 Hi, welcome to today's product school webinar. I'm Amanda winter a p.m. At Google Here to talk to you about Idea of product fitness and how pms can really be athletes of the workplace a Little bit about me. I am a product manager on Google search But I actually got my start in technology in Washington, DC at an early-stage company called fiscal note I was an enterprise sales customer support customer training and education all before I got my first role as a p.m After a few years there. I moved cross-country to incline village, Nevada Small town on the north shore of Lake Tahoe to be the founding p.m. At a company called ridgeline After a few years there and a cent on the business strategy side. I returned a product earlier this year at Google So what are we talking about today? I want to tell you about this idea of product fitness We'll talk about like we'll deep dive into definitions. What does it mean? We'll then talk about how do you get fit and I'll leave you with a couple of takeaways Before we jump into it though want to talk a little bit about what this means to me and how I arrived at it So when I started to think about my career as a p.m. And I ran through all of the different jobs and projects and functions that I've served in over the years Whether or not they were a specific p.m. Task or something where I was collaborating with another part of the organization I realized that they all required me to adapt and to participate in different types of activities and job roles I Came to realize that every time I engaged in a different function I was training my brain to understand the needs of that role and the needs of Products role in relation to that function in the same way that an athlete trains to perform the various aspects of their sport Running jumping kicking I was training to both be a product person But also a partner to other parts of the business and so I really started to think about how I could become more fit How could I become more agile more able to adapt to the various needs of the product management role? And I landed on this set of ideas hope some of it rings salient for all of you today So we'll talk about the what go through some definitions and examples So what does it mean to be fit in general like physically fit? There are a lot of definitions, but a couple that Seemed relevant to me One being the quality of being suitable to fulfill and succeed at a particular task or role So to be fit in a particular sport is to be able to run and kick and jump in the way that your sport requires Another way to think about it is to be conditioned to consistently perform in those required Competencies so not only can you do the thing? But you can consistently and repeatedly do the thing and people can rely on you to run jump kick And it means that you consistently do the things that are required of you to achieve the sports end goal or the The task at hand The last one really sums it up being able to participate in a variety of activities Leaning on overall strength agility and endurance so this definition of fitness and it more applies to like that friend that you have that You know goes to spin classes a couple times a week But then is also able to jump on a five mile trail run and then end the day with a hot yoga class They just generally seem to be fit. They have fitness. They have underlying Endurance they can kind of last when it comes to respiratory activities. And so that definition of fitness really being about Full body Full body physical fitness. You're able to perform no matter what task you're given So what does this mean about product fitness? So to me product fitness borrow some of those characteristics And it's really the quality of successfully engaging in all the aspects of product management Whether they're the explicit tasks of creating a vision and a strategy or the implicit roles Like being a trusted partner to your marketing and sales partners To the right you see a diagram that many p.m. Is are familiar with It's a famous one that pms are at the center of UX technology and business and that we are kind of the middle of these concentric circles At its core, I think this is pretty fair We engage in all three of these aspects of the business But it's also kind of missing a lot of other Concentric circles we engage with legal and finance and sales and marketing and customer support And I really think that's the core of why product fitness is important pms have a specific role absolutely, but part of that role is being able to adapt and work with other types of people and other types of functions and So because p.m. Doesn't necessarily specialize in any individual one of these circles But rather has to blend them and create out of all of them I think product fitness asks and Encourages that you both flex the p.m. Muscles But you also get really fit at some of these other core business competencies and we'll talk about that a little bit later I'll give you a sense of what this looks like. Just so you have a couple things to picture while we deep dive Product fitness might look like working on the customer support desk during your products next launch Doesn't exactly sound like the most fun to every single p.m But imagine you've just been working for the whole year to get your product into shape to be released to your customer segment Your product your customer support desk is at the ready willing to hear any and all issues bugs improvements that come from that release as A product manager you not only want to hear from customers and hear their exact The way that they talk about their pain points and the way that they talk about your product But working on the customer support desk also gives you a glimpse into the lives of your customer support reps What are their goals? What are their motivations? How do they what makes them feel successful? So when you take some time to flex those muscles you not only learn about your customer But you learn about a really critical business partner that you have in your customer support reps Another example might be co-leading a product demo with