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The Essence of The Zoho vs. Freshworks [Deep Dive]

Over the past few months, I’ve been on a deep dive into the world of customer discovery and the Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) framework. This comprehensive, step-by-step guide is the result of extensive research, several experiments, and even a custom GPT designed specifically for JTBD (link in the resources section). First things first, what exactly is Jobs To Be Done (JTBD)? The JTBD framework is an approach that shifts the focus from products to the customer's needs. It centers around understanding the 'job' or task that a customer needs to accomplish using a product or service. In essence, the customer 'hires' the product or service to complete this job. The JTBD framework's advantage lies in its ability to concentrate on addressing problems rather than focusing on any specific solutions. To illustrate this concept, here are two simple examples: Ride-Sharing Services (e.g., or ): Uber Lyft A customer uses a ride-sharing app to book a car. Traditional View: The customer's job is to reach a destination quickly and comfortably, avoiding the hassles of driving or parking. The ride-sharing service is hired not just for transport but for convenience and efficiency. JTBD View: Coffee Shops (e.g., Starbucks): Customers visit coffee shops to purchase coffee. Traditional View: While buying coffee is one aspect, customers also 'hire' the coffee shop as a place to meet friends, work, or relax. The job extends to seeking a pleasant experience and environment. JTBD View: In each example, JTBD shifts the focus from the product itself (car rides, coffee) to what the customer is really seeking to achieve with these products or services in their daily life. Three concepts to understand JTBD To fully grasp JTBD, we need to define three key concepts: Market Tony Ulwick redefines a market not as a vertical, geography, or technology but as a group of people and the job they are trying to get done. It's about discerning what customers truly seek to accomplish with a product or service. Jobs In JTBD, a 'job' is a task or goal a customer aims to achieve in a particular situation by using a product or service. It's action-oriented, encompassing functional, emotional, and social dimensions. Jobs are typically phrased as action-oriented tasks. They should start with a verb and clearly describe what the customer is trying to accomplish. For example: "Maintain personal health and fitness." "Plan and enjoy a vacation." "Enhance professional skills." Outcomes These are the desired end-states or goals customers aim for when hiring a product or service for a job. Outcomes are specific, and measurable, and define what success looks like for the customer. Phrasing outcomes should include metrics or standards used by customers to evaluate success. For example: "Minimize the time required to plan a vacation itinerary." "Maximize the reliability of maintaining a regular exercise routine." "Ensure the latest industry knowledge is incorporated into skill enhancement." How to Apply Jobs-To-Be-Done in 4 steps Step 1: Initial Market Exploration Begin by exploring potential markets based on preliminary insights or hypotheses about customer needs. This can involve exploratory research, such as interviews with potential users, market analysis, and studying existing data. From this exploratory research, identify a range of jobs that potential customers might be trying to get done. These jobs don't need to be detailed at this stage but should give a broad sense of the tasks or goals your potential customers are trying to achieve. Based on these identified jobs, narrow down to a specific market that seems most viable or underserved. This is where you define your market in terms of a specific group of people and the core functional job they are trying to get done. 💡 For example, imagine that you are a product manager at Airbnb. By looking at the data and market trends, you notice that a sizable part of your user base is booking stays for longer periods (e.g. 1 month or longer) and are traveling solo. You decide therefore to explore this potential market. So instead of saying "We are targeting the travel industry" (a vertical), say "We are targeting solo travelers looking to connect with local cultures" (a group of people and their emotional job) or "We are targeting solo travelers looking for long term temporary accommodation" (a functional job). Step 2: Collect all the customer's Jobs and Outcomes The second step in applying the JTBD framework is to collect all the jobs customers are trying to get done when interacting with your product and the outcomes they want to achieve for each job. The end result should be two extensive lists, one for jobs and one for outcomes, phrased as we have seen in the examples above. The best way to collect jobs and outcomes at this stage is through qualitative user interviews, to understand what your users' goals are and what they are trying to accomplish. But rather than spending countless hours in user interviews, here is a hack Tony Ulwick suggests to speed things up and make the process more efficient: Take the top 2–3 experts in your market and organize an interview with them at the same time, either virtually or in person. Divide the session into 2 slots (either the same day or different days) - one for jobs and one for outcomes. For each session, try to get the experts to agree on: A list of the jobs they are trying to get done How to formulate the job statements A list of outcomes they want to achieve for each job How to formulate the outcome statements 💡 Here is how I would apply the framework following our example of a product manager at Airbnb exploring the market of solo travelers/digital nomads looking for accommodation: Identify top contributors in digital nomad online groups and communities (e.g. Facebook, Reddit, NomadList) Invite 3 of them for 2 rounds of interviews on separate days, with all of them together In the first round, focus on capturing jobs they try to get done when booking accommodation. Ask questions like: "Can you walk me through finding accommodation as a digital nomad?" "What factors do you consider when choosing where to stay?" 4. Turn job findings into job statements (see table below) 5. In the second round with the same experts, focus on outcomes wanted for each job. Ask questions like: "Let's discuss finding budget-friendly places with good connectivity. What does success look like here?" "How do you know if an accommodation meets your needs?" "What factors determine a successful stay?" 6. Turn outcome findings into outcome statements (see table below) 7. Interview more people to confirm findings or get additional insights if needed. By the end, I should have properly stated jobs and outcomes lists like: Side note 1: During this process, you may discover that your product addresses only part of the job. This is common and highlights potential market opportunities. Side note 2: I can provide more specifics on user interviews for JTBD if helpful. Leave me a comment. You might also want to check this that illustrates how I structure user interviews. article Step 3: Uncover Unmeet Needs After compiling your jobs and outcomes statements, the next step is to identify your . The objective here is to determine which jobs are of the utmost importance to most of your audience. customers’ unmet needs To accomplish this, design a that lists each job along with its associated outcomes, asking participants to rate them for importance and satisfaction. Here’s a suggested format: survey a. When attempting to [job], how crucial is it for you to [outcome statement]? Options range from ‘Not important at all’ to ‘Extremely important.’ b. How satisfied are you with your ability to [outcome]? Options range from ‘Not satisfied at all’ to ‘Extremely satisfied.’ Example: 💡 Job: Find accommodations suitable for long-term stays. When trying to find accommodations suitable for long-term stays, how important is it to you that ? Question a: you minimize the time required to identify accommodations offering long-term stay discounts for extended travels Not important at all Not important Somewhat important Important Very important Extremely important How satisfied are you with your ability to ? Question b: minimize the time required to identify accommodations offering long-term stay discounts for extended travels Not satisfied at all Not satisfied Somewhat satisfied Satisfied Very satisfied Extremely satisfied Survey Sample Size and Conditions: B2B: 120–180 clients B2C: Around 600 for a single product; 1200 for a portfolio Survey Duration: Approximately 20 minutes, with participant compensation recommended. Step 4: Prioritize Unmeet Needs Upon receiving the survey results, focus on prioritizing the unmet needs. Look for needs rated as very or extremely important but not very or extremely satisfied. 💡 Using our Airbnb example, let’s visualize the survey results on a graph. Each point represents a job, plotted according to its importance and satisfaction ratings. The red dashed lines at 75% help categorize jobs based on their levels of importance and satisfaction. Next, calculate the for each job using the formula: Opportunity Score Opportunity Score = Importance+(Importance−Satisfaction) In our example from the graph, the following jobs stand out: (importance 70% satisfaction 40%) Long-term Stay Discounts : (importance 85% satisfaction 50%) Reliable Internet Connection : (importance 65% satisfaction 45%) Social Interaction Opportunities (importance 55% satisfaction 40%) Affordable Comfort When we calculate the opportunity score, here are our top priorities: (Opportunity Score: 120) Reliable Internet Connection (Opportunity Score: 100) Long-term Stay Discounts (Opportunity Score: 85) Social Interaction Opportunities (Opportunity Score: 70) Affordable Comfort And now? What happens next With your priorities established, it’s time to shift from problem identification to solution creation. Focus on developing solutions for the top-priority jobs starting with “Reliable Internet Connection,” then moving to “Long-term Stay Discounts” and so forth. The outcome statement of each job will be your measure of success or noth star metric. For jobs with more complex needs, like ‘Social Interaction Opportunities,’ investigate in greater detail to understand the specific nuances and contexts in which they are performed. Also published here. 📚 Helpful resources Access to the t (Notion Template): a guide to help you step-by-step in applying JTBD specifically to your needs (requires a subscription to ChatGPT Plus) JTBD custom GPT + the JTBD checklis Watch my interview with Tony for practical applications of JTBD (including his experience applying the framework at Twitter) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOxxwNGe9I8&embedable=true

Uncover Your Customers' Hidden Needs In 4 Steps with Jobs-To-Be-Done + Access Custom GPT

