 Thank you so much for joining the webinar today. I'm glad you're able to make this time. I'm Nidhi. So let's get started with a little bit of introduction for those who are new to my webinars, and then we'll dive straight into the topic. So a little bit about myself. So I have been product manager for 15 years of currently I work for AWS. Before Amazon, I was part of Nutanix. I worked for Nutanix for close to two years, then I was at Oracle for approximately 10 years. And in between, I've worked at a few other companies as well, including startups. Now, in this overall experience, I've managed both hardware products and software products and products from very, very different technology space. So my journey has involved a lot of learning. And so I'm very excited to share this webinar and my take on learning and how do I go about it, because it has been very important part of my journey so far. Along with being a product manager at Amazon, I'm also the programs and marketing head for IOTB Area Alumni Association. It's a volunteer work and I love doing it. It's a lot of learning as well that comes from there. In addition to that, I'm also the member of CIS for their benchmark supporting. So there's a lot of stuff going on, a lot of learning going on, and I'm happy to be here and share my thoughts with you. Before we get started, quick disclaimer that all the opinions that I share today, they are my own. They have nothing to do. They are not the expressed opinion of my employers or any organization that I'm part of. So with that, let's switch to our conversation today. So we'll talk about learning and we'll talk about what does learning mean as a product manager, why it is so important. And what is basically a take on product management learning, there's a lot to learn, there's a lot to do. How do we go about it, right? And in that how part, I'll break down my ways of acquiring the knowledge, how do you retain the knowledge, and how do you use your knowledge. Without waiting, let's go ahead and dive deeper. Okay. Before we learn, what does learning mean as a product manager? Let's see what does learning mean in general. So there's, you know, that you can learn anything completely new. Even there are studies that you can actually learn a completely new topic in 20 hours will not be dive, but you can learn enough to feel comfortable about it to talk about it. Right. So here's, there are stages of learning. So before we talk about learning as a product manager, let's just understand what does learning mean in general, right. So when we talk about learning, there are this, this triangle basically shows from top to bottom, how do you lead from not knowing what you don't, what not knowing what you know or you don't know to basically mastering a skill or a topic. That's what learning looks like. At the very bottom, there's unconscious incompetence, which basically means I don't know what I don't know. So you're not even aware of what you don't know. Next level is conscious incompetence, which is basically, you know that there are certain things that you're not aware of and that's where your training and learning starts, when it is awareness from inside. Next level is conscious competence, where you know that I know it, but you still have to pay attention. Otherwise, you might make mistakes, right. So that's a conscious competence. After that comes the unconscious competence. I mean, you can do it in your sleep, you know the topic, you know the stuff, and you can just do it easily. And after that is mastery. So teaching is the highest level of knowing any skill of topic or topic. When you know it enough that you can teach it when you can face the questions and you can handle different scenarios and answer questions on that. That's when you have reached the level of mastery. So our goal is any topic, even as a product manager you handle, you want to make sure that first of all you start from finding out what you don't know and then try to reach to the level of mastery if required in that particular topic. Now, as a product manager, there are a few things, a few bullet points I've mentioned here, and you can see those highlighted here. Learning is a must. Whether you continue to manage that same product that you have been managing for a long time, know that technology and industry is evolving. You're not going to sustain or you're not going to do justice to your product just by knowing what you know today. So you have to keep on continuously learning. So learning is not optional. It is a must as a PM. Second thing is awareness. You remember that in the previous slide, we talked about that lower bottom level. You need to know what you don't know. Don't be blindsided that, hey, I know this stuff, things are going well and it's enough. Well, maybe there is something else that if you knew you would do better. So awareness is a very important aspect and that is why learning is important. Third is purpose. When you're learning as a PM, learn with purpose because there's PM is a vast and big field. You have to figure out what is going to make the biggest impact and then you go and put your time and attention to that thing and which is going to give you the biggest bang for the buck. So learn with purpose, learn with a goal that will give you strongest foothold and make sure that you have that prioritization in place for overall learning. Third thing is perspective. Learning a few things in detail is great but as a PM, you need to have an overall point of view about your product, about your industry. So make sure that you do the broad stroke. Make sure that you use multiple resources. Don't limit yourself to certain kind of resources, whether it's a tech doc or a white paper or manual sort of and just trying our product. Use multiple resources because your resources are not limited to the big fixated ones. There's more to know and there are more ways to learn. And last one is be ready for unknowns. And I think this is a very, very important aspect. I feel that I do I know enough, right? The point is