one of the account managers on your team Preparing for a product demo if you talk to any salesperson is not just creating the slides It's thinking about all the people in the room the audience. What do they want to hear? What do they need to hear? Are you trying to upsell them on a new product release? Are you trying to gain awareness of new product here? When you co-lead that product demo you start to understand all of the things that motivate your account managers Do are they equipped with all the information necessary from the product team to best express the product? Value proposition that you've created and you've developed So co-leading that demo helps you better understand what the account managers need to be successful Which ultimately helps your customers be more successful, which ultimately helps your product be more successful These are just a couple of examples of how product fitness flexing your muscles working across teams Can help you become a more impactful PM? Okay, let's talk about the how How do you become fit? How do you become product fit? I've working this down across what I call the three C's Conditioning consistency and cross training So yeah, these terms of terms you've heard if you were a high school or college athlete Or if you're someone who takes your physical fitness seriously today You work on your conditioning. You try to be consistent. You cross train on off days so that you're not tiring out your core muscle muscle groups We'll dive into each of these individually But before that I want to pause on this quote that I found from Carrie Walsh Jennings and the Olympic Beach volleyball athlete She said it's going to be a journey. It's not a sprint to get in shape This really resonated with me not only from a physical perspective, but when I think about product fitness, too It's not a sprint even though we call our product development process a sprint sometimes Becoming a really great PM is a journey. It takes evolution It takes iteration and I really think that product fitness the the three C's Give a really nice framework for how to think about building on that career So let's talk about each of them individually We'll start with conditioning Here conditioning looks like Practicing the product process whenever you're given the opportunity from the smallest future improvements to the largest releases and rollouts conditioning when it comes to physical fitness is Working out those those competencies those muscle groups that are needed for the specific tasks of your sport So you might see soccer teams running in between these polls as they're thinking about dodging various members of the opposing team Practicing their kicks practicing being able to catch the ball with their bodies These are core competencies for that sport and conditioning means running those drills over and over Conditioning your body your lungs your muscles to be able to perform Product fitness is somewhat similar If you're a product if you're early in your career You might have looked up a product process to base your work on and it might be seven eight nine steps long And that's okay when you start out you're just trying to build the muscle When you're given a new product problem you say let me clearly articulate the user pain Let me gather user research to understand their perspective Let me work with the design team to sketch out a number of solutions And then I'll go to various stakeholders in the company to shop those solutions And then once we've decided on it will execute with our engineering team run through the go-to-market and launch and land the product Conditioning looks like practicing those steps. I Remember early in my career When I first became an AP I'm an associate product manager. I was given right smaller projects You know, I was told to go through the product backlog Find those bug in those bugs those improvements that'll be kind of low-hanging fruit to help you practice the process For some of those it would have been really easy to just write a really quick Juraticket handed off to a senior engineer and get those quick wins That is a way to do it and there's totally value in doing that For me I found that even with small feature improvements Going through the product process really helped me kind of hone my process and hone my framework and product philosophy So even if the bug fix was going to take two days you take a day Try to talk to the customer support rep that filed the ticket talk to the account manager that owned that customer Talk to the design team about whether they've ever ideated on various solutions using those small opportunities low risk As a way to practice your process then gets you ready for the big time It's you ready for the big release where you're really going to want to have your process on lock And so I think part of product fitness conditioning is to identify those core functions of your PM role Is it the defining the strategy building up the requirements and then running the sprint if those are the skills? Find every opportunity to execute on them That leads really nicely into the second C Consistency For me consistency looks like finding all those ways to build a habit and rigor into your product skills So you now have a relatively Straightforward process that you run through you have a couple steps that you say one whenever I have a product Problem our executive team comes to us and says we want to enter this market Here's how I know how to do that So you give yourself goals for the type of skills that you want to develop Maybe data analysis is really important to your job and your product in your company So you build in a habit to pull that user data write the sequel scripts to do so run the you know excel models to do the analysis and you really build in that consistency to start honing your craft and Then you aim to create those habits that then become second nature So building on the idea of conditioning not only are you executing on those product core skills, but you're doing them over and over Producing consistent outcomes. So you know what you can rely on yourself