A step by step decision making process to help you choose the best option Intro I started writing this article and to create the Blind Game Method because as a Product Manager, a big part of my job is to make decisions. I wanted to develop a framework that would help me become both efficient and effective in this process. I needed a guiding thinking system that would allow me to make decisions in a way that minimizes my mental bias, as well as the unpredictability of unforeseen circumstances, which I refer to throughout this article as “The Big Unknown”. While it was born specifically to be useful in my job as a Product Manager, the Blind Game can be played by everyone and can be extended to all aspects of your life, including your private one. I recently used it for example to decide if I should get my very first dog or not : ) In the article, I picked an example to illustrate the Blind Game that, while is a typical problem for a Product Manager, and also for entrepreneurs, can be well understood by people who come from different sectors and professions. In this article you will learn: What are the most common problems when making a decision How to define and classify decisions The Blind Game Method: a 3 level decision-making process. Each level is designed to help you make a decision as fast as possible, or to guide you to the next level if you need an additional layer of clarityA clear example of how the Blind Game works How to effectively communicate your decision Free download of the Blind Game Template As this article is a step-by-step guide, it is a long-form. If you desire to start the Blind Game as fast as possible to start using the template, you can scroll to the example section. The decision making problem “So have you decided if we are going to build this feature? Are you sure it is going to bring us the right number?” asks my boss seated in front of me. I want to hide under the table and retort “Of course I am not sure. Do I look like a clairvoyant with a crystal ball, able to see the future?” Instead I say: “I think we should build this new feature, it will take us exactly where we want to be based on the evidence we have.” Although I managed to sound confident and collected, in reality I still want to hide under the table. I have no idea if this is indeed the best decision. We have all been there. We all have heard this voice inside our head saying: “Are you sure this is the best decision? What if this decision ends up in a catastrophic failure and causing irreversible damage?”. If you are a product manager, your job is about making decisions every day. Whether from our boss, our team, our stakeholders, we are continuously pushed to call the shots, and decision making is the most important contribution we give to an organization. Setting the vision and the strategy to develop the product, deciding what gets in the backlog and what to prioritize, decision-making is the core of what we do. This responsibility of making such big decisions sometimes feels paralyzing. As I said, no one has a crystal ball able to predict the future and we all have to contend with the uncertainty of outcomes. I sometimes experienced a sense of paralysis when I had to make big decisions. Is this the right vision for my product? How do I set the team up to win? Should I replicate my competitors and take a more secure path, or should I come up with some new and face higher risks? Should I build this functionality that my stakeholders swear is life-changing? I am sure all this sounds very familiar to you. Why do we struggle so much when it comes to making a decision? Where lies the problem? If I imagine the decision-making process as a chess game, there are certain “moves” or patterns I am frequently faced with. In the Blind Game, I defined those as the five common moves: When I start gathering information, I often feel overwhelmed by the at my disposal. excessive options Paradoxically I also feel like I don’t have the right information available to make a decision. There are too many resources on the web to verify. It is both a relevance issue and an inability to gather or extract enough knowledge from the people (or the resources) that hold it. This is what I referred to as “ ”, borrowing this term loosely from the economic theory. asymmetric information This makes me feel like I have to and second guess my decisions. After all, how do I know that the source is reliable and trustworthy? Even when this is the case, I am aware that my mind operates according to mental bias (hello, “Thinking Fast and Slow” anyone?) doubt myself Because of my insecurities, I end up wasting a lot of time and energy in the decision making process, looking for more relevant information and agonizing over my options. I end up depleting my already limited “ ”. energy bucket Finally, there is the fifth player, “ ” because no matter how much information I gather or thoughts I have put into making a decision, it is often impossible to truly assess all the implications and consequences it will have, because it is either too complex or unpredictable. No one can see the future. The Big Unknown An example of a typical situation that everyone is familiar with is the following: Think about a time when you went visiting a doctor and the doctor made a diagnosis for your chronic migraine. The doctor explains the diagnosis to you very briefly as he is in a rush today and has no time to dwell with you. He sends you on your way with more questions than answers. We are in the presence of asymmetric information , the doctor has an advantage (the knowledge of the diagnosis) that you do not possess and you were not able to get from him more information. Once home, you hit the internet and start googling your diagnosis. You are immediately overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of information, there are too many options . Which one is relevant and trustworthy and which isn’t? You decide out of gut feeling to trust a website, but immediately you start to doubt yourself . Afterall you are not a doctor, how can you be sure that this is the right interpretation of your diagnosis? You face a choice now. You can either deplete your “energy bucket” and research some more, perhaps going back to the doctor, or you can decide to trust the website and live with the consequences of whatever comes next. The Blind Game I started developing the Blind Game to cope with the stress caused by my unhealthy idea that I have to constantly make the “best possible decision” in all circumstances. What is the definition of “best decision” anyway? Behind the concept of “best decision” we often cling to an idea of perfectionism, of something we believe we can control. I know I certainly did. Because no one can see the future, we need to embrace the fact that we have imperfect choices at our disposal. The “best possible decision” is therefore one that minimizes the “Big Unknown”, by making the most out of the information we have available, and ensures a balance between energy invested in the process and the results. The Blind Game is designed to help you achieve this definition of “best decision”. The Blind Game is a decision-making framework, a 3 steps process designed to help you reach a conclusion in a way that minimizes mental bias and the “Big Unknown”. By playing the game, you will be able to make a decision with reduced effort, greater clarity, and less self-doubt. Level 1: The Rules The Blind Game starts with level 1, by defining and setting the rules of the decision making process. In this stage, you will define the basis that will help you make your decision. The questions are in chronological order, each step is designed to help you answer the following one. First of all, you need to define three basics elements: What is the decision you need to make? Why is it needed that you make a decision? What is the best outcome you can aspire to? Once you know your why and the best outcome, you can move to outline the rules of the game: : is the decision reversible or irreversible? In a letter to shareholders, Jeff Bezos distinguishes between two types of decisions. Irreversible decisions, or Type 1, are “one-way doors” that need long and careful consideration. Once made “you can’t get back to where you were before”. Luckily most decisions are bound to be reversible, or Type 2, so “you can reopen the door and go back through.” Thus the question to ask if the decision is reversible is: how quickly and how easily can you go back? Type : what is the impact you expect this decision to have? Is it life changing, high, medium, or low? ☄ Impact : how confident do you need to be before deciding? The more impact the decision will have, the higher your confidence level will need to be 🌡Confidence Level ⚡ how much energy is worth putting in the decision-making process? Is it worth putting so much effort in the process, or can you live with a more relaxed and chilled attitude? Energy Bucket: 🕑 time is usually tied to your energy bucket. How much time do you need or have at your disposal to make this decision? Are you time-pressured to decide Time Investment: : now that you have defined all of the above, is time to quantify your MAI. What is the minimum amount of information you need to make the decision? Defining the MAI level between low, medium and high, is crucial to avoid both the risk of information overload on the one side, and to be too impulsive on the other. Your MAI should be functional to the previous answers: the higher you scored, the higher the MAI you will need. Conversely, too much MAI when a decision is simple or has low value, can result in paralysis, increased self-doubt and inability to decide. MAI Level (minimum amount of information) : list the information you need to make the decision Define MAI : defining a deadline is crucial to respect the MAI. The keyword is the minimum. In some instances, the deadline is already set for you. In that case, you should add the deadline before you start defining your MAI. Deadline If the decision is reversible, with low to medium impact, defining and gathering your MAI, should be enough to help you make a decision. In case the decision is: IrreversibleReversible with high impact, or if you think that If the MAI you have gathered is not enough and you are indecisive about your options You are looking for a boost in confidence Then you move to level 2. 👇 Level 2: The Question List The purpose of the Question List is to bring an additional layer of clarity to your decision-making process. Answer as many or as little as you need to make your decision. Is the MAI (minimum amount of information) that you have acquired enough to make a decision? If not, how can you get more information and of which type? What data have you gathered to support your hypothesis? What is the short term impact? What is the long term impact? What changes are you able to foresee? What are the benefits and what are the costs associated with this decision? What would be the benefits of a partial success? What is the cost of inaction (6 months/1 year/ 5 years) from now? How does each option that you are considering compare or get you closer to your definition of the best decision? Consider the Big Unknown, for each option how can you cup the risk of everything going wrong? How much effort would it take to implement the decision? Is it worth the effort (aka is the reward high enough to justify the effort?) The “Question List” level should be enough to help you make a decision in at least 80% of the cases and the Blind Game would stop here. Certain decisions however have too many stakes involved. In case the decision is: Irreversible It is reversible but going back has a high cost (financially or emotionally), pain, and effort Then you move to level 3. 👇 Level 3: The Effect Predictor Every decision has an effect. Level 3 asks you to place your options on a chessboard to help you evaluate the possible consequences of your action on other “moving pieces”. You will repeat this step for every option at your disposal. Luckily at this stage, the options are either shortlisted to two, or you are contemplating a “should I do it or not” type of decision. Envision the option you are considering as the King in the game. How would the movement of the King influence the next move of the other pawns? Pawns in the Blind Game are referred to as Players. A Player can be a person, a situation, or an event that will be affected by your decision. Just like a Pawn in a chessboard, for each player you define three moves or scenarios. : best possible outcome for that Player. Best Scenario : the worst possible outcome for that player. Opposite Scenario : a blend of the previous two scenarios. Middle Scenario For every move, specify the supporting evidence and a percentage on the likelihood that it will come to pass. Through this process, you will be able to pick the “most likely effect” for each Player and to motivate your choice. By evaluating the consequences of your decision on the other Players, you can now make a decision that minimizes as much as possible the “Big Unknown”, as well as your mental bias. The Blind Game in practice Let’s now make a concrete example of how the Blind Game works and imagine the following scenario. You are a Product Manager at Netflix. Since COVID-19 and social distancing, users are asking to add a functionality that will allow them to watch their favorite Netflix shows with their friends and loved ones remotely, inside the platform. You are thinking about a built-in video call system that will allow users to interact with each other on the platform while watching a show. While this sounds tempting, you are afraid that this functionality will distract users from enjoying the content. Furthermore, in the absence of social distancing, users might not want this functionality anymore, and you will have needlessly spent time, energy, and resources. The question is: should you build it or not? Level 1 of the Blind Game is about outlining the decision rules. Filling out the information in chronological order, you will end up with something that looks like the picture below. Adding the “watch remote with friends” functionality is: A reversible decision, as you can go back and remove it The cost of going back (impact) will be high. This is why before making a decision you feel like you need to have a confidence “mastery level”, to avoid wasting time, money and resources You preventive that you need to invest a high amount of energies and time to make the decision The minimum amount of information (MAI) is high. You give yourself one month to gather your MAI, as stakeholders are pushing you to make a decision as fast as possible. Your MAI includes assessing: a. The impact on current technologies b. The impact on the UI and on the user experience when watching content c. The cost to build the future d. Wireframe various options to evaluate users preferences e. Dependencies on other departments and existing services f. Capacities on your team and other teams involved As you are starting gathering evidence, it becomes clear that you need to put some more thoughts into this. There are still many blank spots and you know you won’t be able to gather more information due to the tight deadline you had to set. You move therefore to level 2, the question list, and you write down the answers you think are relevant for this particular use case. By answering the question list, you have somewhat a clearer picture in mind, however you are far from feeling confident about what you should do. In particular, you are unable to foresee the consequences of your actions on other interested parties. You decide therefore to move to the next and final level, the “Effect Predictor”. At this point, you want to see what will happen if you decide to build the feature. Note that you could also do the opposite, you could ask yourself what would happen if you do not build the feature. You define the “Players”, or the actors that would be affected by your decision. Your goal is to predict the effect that it will have on them if you choose in the end to build the “watch remote with friends” functionality. The Players you want to predict the effect on are: Users Your team Stakeholders Competitors Current technologies and services in use in the company For each player, define the best possible scenario, the opposite version of it, and the middle ground between the two. Write down the supporting evidence for each and assign them a percentage on the likelihood of this happening as follow: To help you visualize the different scenarios for the players, I have created three different views for each: By comparing the different scenarios, in the end you think that: Users and stakeholders are going to be happy about the new functionality. They will see it as an exciting new development of the platform. Your team will have mixed feelings on the topic, due to the inability to classify technical complexities at this stage. Since it is too soon to understand all technical implications, you classify those as the “Big Unknown”. Finally, you think that competitors, especially the other big players, will copy the functionality. Now that you have gone through all the 3 levels of the Blind Game, you are now able to make the decision to build this new functionality. Communicating the decision Having made a decision, whatever this might be, you now need to communicate it. I have written about communication and how to craft compelling Narratives to promote new initiatives in . Product Management is Change Management A small note of caution here. By virtue of playing the Blind Game, you probably have gathered much more information than any other person in the company on the subject. You start from an advantageous position, as you are now the holder of all the information and the context behind it. Because as we have spent so much time researching and thinking about it, sometimes we risk forgetting what it was like at the beginning, when we knew nothing or little on the topic. We risk omitting important information to jump straight to the point, risking ruling out the decision. All our efforts and investigation can go to nothing if we don’t prepare this part carefully. Our job is to convey a condensed version of the Blind Game, providing context and distilling the evidence in short digestible pills, in a compelling fashion. You can find out more about how you can accomplish it by . reading this article Download the free Blind Game Template here Previously published at https://saratortoli.com/the-blind-game-a-decision-making-framework/

