Your First 100 Days
We have all started from scratch in a new role and the first 100 days are critical to set yourself on a successful path, in particular in product leadership roles.
You have to both understand and meet very different expectations from colleagues and stakeholders.You have to formulate your own approach, and deliver plans for the products you’ve taken on. And you have to adapt the existing roadmap and projects to your direction.
In this episode we share our pointers to dos and donts in the first 100 days and which will line you up for impact in your new role.
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Podcast brought to you by Christian Miccio and Jonas Vang Gregersen!
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Partial transcript:
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So first thing we do is interview leadership, interview stakeholders, interview your team, literally set up one-on-ones with people, find out what they're aiming for, find out what their goals are, you need to learn who they are, what they want to achieve, and in that way you can, you know, in the future align with them and figure out how to have a coexistence, let's say, in the company. Secondly, it's good to read up on vision, on the strategy and understand where the company's currently headed. Without that you don't know what to do, you don't know where it's going, you don't know what to, you know, what to fine-tune.
So this is really important to understand the current situation. And one of the first things you should be doing as well to understand the company and the situation you're in, is take your own medicine. This means using your products you're in charge of, down to the details, understand what problems they solve for users, what problems they don't solve, and basically, you know, where are the friction points, where are the value points, what do you, what you have handed over to you.
So that's the first, the first big area. Second big area, Jonas. Yes, and just to leave it where you left it, Christian, in terms of knowing your own product, we discussed this in the lead-in to this episode, that in fact, you need to be the most knowledgeable of the products, even though there may be a product between you, a product team between you and the product, understand it in detail.
Because the same goes for getting to know and understand your customers and the vertical you're in. You need to be the most knowledgeable. You have to have an in-depth understanding of their pains that you're looking to resolve, but also if and where your product and offering provides a value for your customers.
It starts with the data, look at available dashboards, metrics dashboards that are available to you within the company, study the KPIs, figure out what's really going on into the low detail. You also need to look at the market and the competitive space to understand where your company and your product are placed at the moment. And here, don't rely on what you get told by your new colleagues.
Make up your own opinion and make sure that what is perceived as to be the position in the market is in effect, from your point of view, also the case. And then finally, but most importantly, in my opinion, which is to start meeting your customers. Spend as much quality time with your customers, learn about their pains to sit with them, understand what's going on in their way of doing things.
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And so what you, the next thing you should be doing, most likely, is that based on your assessments, develop a clear vision, develop a product vision, and develop a product strategy that are similar or divergent from what you had before. But you know, in reality, it's always going to be somewhere in the middle. But you do need to articulate a way forward because that will be expected of you, first of all, but that also will allow you to discuss with the whole company, where things should be going, align people, align the teams.
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