The first 30 days is a time of understanding, building trust and establishing relationships. You will have to play detective and, occasionally, become a psychologist. 

The first potential issue to address is keeping in balance your ego and appetite for power but also retaining your impulse to start impressing people. 

Some various aspects of the company may look distorted and you might get the urge to jump offering immediate solutions. 

“But I did that at my last project. It worked great!”

Hold your horses fella. At least for now. There is probably a history behind why things are the way there are.

Rember, don’t change anything for now. Your ideas will become clearer once you settle in. It is more important to gain credibility, absorb the not so obvious nuances of the business, and demonstrate that you are a great listener that is clearly interested in making peoples’ lives easier.

The objective of your first 30 days is to understand the bigger picture before proceeding to details. This game is important to master as it will definitely affect your future job.

The mountain to climb

A wise man once said that “every company needs a mountain to climb”.

If you are lucky, your new organization has an inspiring mission explaining what the mountain is and why is it important to climb it. The bigger the mountain the more passionate will people be about summiting it.

In an ideal world, the mission of the company (the “what” and “where”) and purpose (the “why”) is embedded in its culture and people rally behind them. They show up at work knowing that what they do has meaning. And there is a lot of power in meaning, power that motivates people to perform at their best.

But this book is not about an ideal world. It is about the realities on the ground.

In many cases, you will encounter a lack of a clear stated honest mission. Or if it’s there, it is copy-pasted and adapted from competitors, miss communicated or simply a front cover for the founder’s personal mission to achieve fortune and fame.

But you know what? This is absolutely fine and part of human nature. Whatever the real mission is your job is to understand it.

Then, I recommend you have a look at what the companies values are if there are any. But, most importantly, inquire if they actually match with what’s really going on inside the company. Values are statements aimed at creating a certain company culture. The problem is that they only work if they are not only communicated but also conveyed by the leadership through the power of example.

Questions to ask: 

• What is the company’s real mission (the “what”)?
• What is its purpose (the “why”)?
• What are its values and do they match the real company culture?

Show me the money

Your main job as a product manager is to help your company build products a lot of people want and are willing to pay for (one way or the other). 

“Willing to pay for” is what drives the business forward, and, no matter how companies present themselves as “good doers world changers”, making money is still very often the primary requirement and the main engine behind peoples’ motivation.

Think about how your company makes money or how does it plan to make money in the future.

Figure out what the business model is. Understand it in general terms, understand its 50 shades of grey (as sometimes it is less obvious) and understand how it relates to the product and your future work.

Questions to ask

• How do we make money?
• What are the revenue channels?
• How will we make money?

Objectives

You might start a job part of a startup looking to find product-market fit. 

Or it might be in an early-stage company that has achieved product/market fit and now looking to drive breakout growth.

Or you are in an established business that needs to accelerate or reignite growth or increase its market share.

Companies have different objectives depending on their level of maturity.

A startup looking for product-market fit is in desperate need of initial market validation. Therefore your job as a product manager will have to be aimed towards that.

Or, if the company is more established, the founders might decide to raise a Series A. Investors like big numbers, therefore, you will be working on getting them.

Or, maybe the company needs some innovation to differentiate itself from competitors. Guess what? You will need to get creative and bold. 

Questions to ask?

• What are the company’s objectives short and medium-term?

A people’s person

“What can I do to make your life easier?”

Your job as a product manager is not only about delivering products. You are a mediator and an adviser. 

When you start working at a new company aim to talk to everyone you will be working with. And try not to be a smart ass. Again, don’t come up with solutions as of now. Ask questions about their work and problems and offer your genuine help and interest to solve them. 

You need to show people that you are not there to command but to be part of the team. And stand behind your offering when the time comes.

People desire attention and to be listened to. Everybody wants to show expertise and, very often, I see glimpses in their eyes when they do so. Receiving validation and significance is important especially on their work which is something that takes a big part in their lives.

Point out the things that you don’t fully understand. Dumb questions are also fine as they would make them feel smart.

Another thing I suggest is to try to understand people’s style of working, characters and motivations.

An engineer might be more autonomous and always taking initiative. Others might require detailed inputs.

A designer might be the “artist kind” and get picky fast if she thinks her work is criticized (a more soft language is needed).

Some might be motivated by money, others about job stability. Or, people could actually be very passionate about what the company is doing and see purpose differently.