The Blind Game: A Decision-Making Framework

A guide to find meaning and purpose in your life in the most unlikely circumstances, including a global pandemic, through Ikigai. Key Takeaway: In this post, you will learn how to find your purpose in life amidst chaos, through a Japanese method called Ikigai. After finishing reading you will have defined: What is that you love and you are good at What is that the World needs right now Define a problem to solve that matters to you How you can make an income by doing something you care about Your ultimate life meaning and purpose Introduction I am going to be honest with you: I didn’t see this coming. In my usually carefully planned, organized life, I have never considered that I, along with half of the world, would be a prisoner of an invisible enemy that goes by the name COVID-19. All of the things that I gave for granted, from meeting friends to ordering a matcha latte in my usual cafe, are gone. Now I am happy to go grocery shopping once a week because it means I can go outside. Suddenly I have to put on hold my usual life, in which I pile up one thing after another, busy being busy, and I am forced to take a pause, whether I like it or not. I look around me and realize that, when all else is stripped bare, the simplest things are the ones that are the most important. I need to find purpose in life amidst chaos. This is a wake-up call. What will the World be like when all of this is over? Would it go back to the way things were before or would things change? I am passionate about history and extensively researched patterns throughout our millennial-long civilization. And one such pattern is this: the greater opportunities, the one that shapes new realities, always follows a period of intense crisis. What we are living in today is a health and an economical crisis, all rolled into one. Doctors and nurses fight for people’s lives risking their own, while many others are laid off because social distancing has brought down entire economic business models, forcing company’s to shut down. And yet even against those odds, every single one of us can be the key to help to reshape reality once all of this is over. However, we are not going to reshape reality unless we figure out ourselves first. I believe we have a choice. We can see this period only as a dark time, or as an opportunity to bring clarity, to and emerge stronger than before. If you choose to stick with the second option, this is indeed a time where opportunities lie just beneath the surface (and not just if you manufacture toilet paper or sanitizers). face our fears How to live a life of purpose A tool to help us find our purpose in life amidst chaos is , a Japanese model that considers four different areas to help us find and live a life of meaning and purpose. The goal of Ikigai (literally it means a reason to be) is to help you discover what will make you jump out of bed each morning feeling excited for the day ahead. I first came in contact with this model a few months back and since then it has brought clarity regarding who I am and where I want to go. Ikigai At its core, Ikigai asks you to find an answer to the following four questions: What do I love? What am I good at? What can I be paid for now — or something that could transform into my future hustle? What does the world need? Asking those questions sounds simple enough and yet it’s incredibly difficult. And asking questions, I believe, is actually the key to unlock your Ikigai. From the question we ask ourselves, comes the quality of the answer we are going to get. To help myself figuring out my Ikigai, I created an example in Notion to visually organize the answers, however, this works as well with a piece of paper: On finding your Passion Let’s say that you would like to open your own company, change your job, change lifestyle, but you are not sure where to focus or what exactly you are passionate about. In this section we are going to figure out exactly your passions by focusing on the first two circles, “what you love” and “what you are good at”. Questions to ask to help in finding what you love: What did you like when you were a kid, who did you want to become? What energized you and what instead sucks your energies? How do you spend your free time? If you knew you have only one year left, what would you do? What would you do if you wouldn’t have to worry about money? Now consider taking a piece of paper and divide it into 4 columns as follow: The first column is “ ”. List all of the things you love doing and that you know you are also good at. This is going to be your What I Love and I am Good at passion The second column is “ ” and it’s going to be your Those might also be skills you might want to learn but have not mastered yet. For example, I am really keen to start a Podcast but I am have never done this before therefore although I love the idea I don’t know if I am going to be good at it. What I Love and I am not Good at potential. The third column is “ ” and it’s what might help you in until you find your Ikigai What I don’t Love and I am Good at paying the bills The fourth column is “ ” and those are all activities you should consider to What I don’t Love and I am not Good at delegate or eliminate. Of course, we want to focus on the first column because this is our passion and comes easy to us, however, let’s also keep an eye on the second, as things that have potential in the present might become your greatest asset in the future. Eventually, we want to minimize, delegate or get rid of what we write in the third and fourth columns, this is why this exercise is so powerful because it also highlights areas in your life that sucks your energies so that you can do something about it. Below is my personal example of the “Love/Good Intersection”: On finding your Mission How does it feel to be aware of what is your passion? Feels good, right? Well according to the Ikigai method, this is not enough. Finding your passion but not getting paid for it, in fact, can lead to frustration. At the same time, researches have shown us that the key to happiness is proportioned to the contribution we are able to give to society. To find your purpose, we now take a look at what the world needs and what you can be paid for. Here are some questions to help you through the discovery of these further pieces of the puzzles. Questions to help you reflect on what the world needs: What is the next big thing? What are the emerging needs, the opportunities that lie just beneath the surface?Is there any trend out there that you are able to spot? Is there a market that is overserved? What about one that is underserved? Are there any social/ environmental or economic problems you want to help to solve? To help visualize the answer, I have created the matrix below using , which links trends with the current status in the market of a certain initiative by distinguishing between underserved and overserved (e.g. due to high competition). Focus on things that are underserved in general and on-trend, because they have the highest potential. Miro.com Below is an example at the time of quarantine during COVID-19: Your goal is to fill this matrix with the various options for each quadrant and find out what you can be paid for based on the problem you are feeling a call to solve that are in the leverage quadrant and/or in the opportunity quadrant, based on the knowledge that what is not trending today might be trending tomorrow (hello, toilet paper?). To help you determine what you can be paid for, I have posted below a few more questions: Questions to find out what you can be paid for: How would you evaluate your current career path? Are there talents that you can develop more? Are you working in an industry that is on-trend? Is there a sector or an industry that you are knowledgeable about? Can you easily leverage this knowledge or are there high barrier entries (e.g. competition, capability to acquire further knowledge/skills)? Pick three values that are important for you. Does your current job align with your values? Is the job that you are doing afloat with the competition? This will impact your salary negotiation power. Are there other opportunities around you that you can leverage? Are there any overlaps between your career and the other 3 elements of Ikigai? Bringing it together Now that we have taken a look at each element that forms the Ikigai, it’s time to bring it all together: The example above is based on my own Ikigai. I love learning new things and I have the complementary skill of being good at creating something from scratches and shaping it by giving it structure (e.g. creating a new project to learn about cryptocurrency and then organize it in Notion). I can be paid and would enjoy working as a Product Manager, which is also my current position and in line with my passion and coincidentally this is very much a position that is high in demand in the market, as COVID-19 and social distancing have made self-evident the need to rethink most traditional businesses in a digital way. To be more specific for example, I could determine in which sector/industry/company I would like to offer my help or I could spot a need in the market that is underserved and try to open my own business to fill the gap (e.g. a tool to help remote workers in the example above). Now it’s on to you. What is your Ikigai? Share your story in the comments!