to do But also your teammates know that they can rely on you to deliver the the most clear product requirements Deliver the most clear product value prop when that sales team needs to go into their next sales pitch The last of the three C's is cross training Here I mean flexing your cross functional muscles from triaging bugs to running design sprints to running sales pitches So when you're an athlete in a specific sport You don't just train on the same Run running Distances and the same kicks over and over and over you throw in other types of activity So that you train the rest of your body to be able to handle when you're performing your specific sport So what you see above that might be a soccer team. That's you know, they're not on the field today They're swimming so that they can work on their endurance the respiratory endurance work on arm and back muscles as well as their legs I think it's really similar with product fitness. So like we talked about Product tends to sit at the center of UX technology and business along with other functions at the company and The best way to learn how to deliver to those teams is to actually walk a day in their shoes I think that PMs should take every opportunity to engage with and partner with their stakeholders This kind of seems obvious But if you've been a PM for a period of time, you know that it could be easy to silo yourself You know your product area, you know your domain You know the roadmap for the next one year two years three years You know the epics that you need to write the requirements that you need to flesh out and you do so you run you run with it With your awesome squad and you deliver your product That is the name of the game. So you have to do those things But while you're running your product process, you should also be engaging with all the stakeholders that also help make your product successful This means working with the sales and marketing team listening to the customer support team Trying to understand the legal implications of a new release When you take those opportunities and you cross train and you almost do those roles or at least help those roles You not only get closer to your customer in ways or get closer to your business to your market But you learn to empathize with those functions as a PM So much of the job is being able to work with other people being able to persuade them onto your side persuade them Onto your strategy But then also be able to take their goals and motivations and build them into your own success I think the best way to do this is to cross train and to sit on other teams Take days to help the marketing team read a new one pager Honestly, my motto is that if you're ever in the position to help another team achieve their goals Do it? I Know not all PMS might have the time or the space, but you can find small ways whether it's just going to a meeting Shadowing these other parts of the team or asking at the beginning of a quarter What you might be able to partner with them on I think finding those opportunities is a great way to cross train your product skills and make you Just a really consistent and reliable PM So where do you go from here? What are the takeaways? Using the three C's of product fitness conditioning consistency and cross training. I'll leave you with these three quick ideas The first one being to always view the product from all angles Now your role as a product manager is to facilitate the development and launch and Continual maintenance of your product. That's your that's kind of your charter but Developing great products is more than you writing clear requirements and working with your awesome engineering team to deliver It requires taking in the perspective of all the other parts of your organization and viewing the product from those Perspectives marketing and sales are going to have a very different view of the value proposition Then customer support and account management then finance and legal and so as a really great PM Not just one that executes on the product But understands the big picture of where that product plays in the market Requires taking in all those angles and viewing your product from all those perspectives and PMs are uniquely positioned to do that because we work across so many different teams and so many different initiatives The second takeaway would be to build those cross-functional muscles Every time you have a meeting with a new part of the org It's a way to practice the push and the pull of being a product manager The push of your strategy and your vision and your team's priorities and the pull of all that rich Customer knowledge and rich business strategy from your partners in other parts of the org You can use them as conditioning every time you have that meeting Every time you have that deliverable where you have to partner with another part of the org it's a way for you to practice to be an impactful product person and It's a way to build empathy and learn how you can best leverage your teammates expertise That really leads into the last takeaway and this builds on that on the cross-functional Aspect the idea is to walk a day in others shoes So not only can you partner with those teams? But if you ever have the opportunity to take on a mini role do a 20% project Do a tour of duty in another part of the org I say to do it product managers build their fitness by gaining empathy We always talk about customer empathy Sometimes we talk about engineering empathy But I think it's really important to have business empathy and empathy for your marketing team and your sales team and your support team And so to do that you walk a day in their shoes Help them prepare their deliverables help them deliver demos When you can see the world through your teammates eyes, it makes you a better steward of your craft as a product manager Like I said, that's all I've got for you. Thanks for listening to the product school webinar on product fitness I'm Amanda winter would love to hear any comments anything that rings salient for you Feel free to find me on LinkedIn Have a great rest of the day