To help mastering workplace relationships I recommend the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie, a classic of the genre.

And finally, try to be an honest decent human being. 

Structure, workflows, and dynamics

Teams, groups, squads, pods, task forces, and tribes that eat two pizza max.

Companies have different ways to organize themselves. And some are completely disorganized.

You have to understand how yours is structured, what is the dynamic between different entities, where are the shared resources stored, what is the workflow and how everybody works together towards a common purpose.

Also, try to learn what are the tools that the company uses for different areas of the business (Slack, GDrive, Dropbox, Intercom, Pipedrive, etc). Familiarize yourself with them.

Understand the developing framework (Scrum, Cascade, Agile, etc). Some companies have developed their own frameworks (such as Basecamp and Intercom). Amazon, for example, organizes their squads to be as small that even two pizza would be sufficient for feeding them.

You might see flaws in the way they operate but, again, restrain yourself from trying to change anything for now.

Finally, and most importantly, dig into the company’s way of doing things and see if there is a culture of experimentation in place. If not, remember it for later; if yes, start to think about how one can improve it. We will discuss more about it in the next chapter.

Clients

The purpose of your work behind creating products is, in fact, to create (new) clients.

Sit down with everyone in your team – especially with those that interact directly with the clients –  and ask questions about key users. 

You may be surprised to learn that there has already been relevant work done to that. 

You might also have full personas developed, complete with very specific demographic data about your user base.  

Or you may be surprised that this hasn’t been done so you’ve at least identified an important gap to fill.

Sit on sales calls, support calls, customer success calls. Take some support tickets yourself, get on forums, engage with them on Twitter. Prospects are likely to quickly highlight what’s currently missing in your product. Current customers give you a perspective on how the product is being used, what new features they’d like to see, and what other problems they want to solve. Empathy for your customer base is essential and should start early.

Are your clients B2B, B2C or both?

Once you’ve got a fairly high-level sense of the product, talk to some customers on your own. Do a few customer interviews. Ask them when they bought your product and why? How are things different now in terms of their needs than when they first bought it? And what would have prevented them from buying the product in the first place?

Sales and marketing

Meet with the marketing team to learn how the company is using its voice, and how people are responding. Look at all of the resources and platforms. Ask to see the content calendar to understand what upcoming communications have been planned, as well as looking back at what has been successfully done before.

What is the marketing strategy? Being sniper targeted or omnipresent?

Check what is the main engine of lead acquisition: 

Paid ads, content, referrals?

If it is paid ads, check out the landing pages and ads creatives. Is there a rigorous system in place or done chaotically? Is the company experimenting enough with marketing (A/B testing)? 

Understand the message and how it blends with the users’ personas.

If it is content, read it as much as you can. Look for patterns in ideas. They probably tell more about the company culture that any stated values.

Next, focus on the sales process. 

• How is your company organizing leads and what is the process of converting them?
• Do the salespeople follow up their leads sufficiently? Do they use funnels? Or how does it work?

 Spend some time with the sales team to get a clear picture of the whole funnel pipeline.

Is there any system in place to help the company improve its retention rate? How is the customer support organized and how tickets are being responded to?

Companies are complex entities thus your job is equally complex. You are a problem solver and the better you understand all the items above and see how the company is dealing with them the easiest would it be to find solutions. 

Competitors

When we started Pillar – our elderly home care company – we had to face very strong and well-funded competition. The main competitor was making headlines after raising a seven-figure number, a fact that somehow validated their business model.

Copycats appeared like mushrooms all over the place investing massively into replicating the same model and technology that supported it.

As for us? Well, call us arrogant but we were not impressed. After an extensive user interview and hypotheses validation period, we have concluded that our competitor business model (managing homecare operations themselves) and technology front lining the customers didn’t make any sense.

Operations in homecare are a bummer and patients don’t really care about technology as a product. For them, the product is the person that takes care of mom or dad. Period.

We focused instead on creating amazing caregivers and putting together a strong care network made of small and vibrant care agencies.

A year later our main competitor started following our model.

In short, keep your competition close and understand that this is a battlefield. Don’t get intimidated and don’t try to innovate by copying them. Sometimes they don’t have a clue what they are doing no matter how well funded and intimidating they might appear.

On the contrary, focus on what makes your company unique and how you can help harvest that uniqueness. This is also where you’ll learn what sets your product apart from the rest, the unique selling point that keeps your target market choosing you over others. Let this be one of your guiding stars as you help to drive the business forward.