How To Use The Ikigai Concept to Find Purpose Amidst Chaos 

A Product Manager’s guide to surviving in a COVID-19 world What is this article about? This article is about learning how to stay sane and motivated, and indeed thrive, working remotely during a global pandemic. It is especially targeted to Product Managers and in general to those who, like me, are used to go to the office every day and find themselves in need to adjust and to optimise for this new reality of social distancing. Here is a sample of some takeaways: What is a routine and why it’s important to have one How to create and use routines to keep your personal and professional life separate Concrete examples and questions to help you create your own routine to set you up for success and mental resilience Working remote as a Product Manager and how to stay motivated while being in self isolation The toolbox of a remote Product Manager Adjusting to the New Normal Remote working is the new normal. For those of us that are used to commuting to the office, spending time in meetings with colleagues and stakeholders or conducting customer research in-person, this is a radical change that forces us to rethink patterns and habits that were deeply ingrained. Given the recent working climate changes, how do we adapt to this new reality? Some feel relieved and enjoy this newfound freedom of working from the comfort of their homes, so much that they almost dread going back to the office. On the other side, some may feel a sense of loss, especially when it comes to human connection. No matter which category you fall in, we all had to do some adjustments in our life due to quarantine and social distancing. In this scenario, for those Product Managers like me who are working remotely for the first time, the line between personal and professional life is blurred and this creates a sense of disorientation that can sometimes make us lose our sense of purpose. However, I found there is a secret to stay sane and thrive while working remotely — it all centers around the quality of your routines. What’s a routine? First off, let’s define what a routine isn’t. A routine is not a habit. They are similar concepts but there is a fundamental difference. Both refer to regular and repeated actions in our lives. A habit is an action we do often in a regular and repeated way. A routine is a regular way of doing things in a particular order. The main difference between habit and routine is that habit is a recurrent with little or no conscious thought, whereas routine requires a high degree of intention and effort. This is why a routine is so much more powerful than a simple habit. Having a routine that you consistently choose to enact every day is about bringing intentionality in your daily life. Simply put, life doesn’t just happen to you but you introduce some measure of choice and control over it, the amount of which depends on the quality and number of your routine(s). Why is having a routine so important? As a former professionally trained ballet student, I am a firm believer in the power of having a routine. During my years of training, with 4–5 hours of barre class every day on top of regular school, I learned that there is comfort and power in choosing to repeat the same moves every day. It anchors you to reality and stops you from drifting away in difficult times. No one forced me to do this. It was something I embarked on myself, and I built a regular routine and discipline around it — all while fitting in school, ballet classes, homework, etc. to help me stay focused on achieving what I wanted. Since interrupting ballet I have changed my routines many times over and yet I always made sure to have one, especially in the morning. Remember, unlike a habit that happens automatically, a routine is about bringing intentionality in your life to help stay focused and achieve what you want. So, how do you go about building a routine to fit your life, as you work as a Product Manager achieving your goals? Let’s find out how to create our own routine with the goal of redefining the line between personal and professional life. To help you out, I am going to make an example along the way by sharing my current daily routine, as it is at the time of the quarantine in COVID-19. The single most important routine that you can introduce in your life: your morning routine When you’re completely immersed in doing remote work, it can be easy to roll out of bed and gravitate straight to your laptop. Having a morning routine is like a lifeline of normality amidst chaos and is the single most important thing you can introduce in your life that will make a true, tangible difference. It’s about bringing intentionality into your life right from the start of the day. And what is more powerful than starting a new day by being deliberate and doing what you like, instead of rushing to work? I promise, with what seems like a sacrifice at the beginning, magic can happen that can transform your life for the better. To give you an example of what a morning routine could look like, here is a sample of my own. I usually wake up at 6:00 am and now that I don’t have to commute to the office anymore, I have the luxury to get out of bed at 7:00 am. During this extra hour in bed, I practice , which means I daydream about my future and what I want to accomplish. I close my eyes and picture in detail my future life, what I am doing, what I am wearing, where and with who I am. It’s basically like watching a movie powered by my own imagination. visualization Also, I’ve discovered a newfound gift of this extra hour in bed: I have resumed reading in the morning, which is something I haven’t done since University. Currently, my nightstand features , which I highly recommended, especially in this period of self-isolation. Tony Robbins Awaken the Giants Within At 7:00 am I get up and dedicate 30 minutes between and . I use Notion for my daily journal and Headspace for my meditation. Below is a snapshot of part of my daily journal and the question I ask myself on a daily basis. The benefits of a morning journal is that it helps me to define what I want to do/experience/feel on that specific day. This doesn’t mean that every day is necessarily a success, however most days are because of the shift in mindset. journaling meditation After meditation, I every morning for about 40–45 minutes. Maybe it’s because of my past as a ballerina, but I cannot conceive a life without some form of daily training. With the gym closed, I had to rethink my training routine and I started alternating strength exercises at home to days in which I run in the park. train For home training, I usually watch the , which is free and has plenty of good options to choose from. All I need is a set of light weights and a yoga mat. Popsugar Youtube Channel Once the training is done, my new little guilty pleasure is from my favorite local cafe to take away. I then shower and take the time to enjoy my breakfast, as having a rushed one usually puts me in a bad mood. At this point (around 9:30 am) I usually start working, checking emails and messages. grabbing a coffee My morning routine is pretty elaborate and takes up a lot of time (about 2 hours), however this is what works well for me and helps me to be balanced and stay motivated. To build your own morning routine, you have to figure out what would work best for you. Questions to create a morning routine: If you think about your perfect morning, what does this look like? Can you incorporate at least some elements of it in your daily routine?What are the activities that make you feel good? For example, if you enjoy drawing or reading, could you imagine dedicating at least 10 minutes to it every morning? How would this make you feel? What are the activities that energize you and would set you off to start the day feeling better than ever? For example, does training in the morning boost your energy or suck it out? What can you do to reward and spoil yourself? In my example, having a coffee from my favorite coffee place after working out is a way I ensure I reward myself daily. Once you have clearly outlined the outlook of your morning routine, calculate the time you would need to enact it from the moment you wake up to the time you need to start working. Consider adjusting your sleeping time to make sure that you don’t practice your newfound rituals at the expense of your sleep, because that would be the easiest way to give up your newfound routine. The routine of a remote Product Manager Come to think of it, the life of a Product Manager and his/her team is full of routines and rituals — from daily stand-ups, and sprint plannings, to retrospectives and customer briefings. This is because, as we already established, routines are about being intentional. So how does a Product Manager stay intentional and adapt routines that might fit well in the office in this new remote scenario? Much to my surprise, very few things have actually changed in terms of rituals and outcomes in my first month of working from home, with a few notable exceptions. Here are a few of my Product Manager daily routines during the average day of working remotely: Having team at 10:00 am every morning. This is something that we normally do also when we are in the office, a 15 minutes catch up in which everyone shares activities of the previous day and what’s planned for the current one. Doing remote stands-up, we share our Kanban board during a video call and we take turns in updating each other. stand-ups This usually takes a bit more than the usual 15 minutes, mostly due to muting and unmuting the mic and because it is sometimes needed to give more background and establish a connection. After stand-up, I usually take 10 to 15 minutes to and if necessary re-prioritize. To help me visualize and plan my activities for the day, I use a simple Kanban board in Coda with a color-coding system to group activities (an example is reported below). review the day Having a clear is also important on a team level, remote or not. We use Jira to keep track of our activities on a team level, and we review our priorities and backlog on Mondays every week to make sure we are on track. prioritization process and the same visibility The one area that has significantly shifted in the way I work remotely is the one about . The casual kitchen chat, popping-up at the desk of my teammate when something’s up, the small informal and casual exchange we rely on to build relationships is not an option anymore. We must therefore find new ways and get creative when it comes to communication. communication is often necessary. This means spending more time on chats than normal and jumping on a call whenever messaging back and forth goes on for too long. While this takes away some time from the actual work, it is necessary to give visibility and transparency. Over-communication The has also changed because I am more mindful of the other person. It is important to remember that we are all humans and we all feel a little bit lonely in this period of forced isolation. When jumping on a call I find I derive much more pleasure by starting with small talks and with the questions such as “ ” instead of talking immediately about business. way in which I communicate how are you doing? In fact, while it is true that we are more distant, I found out that we can actually be more intimate in a way, as I get to see pieces of the private life (and living rooms) of the people I work with through video calls, which under normal circumstances I would never see. On a team level, we also had adapted a few we had before. Our Friday celebrations, to check-in and celebrate the end of the week together, are now , and we are also running more frequently than before. We would normally have it once a month, however, we are now running one every second week as we are aware of the increased need to reflect on our current team status and spot immediately what is not working. This helps us preserve team spirit and smooth our ways of working. casual rituals remote happy hours Kaizen Since working remotely, I also realized I walk and move much less during the day than I used to when I go to the office. To solve this problem, I installed a treadmill at home, to allow me to have walking meetings, a thing which I truly enjoy. Another thing I have learned to treasure as a remote worker is the chance to have 10 minutes for myself to recharge between one meeting and the next. This gives me the chance to do a short meditation or sometimes even a walk around the block. To establish a successful routine as a remote Product Manager: What rituals that you had in the office can be replicated and adapted in a remote scenario? Which activities help you feel more connected as a team? How can you reflect on your daily activities and how can you help your team do the same? What are the tools and rituals that would bring anyone on the same page in a very intuitive way? Am I communicating clearly and concisely what I want to say? What are the possible ways that my message can be interpreted? If I realize that there can be different meanings from what I originally intended, I would go back and rephrase it. The Remote Product Manager Toolbox Every hero needs some tools in order to succeed and so do Product Managers. Especially when working remotely, having the proper tools can make or break a Product Manager work and product. Here are a few tools that are useful to manage both a remote team and products, some I have gathered by personal research and experience, others were recommended by other Product Managers: : , Microsoft Teams, Twist, Google Chats Messaging and chats Slack : Zoom, Whereby, Skype, Google Hangouts Videocall : Notion, Best all in-one-tools (project management + wiki) Coda : Team Productivity Check Kiro Visual Collaboration: Miro : Trello, Retrospective Parabol : Asana, ClickUp, Jira Project Management Bringing the day to a closure: Evening Routine While my work-life balance had lines that were clearly defined, I now tend to work longer toward the end of the day. Also, commuting back home was giving me a clear cut from work activities. Right at the beginning of my remote experience, I went from working to directly having dinner and since I had all my devices with me, I tended to check phones and emails up until I went to bed. This made me feel like some key part of the day was missing and it was counterproductive to my brain ability to switch off and recharge, affecting also the quality of my sleep. In the last couple of weeks, I have made sure to have at least a 30-minute break between the moment I finish working and the time I have dinner and to keep away from working devices after it (although I have to admit I am not always successful). What I do as an evening routine between work and having dinner varies from day to day. It might be a yoga session, a video call with a friend or taking a bath. Whatever the activity, it is something that helps unwind from the day and that I feel like doing because I enjoy it. Cooking and chilling on the sofa watching Netflix is also part of the evening routine. Filling my evening journal and going to bed roughly at the same time (around 10:00 pm). The evening journal is the counterpart of my morning one, helping me reflect on the day I just had and setting the ground for the next. Question to build an evening routine: What activities help you relax and slow down? What could be a reward to end the day? What would make the next day easier? Now it’s on to you. What are your routines? What is helping you stay sane and motivated?