that it is a continuous learning and if you're building a future, if you're building a product which is going to be probably first generation or bringing out features that are completely new, there will always be unknown. So have that conviction, have that confidence that you know what you know, but as long as you can find out what you don't know, you can work on it. But they'll always be unknown. So be okay with that. That shouldn't affect your confidence. That shouldn't affect your thought process to speak up. So have that mindset that it's okay to not know certain things and it's okay to keep working on it. That's where the work continues is very important. So now when we know that why is it important to learn as a product manager and what are the high level points that high level mindset that we should have when we learn as a product manager. Let's I'll share a few of the techniques that I use there might be more. So feel free to share in comments or share your ideas that how you approach learning as a PM. I'll share my point of view. And hopefully that will be useful for you. So let's get into that. First is, how do you acquire knowledge? See, when you are a product manager, you'll be busy. You'll be busy. You are hard thinker and basically a smart worker. You'll have to make time for learning. It's not going to feel like that. Hey, right now it feels like a right time. No, it has to be periodic. It has to be structured and you actually have to. It's great to actually put it on your calendar. I do that. I actually put learning time on my calendar. I have fixed time weekly or few times in a week where I just sit down and spend time on learning. So make time for it. When you start learning, make sure that you're you have a complete goal in mind. Are you going to learn that particular topic high level or you're going to go deep dive because there are different approaches and there are different level of time commitment that you'll need for both of those. So know that. Next is as an PM, you know what MVP is minimum viable product know that your learning is also a product itself, right. So keep it keep follow the minimum viable approach right at any point in point in time when you're learning is when you're learning make sure that it's, it's approaching towards completeness in some way right so for example, if you decided to learn some topic deep dive, start from the high level first know the broad stroke, and then decide where you need to go deeper. Right so having that MVP approach having that modular approach will help you feel comfortable will help you feel that you know enough that you're adding value if you're putting time and learning because it will give you that instant knowledge boost. So that's a very. That's a tip that I that's a trick that I use for me for learning. Mix of resources so when I'm learning a new topic I use a lot of resources I use, I would go for deep dive documents for example it's white paper or tech dots or user manual. I scan websites, I love new searches I use keywords in there I use time line feature in there just to see what is going on today. And I think even the quick scan of that will let you know that hey what is it that you need to know and what is it that I don't know. Right, and from that I picked up and I go and read more about certain topic. It keeps me current. Right, so you can learn the fundamentals but you also need to know what is going on now. What is coming up in future what is new right so the staying current is a very important aspect of being a product manager, so I use that a lot that says a world very well for me. Be an efficient reader now you're going to ask me that hey needy I'm going to read white papers reports, I'm going to do my job and there is life. I'm going to get it all done well you know what it's not that complicated follow an efficient reader and one touch approach. As I said I already mentioned the keyword things that helps you find out what you should be reading or learning. One thing that I also use it when I'm reading a lengthy document. I'm very very focused I literally goes is scan for keywords scan by line by line and I read it one time. And at one time, I highlight the content and scan it just one more time, seeing that I got the complete picture of that so once you read once you put in your time in reading a document make sure you get your work from it and you shouldn't have to go and read that at length again to be a very very efficient reader use tricks and trips and tricks that work for you. Also know that specific document format will have. Once you read them couple of times of that particular format you know where the important information lies for example if you're reading analyst reports. You know at the starting they'll talk about takeaways and summary, but at the end there'll be a big table where you can basically just look at that and see that okay so this particular vendor has this strength this and this weakness these are the pros and cons. You know where the important information lies to pay attention to that when you're referring to some document for the first time. So when you go back, you know, this is what the important information lies. Similarly, if you're reading a tech news or article. Generally the subtitles and somewhere in the middle like second or third paragraph they'll talk details in that so that's what you're looking for goes straight to that you know their first first paragraph is probably just the context building. So know where the important information lies so you next time, when you go and read the similar format of docs next time, you know where it is you know where to look for information so you'll be more faster and faster every time. Maintain an open question or anything that I start learning. I maintain a document right by document I mean it's just a pretty rough document it's just open questions that keep coming up in my mind when I'm reading and referring to multiple different resources. So knowing that one document helps me sort my questions pretty quickly, even