Technology 

As a rule of thumb, customers don’t care about the latest technology trends. And it is important to recognize that technology trends, by themselves,  don’t add any value. Customers are not interested in simply buying technology. Instead, they are looking for a solution to a problem, regardless of how that solution is implemented.

Technology trends such as AI, blockchain or the Internet of Things don’t provide value on their own.

They are only a tool meant to help us find a better, cheaper, faster solution to the problems of our customers.

But with this being said, you DO need to understand the tech behind the product.

Schedule time with your lead engineer to walk through the product’s technical architecture in deep detail. Don’t shy away from asking questions or drilling down on things that didn’t quite make sense.

Too often product managers try to impress their engineers with their technical acumen. But, in my experience, engineers are much more impressed with PMs who are willing to ask questions and say “I don’t understand that” (even if you come from a technical background).

Why am I here?

Early on, you should schedule a meeting with your manager. It is essential to recognize the role that she envisions for you and achieve alignment.

Discuss expectations. If in the majority of your conversations so far you should mostly listen, for this one make sure that it goes both ways. 

PMs shouldn’t just be the manager implementation tool and this fact needs to be clearly conveyed from the beginning. Agree with the manager on the strengths they hired you for and make sure you track these sessions and refer back to them. 

Very often leaders tend to impose their will while disregarding the advice of the very people they hired to receive advice from.

Discuss with your manager the topics that we analyzed so far and keep the conversation up for the future.

Understand what has been done

One needs to look at the entire product lifecycle to help put everything into perspective. The goal of studying the historical context, as it is always the case when studying the past, is to understand the present.

Going into a new company and analyzing the current matters while being unbiased and not affected by inner politics is actually a tremendous advantage that you can make use of.

Inquire about how the company started, what was it like in the beginning and if it had pivoted before it got to the present state.

What were the mistakes that were done and what were the lessons? Ask your team which features were successful and which ones cut out.

While you will learn a great deal from talking to the team and rigorously study the product, there are other ways to track how things evolved. Check our previous product roadmaps, release notes, update packs, internal blogs, and feature requests.

Why is this important?

Previous discovery and experiment results will give you a more granular understanding of what has been tested before. By taking the time to revisit these topics you’re reducing the risk of organizational relearning.

Learn what is being done

You need to understand two things: what is currently being done, and why.

The “why” sometimes needs to be repetitive and sound almost childishly when asking it:

“We are building this!”

“Why?”

“Because we would like the customer to do X.”

“Why?”

“Because we believe that, if we do this it, will solve this problem they have.”

“And why this one in particular?”

“Because it makes sense from a KPI perspective.”

“Thanks! Now I got it.”

If you get to the bottom of the “why” (which is the problem aimed to be solved) and the answers make sense from a business perspective and are based on a solid prioritization framework, then Saul Goodman.

But if functionalities are being built just because a person with high authority thought it is a good idea, then you might have to adopt a different approach.

Then, study the roadmap.

If you see a dynamic roadmap focusing on outcomes and striving for overall team alignment then you are in (a) good company.

But if you see a Gantt chart and a list of features divided into “under dev” and “backlog” then you are entitled to say “Oh God!”. Prepare to struggle a bit.

In summary

Product management principles

Form the habit of listening and taking notes to the point where it becomes a reflex. Focus on what is new and relevant.

In addition

In the first 30 days, you will be very busy doing a lot of things without actually changing anything. It is the period when you strive to understand the big picture, the team dynamics, the product within its context and your role.

To do

• Focus on the big picture and be ready to dig for answers to all the questions below: 

• What is the company’s mission?
• Why is the company doing what is doing?
• What are the company’s values and does the reality match the statements?
• What are the short to medium term objectives?
• What is the business model or how does the company plan to make money in the future?
• How does the sales funnel look like?
• What are the customer acquisition channels and how does marketing operate?
• What is the company’s top KPI and North Star Metric? Are they in alignment?

• Focus on people and product:

• Who are your team members, what are the dynamics between people and departments and what are their motivations?
• How are the teams structured?
• Who are your customers and what are their problems?
• Who are your competitors?
• What is the tech behind the product?
• What has been done?
• What is currently being done?

• Define what your actual role will look like.

What not to do

• Don’t change anything yet. Keep your ego and desire for power in place;
• Don’t hurry up trying to impress people.