How to stay sane and motivated when working remote

The Unavoidable Essence of a Product Manager Role: How to succeed as a Change Manager through the power of Narratives. As a Product Manager, you are expected to fulfil many different functions. Product Managers need to maintain big-picture oversight: lead, and take charge of their products and develop a strategy and a roadmap for its improvement and success; all the while delivering incremental value in myriad ways and staying close to the detail and development process on a daily basis. However, one of the (many) things I didn’t realize when becoming a Product Manager, and that , is that taking care of your product is not your only core responsibility. Product Management job description don’t tell you about There is one additional element involved in being a successful Product Manager that is far less advertised: Product Management is Change Management. It’s not a part of the job, it’s “ The Job”. In other words, you cannot be a Product Manager if you are not a Change Manager at the same time. In job descriptions, you might find this element often referred to as “stakeholder management,” however this term falls incredibly short. "Stakeholder management" fails to describe the disruptive nature of product management, in which we constantly redefine our product to meet a freckle and other changing demands. . Whether the average attention span is 8 or 12 seconds, we can all agree that it is increasingly difficult to keep customers engaged and happy for long. Our only chance to do that, as Product Managers, is to generate continuous innovation by disrupting our own product. This is not only to generate incremental value, it is a matter of survival for both the product and the company. Customers today are sophisticated and get easily bored There is only one problem with this: organizations are much less prone to wanting to change than your customers are. I recently read an on sustainable growth and a sentence really resonated with me, stating: article The essence of a successful growth strategy is that it does not leave any part of the organization behind. The resulting growth lasts, and isn’t just a flash in the pan. So to succeed as a Product Manager, you have to succeed as a Change Manager. It’s not an “either/or-type-of-thing”, a “nice to have”. It’s the core, the precondition of the job. . The product manager is the driver of the transformation because he/she is the link between the customers and the company, and needs to take the entire organization along the journey This is much more complex in than it is in start-ups, as startups operate in small, almost familiar-like teams. By contrast in large organizations, it is difficult to assess the impact that one change can have on other departments, sometimes to the extent that you are unable to asses the ramification of the impact of your actions and tracking down which teams to inform. large organizations How does the Product Manager become a successful Change Manager? Change inside an organization is the result of three elements: processes, platforms, and people. As processes and platforms can nicely fall into place when addressing people’s perspectives about change, in this article we are going to start by isolating and addressing this element. In my work as a Product Manager, I have been lucky to be involved in a large scale organizational change, one that is revolutionizing a core process to redefine the way we do business. The first and most important lesson I learned is that change is first and foremost about Narratives. It’s all about telling stories, and the way you decide to tell those stories will ultimately end up making or breaking your product. Putting this into perspective, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. To quote Yuval Noah Harari, bestselling author of : Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind “The truly unique trait of Sapiens is our ability to create and believe fiction. All other animals use their communication system to describe reality. We use our communication system to create new realities.” Change is all about creating new realities and our ability to communicate this new, imagined reality is arguably one of the most important skills to master as Product Managers. In order to evangelize the product vision inside an organization and induce the change needed to keep the customers happy and the product alive, I have created for myself the following step-by-step guide: Chapter 1: Visualize (and write it down) To envision the change you want to bring about and its ramification, you start by asking yourself the fundamental questions, in this order: Why is the change needed? What are the alternatives to the change you are proposing? What is the cost of not changing (a.k.a. maintain the status quo)? Who is it going to be impacted (both customers and inside the organization)? How are they going to be impacted (both customers and inside the organization)? Write down a Communication Plan for yourself which contains the answers to all of these questions. This document can remain private or can be shared within your team, as you see fit. The bottom line to this first point is: if you are not crystal clear on why the change is needed and how to bring it about in the first place, you are going to have a hard time selling it. Chapter 2: Craft a new Narrative Once you have a strategy for your product that thoroughly motivates for the need for changing the current processes and/or ways of working inside an organization, as well as having mapped out the stakeholders involved, it is time to around the change. craft the story The key is in presenting new narratives that tell stories of a different, more desirable, brighter future. Humans have used their ability to tell stories to form shared beliefs upon which entire civilizations were born. Here are a few ingredients that I found out help crafting exciting stories: Make sure your story is aligned to the higher mission and vision of the company, something that is inspiring, slightly out of reach and daring. Even better if you can further break it down and fit it in the OKR. Have a Mission: A key element of every good story, you need to have a designated hero who champions the change. The hero in our case should be the product, the “savior” that will bring about all the benefits. Pick a “Hero”: The greatest motivation to change sometimes comes from having a shared enemy to fight against, which gives a reason to team up and fight. The villain in our case is the reason behind the change (e.g. change in demand and the market, increasing competition and so forth). Highlight how the hero (a.k.a. the product) can “defeat” the villain. Pick a “Villain”: We are naturally wired against changes and to operate according to shortcuts to save precious energies for our brain. Change requires effort and willpower, as it puts us in an uncomfortable position to explore the unknown and form new pathways. To bring about a change, you must, therefore, create a burning need. To win resistance and generate the need for change, address directly the fears of the person/department/area you are talking with, instead of speaking in general terms, or worse, avoiding the topic out of concern for the outcome. If you are unsure regarding what is holding back your stakeholders, consider running a . When fears are exposed, they often lose their momentum and relinquish their power. Create the need by addressing fears: Triz As mentioned above, we are naturally wired toward preservation and comfort. The need for change must, therefore, come with high benefits to motivate a state of transition and possibly discomfort. Clearly emphasize the benefits the change will bring and provide to track the “hero” progress, to give a sense of accountability and responsibility. Create the need by addressing the benefits: KPIs You have two types of supporters, the first one being the , the “influencers” of an organization. You don’t need to convince anyone, sometimes a few influential and respected people inside the organization to win over, are the only ones that you need to bring about the desired result, as the rest usually will follow. The second type of “supporting cast” you need is . Back up your story and the motivation to change with data. Numbers are more difficult to argue with than words. Have a “Supporting Cast(s)”: decision-makers data Chapter 3: Tell a Story Now that you have crafted your narrative and pinpointed all the elements that make it up, it is time to go about and start telling a story. Tie all the elements above in one (or more) cohesive and comprehensive document. This document might be, a P (PRD), a P PowerPoint presentation or any other form of documentations you find necessary. Sometimes all of them are needed because they address different needs and different audiences. For example, a PRD alone might be too long and technical to be shared at large and the Press Release might be too short and perhaps lacking when it comes to addressing the fears of each department/area involved in the change inside the organization. Combining them or creating a document with the specific ingredients mentioned above might be a good option to tell your new story. Further things to take under consideration are: roduct Requirement Document ress Release, . Whatever might be clear and obvious in your mind, doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be apparent to everyone else. By creating and sharing documents to the organization at large, I learned that many different interpretations can arise from a single sentence, sometimes from a single word, even when carefully phrased. The easiest way to avoid misinterpretations is to provide reading guidance in the form of an introduction to each section and clearly state their intended goal (and what is not the goal too). Provide reading guidance . Change is about behaviors before it is about processes. In order to bring about behavioral change, we need to capture people’s hearts and imaginations. This is why the fashion and entertainment industries are so successful. They have this innate ability to tell compelling stories that make people escape reality and dream about new possibilities. Ever wondered why you might be absolutely convinced you need a Prada bag in your life, but getting enough sleep or giving up sugars is not at the top of your list? That’s because the Prada bag has far more PR that having 8 hours of sleep has ever had, in fact, sleeping is notoriously demonized as making us inefficient. So you see, it’s all about telling stories and most importantly is much more than just the content of your story, it’s how you “package” those stories. Make it beautiful, filled with visual images, and make it desirable, slightly unattainable, but still within reach if you stretch your arm long enough (even if this means spending an entire day making a PowerPoint presentation). Make it glamorous . You are going to be the storyteller of your own story, so being prepared is important. This usually involves a fair amount of rehearsing out loud your presentation. Are you making justice to your story? Are you effectively selling the change in a compelling and motivated way? See the point above, making it glamorous, because this also applies to you as you need to “dress the part.” Be the Evangelist . Everywhere. Create roadmaps, hold presentations and 121 meetings. Start spreading the seed of the change, at first by telling a few people who can help you in leading the change in informal meetings. Their buy-in is crucial to winning over the rest of the organization. Once you have that, you can proceed to spread your narrative in officials, larger settings. Once the “cat is out of the bag”, so to speak, make it as visual as possible (e.g. create a physical roadmap and leave it somewhere visible for people to pass by every day). The result is that after a while your new story won’t be “new” anymore. It’s mainstream Make it visible . Contrary to popular beliefs, change (sometimes) can happen in small chunks and it doesn’t have to be a great Big Bang. Even when that is the case, you can phase out the changes in your roadmap, to make it more relatable and approachable. If Rome wasn’t built in a day, so probably won’t your product, therefore you might start with the smallest changes and make slow reveals throughout the journey. Divide and conquer Bringing all the elements together, we end up with the following: And this brings us also to the end of this story. What is your own experience with change management and introducing behavioral change? What are the tools that helped you in the process? Share your experience in the comments!

