like to call them as the experiment days. So why is it called as the experiment stage? Now the mantra for the next 30 days that is the mantra for the second month should be make mistakes and learn from them. Now this is your license, this is your ultimate card which you can use to make mistakes and learn from them and this is exactly what the second month is supposed to fall. It's also the opportunity to make use of the I am new tag. If people also know that you're new to the organization so any small mistakes that you do might be overlooked. So make full use of that. Don't be afraid to make mistakes and ask questions. So ask a lot of questions. I think asking is something that actually should be done in the observing phase but this is the time to experiment. So if you've not given any product demo till now maybe you take a smaller audience in terms of function training or demos and make or take a shot at your first demo that would be the experiment and no one is going to judge you if things go wrong because everyone knows that he or she is the new guy or the new girl in the product team. Ideally your contribution to the product should start by the second month. So again even if it's in the form of an experiment start contributing to the product and to the team. One more thing that you'll notice in the second month is that the guidance will start reducing. So you might be having a manager or other stakeholders holding your hand at every step making you feel comfortable. This will start changing in the second month and you will be expected to start taking more ownership of responsibilities. You also need to identify the areas where an impact can be made that is in your company and in the role that you have. The exploration for this should be done in the first 30 days and this is where you identify the impact and you start preparing as to how will I make an impact. So for example if you see a particular feature let's say the login page does not really have an owner or you see a lot of potential in things that you can do to improve or you've identified certain problems in the login page this is your queue start taking steps to own this particular feature. Finally after exploration comes experimentation so you've explored a lot in the first month now is the time to experiment so that you can learn from these experiments and then eventually turn out to be a better product manager in the third month that comes across as a product manager in this 30, 60, 90 plan. Pick a low impact story user story right these could be any low low hanging fruits or any story which requires I would say little product intervention it does not really impact a lot of users it's not very expensive to build so pick such a user story and start working and maybe you can even implement it right do this while at the same time on the parallel you work on the big bank feature that you eventually want to own and eventually you want to ship out but based testing things out on a low impact user story will also help you understand better as to how does the product ecosystem work within the organization as I said it allows you to identify the mistakes so that they are not repeated when you work on your big feature. Contribute now this is the phase where you also start contributing as I said you'll be expected to start contributing the honeymoon phase will slowly start to fade out and you will be expected to contribute in your team's discovery efforts so you know when I say discovery efforts it means product discovery so identifying a potential product problem or identifying an opportunity where you might increase improve on certain product metrics which the company is actively looking for you also start making decisions about features that the team will work on next depending on the kind of product setting which is there there's a very high possibility that an engineering team is associated with you and the engineering team is dependent on you to get their dose of features that are supposed to be working or worked upon so start making decisions on what features the team will be working on next. Define a backlog item that your team will work on soon so one you know those items they need to be in the backlog which you will be presenting to your team so that they can work on. The main difference between the 36 between the 30 day and 60 day period is that activities that you do the activities that you undertake switch over from observing to learn from observing to do right so that's one of the biggest differences so from observing to learn you are moving to observing to do. Cool so after this experimentation that you've done and you've had your fair share of learnings by committing mistakes by implementing things the last 30 days in this 30 60 90 plan or rather the third month would be the implement phase right now this is where you consider to be ready you've had your one to two months of training you've done your fair share of mistakes you've fallen you've caught enough now it's the time to implement and the the the leave is that you have to know will slowly start to cease so the implementation stage has come two months have elapsed it's time to get on with the action now if you consider this stage with with you know with the with learning how to ride a bicycle I call this the phase where you start riding without the side wheels of a cycle as you can see in the picture a young kid starting to ride a cycle without the support of side wheels because the support that you've been enjoying till now will stop you're no longer the the new kid on the block you have you know you're you're already three months into the organization and the guidance will slowly start reducing if you're not owning a big feature by by this time I think it's time to talk to your lead you show the ownership that you're ready to take on a big feature that you would be owning and that you will be taking forward this will what this will show this will show proactiveness it also shows initiative and eagerness that you have to learn and grow within the product group the new beta is fading away so you know you cannot use that as as your license to get out of a difficult situation so you need to be more careful now you need to be better prepared a few of the common mistakes that should be avoided in the first 90 days in the first three months of your new role don't be anxious it's yes it's a new role new role it's it's fair to be nervous but don't be anxious no and do do not develop an imposter syndrome I have seen this many times when people joining a new role they're too overwhelmed you know if it's a bigger organization they're too overwhelmed if they'll be able to fit in if they will know how this can be done or you know how will they ever be able to know the entire product give it some time but do not fall in the imposter syndrome you've done this in the past and that's the reason why you've been selected for this position have faith in yourself and you will be able to do your best do not focus on things like paperwork or reading too much product literature for that matter you know that's the reason I did not want to keep this webinar very literature driven and keeping this more of experience sharing you know kind of a webinar where you learn from others mistakes you look around but do not really try to go by the book so you know there would be a lot of product literature around you don't overwhelm yourself with that go with the flow talk to people learn and I'm sure you'll be fine do not spend too much time alone at your desk these 90 days are really critical in trying to in building building yourself you know in front of others so do not spend time alone at your desk move around set up meetings with people talk to different people and get to know as many people as possible as I said do not try to change anything right away there will be a time where you know where you'll command that respect and people will be appreciative of the change but in these 90 days in the first 90 days do not try to make any drastic changes right away unless you know you're joining in at a really high position where you're supposed to be making changes it's a different thing in that case but from mid to from junior to mid-level positions to not make any drastic changes right away and finally do not boss around even if you're a product leader I would strongly recommend that you do not boss around you do not make people feel uncomfortable with having a new boss around what's important is you be you remain humble you try to form as many relationships as with your subordinate with your stakeholders with your colleagues as possible and people would not be very appreciative if you boss around them moving on to the last part I think I kind of have like a checklist over here so make a mental note of this or you can probably take some pointers over here the checklist says in the first 30 days these are the three things that you should be doing use your own product a lot get very well acquainted with the product meet as many stakeholders as possible or talk to them learn from them set up relations make relationships and conduct user research or talk to the most important stakeholder that you have that is your user for the next 30 days that is in the second month draw a short term roadmap of which you would want to implement for your product and determine the low hanging fruits that you want to work on and finally in the last last month of this plan that is the third month define user stories or feature that you would want to work upon I'm hoping by this time you're ready to ship your first feature and at the same time walk on the long term roadmap that you have prepared finally to summarize this the 30 60 90 plan is a set of high level priorities that you should be looking at and the achievable goals right so your success can be measured and this is where you should be measuring your success using the 30 60 90 plan define the focus areas so for each of these three packs of 30 days you need to have very focused specific areas where you will be spending time on in each of the 30 days leave a positive impression this is not something which has to be said but if executed well your 30 your your first 90 days will make a good impression on your employer and that will you know even if you're there with the organization for five years ten years I think it will leave a very long lasting impression so use these 90 days to your fullest advantage as I said it's asked in many interviews so be prepared with one and the expectation is that by the end of 90 days you are a contributing product team member with a firm handle on the on the product life cycle that you hired to maintain I leave you with this the first 30 days are to make inhabit the next 30 days are to make progress and finally 90 days in in 90 days you're supposed to see the results of the habits that you've built in the progress that you've made having said this I would like to end this webinar thank you everyone for joining in if you want to chat something or if you have any questions you can stay in touch with me on LinkedIn and until next time bye bye