if I'm talking to someone if an impart of some meeting if I get an opportunity to ask, I know what to ask. So know what to ask at any point in time because you would have questions but if you don't sort them out. It will be all jumbled up right you'd never, you would know, to some extent that this is what you want to ask, but it'll not be very clear to be very clear on what your open questions as a very important part of efficient learning. So once you acquire knowledge. Now you know you're you've done your hard work. How do you retain it over time you're going to forget there's some stuff that will be probably useful probably not useful. It is very important to centralize you figure out your way what is what works for you to centralize. I use one doc, one Google Drive, one folder, and one email ID. So I know where where my stuff is where I need to go and look for it. And it's all in that one place, but I can go and refer back. It's very important that you have the trace back mechanism for your content. Link your findings, you learn. Let's say you come across some data point. Cool. It's right. It sounds great. How am I going to use it. So map it back to some of the problem statements or where you're looking for finding that mapping is important and keeping record of that is also important. Again, one document keep record I actually maintain a data mapping doc. I have some of the key matrices that I'm looking for and what exact value they map to I keep that. Next is highlight your notes I mentioned that before document that you read even if it's a webpage if you have ability to download it well if it is important to download it highlighted you're done next time when you go look for it you're not searching that webpage again on web. You go to your highlighted notes and you're done archive and refresh overtime and you follow this practice, there'll be a lot of content and you'll start running out of storage. So make sure at certain point I do it annually. So at some point in a year I'd go and I'll see what information is useful I'll archive rest of the stuff probably delete delete if it's not useful anymore, and then reset and refresh. It takes only a little bit of time, but if you don't do it, then again it'll feel like that you have so much of information piling up, and part of it is probably useless right so that's important to archive and refresh and reset and know what you learned, and how do you move on from there. Now, we talked about how you retain the knowledge. Now the biggest step is how do you use that knowledge you can retain it, but there's there's more to that unless you are able to use your knowledge is no value to you. Mapping is very important mapping your problem statement to your learning. Let's say if you're building a product that requires certain technical expertise. If you're reading a technical document, take out those. The smaller concepts that you learn there and link it back by linking I mean I put it in a one single doc where you can map it back so you don't have to go back and refer to the huge big document again and again. Keep your references. Of course, many times you'll have to go deeper in detail so keep your references, keep your notes and follow tiered approach. It goes back to the first slide that I shared earlier right. When you start learning a new thing you'll not reach mastery at one point maybe in everything you don't even have to reach mastery so figure out what what parts are of that topic that you need to know right away you need to know in detail. Know the key details to that level that you can teach right. Then for next level details that you're still learning you're still getting up to speed. Have reference of those details and be good enough to explain that with a tool. For example, if you can make a slides and if you're going to talk about it. With that aid you're able to explain that have that level of mastery in that you can choose whichever tool you want I mean you could choose a doc or slides or demo, whatever but know that that level of mastery you should have. And you're trying to learn a topic. And then, as I said no deep dive details that when you have to refer back you can always go back to that and you know that your resources. I have said in my previous webinar as well your resources are not limited to your books or docs. They're much beyond that they're there's technical resources for, for example, website or any document right, but there are human resources as well. That's where you learn as well you learn on job you learn from people, make sure you build that overall perspective and have your learnings at a consolidated centralized place. And once you follow that to your approach. Try to keep raising bar on each of the step one by one right so whatever you are in an early learning stage, try to get to next level right try to get to one level up over time. And this whole process of learning and getting better over time might look complicated might look time consuming it is not because there's a value that you get from that is so much. And you'll get efficient and learning as well over time. So it is great to keep learning keep continuing to get better at technology market space, but it's also important that you do it efficiently so use the tips and tricks, few of this that I have shared today. I'm sure there are more so feel free to share that in comment I'd be happy to learn more from you, because as a PM it's continuous learning. So, please go ahead and share your thoughts and know that starting from that awareness level to learning and changing and to master it's a step process, and we are all going through it every single day right when we're trying to learn a new thing. So that was that these are the thoughts I wanted to share with you if you have any questions for me please feel free to write in comment window reach out to me. Here's my LinkedIn if you want to connect offline as well. And Twitter as well. So it has been great sharing these thoughts with you. Happy to connect with you for next step if you want. Thanks.