Change Management: How To Use Narratives To Make Better Products 

Unfiltered Conversations: The Roles Product Manager Job Ads Don't Advertise

The Joys and the Struggles of a New Product Manager - How To Manage Expectations

My personal recipes on how to change your career and land your dream job at any age coming from a different background A while ago I posted on my profile a brief intro of the talk I gave in June in front of the Product Managers community at about how I managed my career change and transitioned from a Sales position to a Product management one. LinkedIn Zalando To my surprise within a few hours from sharing that little sneak peak of my story, I received a lot of personal messages, both from colleagues and people outside of the organisation that I have never met before, asking the following questions: “How do you become a Product Manager?” “What did you do to get there?” While writing the answer to those messages I started to realise that I actually picked up quite a few useful tips and tricks along the way, which most of the time I learned the hard way through trial and error, and I figured that maybe my personal experience might be of interest for those who want to succeed in changing their career in general and becoming a Product Manager in particular. So if I managed to capture your interest, here is my personal story of how, already in my 30's , I attained one of the most sought after position in the job market today without having any previous formal experience in the role, turned into a little recipes article just for your benefit. Recipe #1: Know your Motivation(s) and your Goal(s) It might sound cheesy and you might skip this to jump immediately to the juicy stuff (it’s coming, I promise you) but first things first, you should know your goal and what motivates you to reach your goal. It’s as simple as that: if then all things are possible. you know what you want and why you want it Professionally speaking, I found myself struggling more then once to feel the satisfaction I needed in order to push through the day to day tasks, and if you are reading this blog post about career change then my best guess is that you are also seeking something that will make you feel more rewarded and fulfilled. Because I couldn’t quite figure out the answer to the question “what do you want to be when you grow up” and most important why I wanted it, I ended up changing positions and roles for all my professional career, jumping from one thing to the next, before I finally managed to stumble accidentally into Product Management. Once I crossed path with it and started to understand the role, I became utterly fascinated and for the first time in my professional life I was completely sure that that was the career I wanted to pursue. Here is the reason why Product Management is so special to me: it combines some of the things I love the most and I feel I can give a strong contribution in. As a Product Manager I can be insatiably curious, I can utilise my imagination and observation to find technological solutions to problems and/or emerging needs and communicate with a lot of people, all at the same time. It is too good to be true. So now that I got my goal and motivation covered, the question was: how do I go about landing a position in my 30s without even a stitch of previous formal experience in that role?! Recipe #2: make your research and prepare to study (hard) Like all the things you are inexperienced with and are interested in learning, you need to start by . In my case that meant reading everything I could get my hands on. Now you can follow my example and also lose yourself in research, browsing from Medium to Hackernoon and comparing every book recommended on Amazon on the topic by reading all the reviews ever written on it. Alternatively, you might consider starting from my recommendation below. Among all my readings and browsing I found that top 6 resources that have helped me the most to understand what Product Management is and have prepared me for the role are the following: covering the basics Posts: by Lenny Rachitsky How To Get Into Product Management (And Thrive) by Micheal Williams All the product resources you’ll ever need Books: by Martin Kagan Inspired by Dan Olsen The Lean Product Playbook by Matt Lemay Product Management in Practice: A Real-World Guide to the Key Connective Role of the 21st Century by Dale Carnegie How To Win Friends And Influence People I have added this last title, a classic on communication by Dale Carnegie, because a Product Manager responsibility extend way beyond defining a strategy and a Roadmap to go with it, or grooming the Backlog. One thing that I quickly discovered in fact is that oftentimes PM = PR (aka Public Relation). A Product Manager is expected to lead without having any formal authority and to align management and stakeholders around his/her strategy for a  successful product, therefore your ability to and influence the outcome of meetings toward your intended goal is of the utmost importance. Bottom line is you can be sure your interviewer (that is once you land an interview) is going to test your communication skills. communicate effectively As an added bonus, in case you struggle a bit in this area and the thought of public speaking (which you will end up doing a lot) makes your knees wobble, a good idea might be to sign yourself up for some such as acting or improvisation, which will help you to manage stress and expectations during meetings. I know that my past as a ballerina and stage experience has helped me a lot in managing stressful situations and find the confidence I needed. performing arts classes Finally to close off this second recipe, here comes the question that torments every aspiring PM: MBA yes or MBA no? It is known that some companies have a penchant toward candidates that have attained an MBA. As I have recently earned one I can only speak from personal experience and say that it has helped me in preparing for my career change in several ways. Besides learning “hard skills” such as writing a proper Business Plan or make a 5 year financial forecast, it has given me a more independent working style, enhancing greatly my presentation skills and strengthening my overall professional confidence. It might help you as well, especially if your background comes from fields of studies other than Business or Economics, and this is because an MBA gives you a broader understanding of how an organisation works at large in all its parts, as well as some of the tools that you need if you want to succeed in the role. That being said, having an MBA doesn’t mean you are going to be automatically a great PM, but for sure it might make your life easier. Recipe #3: take advantage of what your organisation and environment has to offer Although technically you still have to become one, it is time to practice and start thinking like a Product Manager would. Look around and ask yourself: “What are the low hanging fruits that are around me?” For instance, , what does it have to offer that could benefit you and bring you closer to your goal? Usually large companies give their employees a large array of benefits, like an internal job portal or some form of tutoring. take your own organisation For example , the company I work for, offers a Mentorship program, where employees can sign up and are paired with more experienced colleagues to be mentored in a certain area, which could be totally unrelated to their current job function. Zalando Mentorship is truly a powerful tool and can give you so much on both personal and professional level, therefore even if your organisation doesn’t formally offer such a program you might still consider looking around and ask a more experienced colleague to mentor you. If your organisation has tech teams in residence get in contact with at least one of them and ask to and to contribute in any capacity you can in your free time, even if this means that you will end up skipping your lunch breaks or staying an hour or two longer than you usually would. The practical experience that you will gain from this, will definitely compensate every sacrifice that you make. shadow their projects Beside benefits such as the ones mentioned above, there is another reason why I suggest that looking at your own organisation first could be a good strategy: simply put, it is much easier to transition internally than selling your “inexperience” outside in a highly competitive market, and if this is true for most jobs, it is undoubtedly so for Product Managers. Inside your own organisation you might in fact be able to leverage your existing network to support you in this change, to find an internal sponsor that can promote and vouch for you, such as your Mentor and the team that you have shadowed, attesting that although your experience comes from other fields, you have all that it takes to succeed in the role, a task that might be easier said than done if you try to prove this externally to someone who is just seeing you for the first time during the interview process. If in contrast you are on your first job or there is no opportunity to transition internally, there are other routes you might want to pursue, like attending centred around Product Management and Entrepreneurship, as well as specific PMs conferences, like or . local meetups and events Mind the Product Productized The advantage of attending such gatherings, which I personally recommend no matter what your circumstances are, is that you learn a lot of what is “hot” and out there, while at the same time start building your personal network (more on this below) and pick up some of the jargon used in the field. Recipe #4: On Relationship and Timing aka how to carefully plan your move The relationships you cultivate might be the fundamental keys to your success if you are aiming for a career change. Answering the following question is of the utmost importance: “Do I have the right contacts/connections? If so how can I leverage my network to get closer to my goal and if not how can I acquire the connection I need?” As mentioned above, events and conferences are a splendid way in which you can expand your network base, trying to be curious and meeting as many people as possible. Even more important than making connection is with the people you meet, so that you are actually building the foundation for your change. This of course applies to your own organisation as well, cultivating good working relationships with colleagues can only help you, especially if you are planning to move internally. following up By setting this strong foundation and by talking to your network you might come to know and have a heads up when an opportunity presents itself, which leads us to a key element: . timing Like most things in life, also in your transition toward a Product Manager role timing is of the essence. This doesn’t mean you need to wait for all the stars to align in order to apply for the job, only that you need to lay the foundation and create the situation that will allow you to be at the right time and in the right place, which is why networking and attending conferences and events is so important in the first place. You will truly be amazed of how much information you can get if you are willing to listen to people and maybe the chance you were waiting for is right there, waiting to be seized. Recipe #5: Sharpen your most important tool, your resume Of course a career change move wouldn’t be complete without talking about your most important tool, your resume. So the question is: how do you make your resume attractive to recruiters even though you have no formal experience as a Product Manager? Admittedly recruiters are going to scan your resume (or a software will) and the first thing that they will notice is that the “Product Manager” job title is suspiciously missing from it. There is unfortunately nothing that you can do about that (and I highly recommend that you avoid lying), however take heart because there are other things that you can do to seriously increase your chances of landing an interview. Here are a few from my personal recipe which apply for everyone who is considering a career change: pro tips Take time to read all of the job descriptions that you can find that resonate with you and you would like to apply to.Among the job descriptions you have read thus far, select the top 4 or 5 that you liked the most and start looking for patterns. What are the most asked for requirements for a PM? What are recruiters looking for?Start clustering your results around the main pillars. An example of pillars could be communication, business strategy, tech acumen, stakeholder management and so forth. For each pillar write down the most sought after traits and possibly copy the passage from the job descriptions you have selected to use as a reference. It’s time to take a look at your resume: is there anything in your past working experience that is similar to the results you obtained from your clustering exercise? If so is there anyway that you can rephrase it to make it more appealing to the recruiters? For example you might have launched your own product in the past or worked closely within your organisation with a tech team and shadowed them in their processes. Rewrite your resume if necessary with your newly found knowledge in mind. Try to put yourself in the recruiters perspective and think about what they are looking for and how are you the right person to get the job done.Prepare your (short) cover letter and elaborate more on why you are a good fit for the role and what will you do to grow into it and help the company. If you are attending regularly Product meetups and conferences/workshops go ahead and mention this as well, it shows willingness and motivation and recruiters usually love that and they are mostly curious about career change and the motivation behind it.Have someone else read both the job description you want to apply for and your resume to get an honest feedback. Is what you have written clear enough? Most important, is it relevant for the recruiters? If the answer is yes, then congratulations, you might have a good chance to be contacted! It is fair to point out that although you have proven on paper that you have all that it takes to excel in the role, chances are that recruiters might still prefer (understandably) someone with a formal product experience, especially in a position as demanding and critical as is the role of a PM. A good strategy therefore might be to apply for a lower position if needed, such as a more junior role. There will be plenty of time to show your value and grow in your new position once you have landed the job. Recipe #6: Rise up, it’s time for the interview Congratulations, you have  covered all of the above and finally managed to land your first PM interview! Now, how do you prepare to face a PM interview? Well this is the time where all your previous reading and studying actually come in handy, so you might consider taking a double look at those before the interview. Additionally I would highly recommend the book “ ”. Cracking the PM Interview: How to Land a Product Manager Job in Technology As mentioned in Recipe #2, besides the technical knowledge, communication is a key part of the PM job, therefore your interviewer is going to carefully evaluate your personality as much, if not more in certain contexts, than your “hard skills”. One thing that might make the difference is to remember to be about what you don’t know. As counter intuitive as this might sound , it is actually what made the difference in my case compared to more experienced candidates competing for the same job. Product Management is a very demanding profession in which you are expected to have pretty much everything covered and figured out at any given time. Cheer up because you are not a PM yet, therefore you might want to be  transparent about things you don’t know yet but you are willing and (that’s the most important part) to learn in the future. Your interviewer also knows that you are coming from another background so they won’t expect you to know everything, but they will for sure try to assess how fast you will learn and if you are truly willing to do so, so prepare to bring a lot of passion and enthusiasm to the table. humble and transparent eager Finally a brief mention regarding your mindset prior to the interview which can truly make the difference: of the interview. I imagined myself answering successfully all of the questions during the interview and getting the job so many times that somehow it became a self fulfilling future. visualise the successful outcome Visualise the same for yourself and you might be pleasantly surprised about the outcome of all your hard effort. Wishing you the best of luck for your career change!

