Professional Development for the Growing Product Leader
As part of my 2021 personal goals I’m planning to publish notes / resources related to tech, startups and product management that I’ve shared privately with my team or closed product communities to help share that knowledge more publicly and document it for the future.
While the best way to grow as a product manager is to doggedly focus on getting more reps building products customers love (through lots of experimentation, trial and error), it can be helpful to take a step back to learn. And if you are a product leader it can be a challenge to continuously find ways to learn and grow for both yourself and your team. Plus with many people start the new year with fresh professional development budgets and more virtual opportunities, now may be a great time to take advantage of these opportunities.
While there are lots of books, conferences and certifications, I believe the best external professional development I’ve had came from workshops with experts who go deep on particular skills. They can be expensive but the ROI on learning is real, and they often have volume discounts if you attend with coworkers.
Here’s some I recommend:
BJ Fogg’s Behavior Design Bootcamp
BJ Fogg is a long time researcher at Stanford who’s research on behavior change provides an amazing window into how people change behaviors and the tactics to get them to.
I attended his weekend bootcamp when it was held at his home in Sonoma — it is currently being run as an online remote bootcamp with 4 separate half day sessions + some optional time with him 1:1 in between.
Why it’s great:
- Every product’s goal is really some combination of behavior changes — I still come back to the learnings from his workshop regularly.
- He frames the entire weekend around teaching you how to teach his methodology to other people at your company so it really does scale the learnings.
- He handpicks the people / companies to attend from a long list of those who want to prioritizing missions he believes in and engages the group with real world applications and discussions so you are bound to be in very interesting company and conversation to learn from.
You can also read his book Tiny Habits or sign up for the free 5 day program.
Marty’s a longtime product leader from Netscape and eBay alum who’s particular point of view on product management and the structure of product teams has influenced startups and big companies around the world.
I attended Marty’s workshop “How to Create Products Customers Love” 5 years ago in NYC as I was working to shift my company’s product structure from project based allocation to dedicated product teams with OKRs. It’s now being held remotely and there are separate workshops for product leadership and product marketing.
Why it’s great:
- He has a few simple but powerful frameworks that embody complicated concepts like empowered product teams and “getting out of the building” which have stuck with me for years.
- Marty goes really deep into the details. He talks about product roles at a high level but then dives into the responsibilities and how to hire for them. He gives lots of examples and ideas for how to up customer discovery time and do it in different scenarios.
- He doesn’t mince words about traditional product roadmaps, long product specs or the feature factory style of product development. With product management being a jack of all trades profession it’s nice to have someone be so clear and opinionated.
You can also read the SVPG blog or Marty’s books Inspired and Empowered. When I went back to share the learnings with our team, I had everyone watch this video and read this article as pre-work to get the gist of Marty’s philosophy.
Teresa Torres’ Discovery Coaching
Teresa is a leading voice in product community most focused on customer discovery. She is a regular speaker at the big product conferences, but focused time with her is super valuable.
I was fortunate to have Teresa as the facilitator as part of the Collaborative Gain product leader council I was in and later hired her to do discovery coaching remotely for two product teams at our company. She now offers public workshops and online courses.
Why it’s great:
- While most product people focus on why people should do customer discovery, Teresa really gets into the how which is so helpful for busy product teams. She has great templates and tools for teams to work on like hypotheses and experiment templates, opportunity mapping and a simple one that I have used a ton — a customer interview snapshot template.
- She can help your team create a shared language around customer discovery which is super valuable. I still use her language when breaking down discovery tactics and goals (e.g. evaluative vs. generative research).
- While there are lots of experts that tell product teams what they are doing wrong, Teresa meets product teams where they are and adapts to their culture and needs. It’s not an all or nothing approach which I appreciate.
You can also read lots of free articles and subscribe to her great Product Talk newsletter here.
Dr. Manning started his career coaching professional and olympic athletes and later branched out to business leaders. He focuses on the psychological and emotional skills needed to compete at the highest levels.
I attended a workshop with a colleague he has trained, Dan Jones, who is also a close friend of mine.
Why it’s great:
- While most professional training is functional or industry specific, this one is very generally applicable to any team and your personal life. Even teams with the best skills will fail without the mental skills needed to persevere.
- Dr. Manning’s approach includes frameworks and tactical guidelines which are really helpful, and I’ve put into practice across multiple companies. e.g. Starting meetings with “wins” reminds teams of their strengths putting them in a better place to then solve problems.
You can also read his book The Fearless Mind and some of the sample videos.
Suzanne Conrad is most famous for having a big part in developing the leadership culture at Lululemon. She’s helped develop leadership and personal growth cultures for many brands associated with being great places to work.
I was lucky to get to do two leadership retreats (one in person, one over Zoom) with Suzanne that my colleague, Lindsey Whalen, a former Lululemon leader arranged. Lightyear now has several courses online.
Why it’s great:
- Suzanne has a spidey sense about the inner issues in your team, company or culture and will dig and dig until you are all laughing, crying and way outside your comfort zone.
- A lot of the difficult challenges of creating great products has to do with coordination and communication but we don’t always spend enough time on these issues. Suzanne is an expert at coaching on these issues.
- Sometimes leaders and PMs struggle to figure out personal development if there are challenges at the company like slow growth or limited funds. Suzanne helps you think together about how each person views success and development and can find a way to create growth culture anywhere.
You can also check out her free course with some personal development content available online.
Lastly, there are two others that I have not personally attended but I hear are fantastic — the Reforge Growth Series and Pragmatic Institute. They both skew towards how important the market is in the concept of product market fit which can be underappreciated by product managers caught up in the day to day.
If these were helpful please feel free to share to help spread the word and leave a comment if there are any others I should consider in the future! I make these recommendations above only to share them and have not been compensated or given freebies in anyway. This list comes from emails I’ve dug up and forwarded many times when people have asked for PM development ideas or reviews in deciding whether to attend one of these workshops.