How to Plan your Career Change and become a Product Manager: [My Tips and Tricks for Success]

HackerNoon editorial team has launched this interview series with women in tech to celebrate their achievements and share their struggles. We need more women in technology, and by sharing stories, we can encourage many girls to follow their dreams. Share your story today! Tell us about yourself! I am a final year doctoral student at the Laboratory for Computational Social Systems based out of IIIT-Delhi, India. By employing computational tools, mainly applied Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Network Science, I investigate the contextual signals that can help improve the detection of hate speech on the web. I have been fortunate to receive financial aid via the Google Phd Fellowship and the Prime Minister Doctoral Fellowship (in partnership with Wipro AI) to support my studies. Now, towards the end of my Phd, I am expanding my horizon to investigate other forms of harmful content on the web. Lately, I have been exploring the themes of fact-checking, fake news, propaganda analysis, and news narrative understanding. The last of which is the topic of my upcoming postdoc work  at CopeNLU  at the University of Copenhagen. As part of my academic and professional journey, I have been fortunate to work full time at Red Hat, furnish my undergrads in CSE from Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI), be a visiting research student at TUM and volunteer with organizations such as AnitaB and Journal of Open Source Softwares (JOSS). Why did you choose this field in the first place? The idea of pursuing computer science or being a phd student was not something I had planned for. Early exposure to science and technology both at home and school, as well as my curiosity to understand how things work, led me to develop a love of science and engineering. However, once I started my undergraduate studies, I struggled to find exactly what I planned to apply my CSE knowledge towards. I have failed at more undertakings than I have succeeded in. I chose to continue my work and studies in computer science because of its interdisciplinary application, especially once I discovered that I enjoyed NLP as a subfield while doing my undergraduate thesis on topic modelling. My interest in applied NLP was further solidified when I got an opportunity to work in the area of computational social systems (CSS) as a part of my PhD. What was the biggest setback/failure that you faced, and how did you manage it? PhD in itself is full of setbacks and failures, with success sprinkled here and there. One incident I especially remember, as it lasted almost two years, was my work on developing a dataset and model to detect hate speech in codemixed Hinglish. It took us one year to curate and annotate the dataset from Twitter. Given the Indian context and language knowledge needed to detect hateful connotations correctly, we could not employ existing crowdsourcing platforms like  Amazon Mechanical Turk. We spend endless hours performing annotations ourselves to produce an annotation guideline and then seek Indian annotators to help perform large-scale annotations. This process was iterative, slow, and mentally taxing for my colleagues and me. However, our woes did not end there, as the standard practice of finetuning a language model (LM) for hate speech detection did not produce effective results. It took us multiple trials and errors to realise that instead of focusing on building a more "complex and fancy system", we needed to improve the input signals, and it took us another round of unsupervised auxiliary data curation and modelling to augment the standard finetuning pipeline to yield improvements when detecting hatefulness in Indic context. The two years that it took from start to finish of this work were full of uncertainty; coupled with the Covid lockdown, it made me feel as if my phd journey would come to an abrupt end. What got us out of the slump was revisiting the research around contextual information, which was not a common practice in NLP modelling for hate speech but was closer to how content moderators make decisions in the real world. What's your biggest achievement that you're really proud of? One project that I am really proud of is a work we recently published on Arxiv (it is still under review for publication). The project explores the use of GenAI tools like ChatGPT in understanding journalistic narratives of the 5W1H (What, Why, When, Where, Who and How) and uncovering neutrality or lack thereof in independent fact-checking. The research not only reiterates the need to look beyond the USA-centric left-right political bias but also contributes to the initial interdisciplinary of combining human-AI efforts to study large-scale corpus and quantify subtle reporting/narrative biases that go unnoticed. The project idea came to me when I was randomly scrolling through an independent news portal, which is known to be "right-aligned", and saw that they had a very active fact-checking project. It led to framing the question of how explicit or implicit political leaning of the independent fact-checking organizations might lead to deviation from neutrality in fact-checking. I was very happy when what I hypothesised from initial manual observations was successfully quantified by our experiments. The bigger question this leaves for the research community is how we quantify the impact of different versions of "truth" and the subtle biases that cause deviation from a neutral point of view. What tech are you most excited/passionate about right now and why? While working with a lot of Hindi and Hinglish datasets from Twitter for analysing hate speech, I kept coming across gaps in the performance of NLP models when working with non-English text and non-Western cultural references. In this regard, I am excited about exploring both modelling paradigms and evaluation benchmarks to improve the adaptability of current NLP systems to non-Western connotations. Of course, by developing more culturally tuned systems, we will be able to understand toxic and stereotyped references better. I think a safer deployment of NLP-based models and interfaces is only possible if, at the granular level, we actively work on improving their adaptability to specific cultures and linguistic patterns. Another area within CSS that I am keen on exploring is narrative building. I recently read "The Language of the Third Reich" by Victor Klemperer and was amazed by how many of the techniques and patterns of narrative building applied by today's media can be traced back to World War II and prior eras. Given that the human psyche remains more or less the same, no matter the language or medium of storytelling, I am keen on applying NLP to help establish long-range narrative understanding. What tech are you most worried about right now and why? It is not technology per se, but I am worried about AI being presented as either an impeccable panacea that will fix all humanity's problems or an existential threat that will wipe off the human race. Inflating the abilities of AI  beyond what is possible by current paradigms is leading to the investment of resources in the wrong direction. It takes the conversation away from current threats to deploying these systems without proper safety checks in place and ignores the biases it propagates. A  person of colour being wrongly convicted of a crime due to biased AI modelling is much more probable and very much a reality than AGI wiping off humanity. In your opinion, why do we see a huge gender gap in the tech industry, and how can we reduce it? Working in tech, whether in industry or academia, is a very consuming process. On the one hand,  technical skills and the accompanying soft skills are something anyone can acquire via varying training channels (formal or informal). On the other hand, the on-paper equality of the tech space is marred by differences in social expectations from one gender specifically. Unless our social systems become more accommodating of working women and provide adequate moral, financial and infrastructural support, women in tech or the workforce in general will suffer. Do you have any advice for aspiring girls who want to join the field? For girls who aspire to work in tech, I would say that they should not feel intimidated; the tech world is full of possibilities and opportunities. There is room for different projects and perspectives to thrive, so keep participating in as many projects as possible and develop your sense of what works and what does not. What are your hobbies and interests outside of tech? Outside of tech, I really enjoy visiting museums and historical sites. Whenever I find time on weekends, I participate in guided tours in my city. I also dabble in writing poetry sometimes; I like to refer to myself as a seasonal poet :P However, my favourite hobby has always been reading. From books to blogs to research papers, the act of reading is very relaxing to me. HackerNoon editorial team has launched this interview series with women in tech to celebrate their achievements and share their struggles. We need more women in technology, and by sharing stories, we can encourage many girls to follow their dreams. Share your story today ! this interview series with women in tech Share your story today Tell us about yourself! Tell us about yourself! I am a final year doctoral student at the Laboratory for Computational Social Systems based out of IIIT-Delhi, India. By employing computational tools, mainly applied Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Network Science, I investigate the contextual signals that can help improve the detection of hate speech on the web . I have been fortunate to receive financial aid via the Google Phd Fellowship and the Prime Minister Doctoral Fellowship (in partnership with Wipro AI) to support my studies. Now, towards the end of my Phd, I am expanding my horizon to investigate other forms of harmful content on the web. Lately, I have been exploring the themes of fact-checking, fake news, propaganda analysis, and news narrative understanding. The last of which is the topic of my upcoming postdoc work  at CopeNLU  at the University of Copenhagen. hate speech on the web As part of my academic and professional journey, I have been fortunate to work full time at Red Hat, furnish my undergrads in CSE from Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI), be a visiting research student at TUM and volunteer with organizations such as AnitaB and Journal of Open Source Softwares (JOSS). Why did you choose this field in the first place? Why did you choose this field in the first place? The idea of pursuing computer science or being a phd student was not something I had planned for. Early exposure to science and technology both at home and school, as well as my curiosity to understand how things work, led me to develop a love of science and engineering. However, once I started my undergraduate studies, I struggled to find exactly what I planned to apply my CSE knowledge towards. I have failed at more undertakings than I have succeeded in. I chose to continue my work and studies in computer science because of its interdisciplinary application, especially once I discovered that I enjoyed NLP as a subfield while doing my undergraduate thesis on topic modelling. My interest in applied NLP was further solidified when I got an opportunity to work in the area of computational social systems (CSS) as a part of my PhD. What was the biggest setback/failure that you faced, and how did you manage it? What was the biggest setback/failure that you faced, and how did you manage it? PhD in itself is full of setbacks and failures, with success sprinkled here and there. One incident I especially remember, as it lasted almost two years, was my work on developing a dataset and model to detect hate speech in codemixed Hinglish. It took us one year to curate and annotate the dataset from Twitter. Given the Indian context and language knowledge needed to detect hateful connotations correctly, we could not employ existing crowdsourcing platforms like  Amazon Mechanical Turk. We spend endless hours performing annotations ourselves to produce an annotation guideline and then seek Indian annotators to help perform large-scale annotations. This process was iterative, slow, and mentally taxing for my colleagues and me. However, our woes did not end there, as the standard practice of finetuning a language model (LM) for hate speech detection did not produce effective results. It took us multiple trials and errors to realise that instead of focusing on building a more "complex and fancy system", we needed to improve the input signals, and it took us another round of unsupervised auxiliary data curation and modelling to augment the standard finetuning pipeline to yield improvements when detecting hatefulness in Indic context. The two years that it took from start to finish of this work were full of uncertainty; coupled with the Covid lockdown, it made me feel as if my phd journey would come to an abrupt end. What got us out of the slump was revisiting the research around contextual information, which was not a common practice in NLP modelling for hate speech but was closer to how content moderators make decisions in the real world. What's your biggest achievement that you're really proud of? What's your biggest achievement that you're really proud of? One project that I am really proud of is a work we recently published on Arxiv (it is still under review for publication). The project explores the use of GenAI tools like ChatGPT in understanding journalistic narratives of the 5W1H (What, Why, When, Where, Who and How) and uncovering neutrality or lack thereof in independent fact-checking. The research not only reiterates the need to look beyond the USA-centric left-right political bias but also contributes to the initial interdisciplinary of combining human-AI efforts to study large-scale corpus and quantify subtle reporting/narrative biases that go unnoticed. The project idea came to me when I was randomly scrolling through an independent news portal, which is known to be "right-aligned", and saw that they had a very active fact-checking project. It led to framing the question of how explicit or implicit political leaning of the independent fact-checking organizations might lead to deviation from neutrality in fact-checking. I was very happy when what I hypothesised from initial manual observations was successfully quantified by our experiments. The bigger question this leaves for the research community is how we quantify the impact of different versions of "truth" and the subtle biases that cause deviation from a neutral point of view. What tech are you most excited/passionate about right now and why? While working with a lot of Hindi and Hinglish datasets from Twitter for analysing hate speech, I kept coming across gaps in the performance of NLP models when working with non-English text and non-Western cultural references. In this regard, I am excited about exploring both modelling paradigms and evaluation benchmarks to improve the adaptability of current NLP systems to non-Western connotations. Of course, by developing more culturally tuned systems, we will be able to understand toxic and stereotyped references better. I think a safer deployment of NLP-based models and interfaces is only possible if, at the granular level, we actively work on improving their adaptability to specific cultures and linguistic patterns. Another area within CSS that I am keen on exploring is narrative building. I recently read "The Language of the Third Reich" by Victor Klemperer and was amazed by how many of the techniques and patterns of narrative building applied by today's media can be traced back to World War II and prior eras. Given that the human psyche remains more or less the same, no matter the language or medium of storytelling, I am keen on applying NLP to help establish long-range narrative understanding. What tech are you most worried about right now and why? What tech are you most worried about right now and why? It is not technology per se, but I am worried about AI being presented as either an impeccable panacea that will fix all humanity's problems or an existential threat that will wipe off the human race. Inflating the abilities of AI  beyond what is possible by current paradigms is leading to the investment of resources in the wrong direction. It takes the conversation away from current threats to deploying these systems without proper safety checks in place and ignores the biases it propagates. A  person of colour being wrongly convicted of a crime due to biased AI modelling is much more probable and very much a reality than AGI wiping off humanity. In your opinion, why do we see a huge gender gap in the tech industry, and how can we reduce it? In your opinion, why do we see a huge gender gap in the tech industry, and how can we reduce it? Working in tech, whether in industry or academia, is a very consuming process. On the one hand,  technical skills and the accompanying soft skills are something anyone can acquire via varying training channels (formal or informal). On the other hand, the on-paper equality of the tech space is marred by differences in social expectations from one gender specifically. Unless our social systems become more accommodating of working women and provide adequate moral, financial and infrastructural support, women in tech or the workforce in general will suffer. Do you have any advice for aspiring girls who want to join the field? For girls who aspire to work in tech, I would say that they should not feel intimidated; the tech world is full of possibilities and opportunities. There is room for different projects and perspectives to thrive, so keep participating in as many projects as possible and develop your sense of what works and what does not. What are your hobbies and interests outside of tech? What are your hobbies and interests outside of tech? Outside of tech, I really enjoy visiting museums and historical sites. Whenever I find time on weekends, I participate in guided tours in my city. I also dabble in writing poetry sometimes; I like to refer to myself as a seasonal poet :P However, my favourite hobby has always been reading. From books to blogs to research papers, the act of reading is very relaxing to me.

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