4 overlooked product skills to focus on 2022

As a new year is beginning, I am reflecting on a year’s worth of growth, learnings, and challenges. And with that, I came to think about a question: what are the skills that product people should focus on growing during 2022?

If the specific skills are undoubtedly connected with the personal and organizational goals, and the ability to solve customers’ problems in a way that works for the business is the foundation of the job, I believe there is more. Looking back at 2021 I identified some overarching areas that are important for every product person working in a growing organization to master. Here are my top 4, in no particular order.

Have a positive attitude towards change

The product world is constantly evolving, and if we do our job right, our products and our organizations will be constantly growing. And therefore constantly changing. Change is not a phase, it is our reality, and getting comfortable with it is a key to succeeding.

Think about it, change is everywhere around us. As we get new insights during the discovery phase, we find out a completely new pattern through data, a new competitor enters the market, retention data change, a stakeholder completely hates one idea, one product launch is successful, or unsuccessful, we have to learn new ways of working, new colleagues join the team, the organization is evolving, an important business decision is made…

Every time one of these things happen we have to change our plans, think again, re-calibrate our balance. Therefore it is important that when these things happen we do not shut down and get territorial but look at change as a possibility to learn something new.

You can self-evaluate how you react to change by thinking about a couple of simple questions. How do you react when the data prove you wrong? What is the first thought when a new process or a new position is introduced? How do you handle a 360 change of plan?

Embracing change is a combination of personal attitude, safe environment, and low stress and you can influence all three of them.

The ability to make a point in a concise and easy-to-remember way

This is many times an outlooked skill, but nothing is as important for a PM as the ability to pitch an idea/explain a concept/present a roadmap in a clear, short, and understandable way. I found myself repeating this more and more often to myself and to my PMs: can you say it with fewer words? Can you make it less busy? Can you use words that people are familiar with?

Everyone can tell a story, but being able to do it with fewer words, plain language and support it with a visual that is easy to remember is truly an art.

An art that is fundamental to align all of the different stakeholders and be able to bring product strategy to life. Without that linear story, you will have misalignment, forces pulling in different directions, and difficulty to execute.

The attention span of all your stakeholders is getting shorter and shorter, they will be able to remember a couple of concepts at best, therefore it is important to pick the right thing to tell. For example, when you write a product update, resist the urge of writing an essay and write down the main focus, in a couple of bullets instead. I struggle with this every month when I write my product updates as the temptation of writing down everything we do is huge. But in this case, big is not beautiful, and you risk getting readers lost in details instead of conveying your focus.

You can exercise on this every day by designing with a clear audience in mind and asking yourself: what is the main message really? Do I need all the details at this point? Can I say this in a slide with two sentences and a visual?

A great example of a single slide to pitch an opportunity from Radha Narayan at the PMF 21 conference

Empathy with your users, your stakeholders, and all the different ideas you are presented

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And to go together, you need to be able to create empathy with everyone around you.

To me, product is a team sport, and you will not be able to create successful products without diverse perspectives and points of view. But to really work with all those different perspectives that you are given, as a product person you need to learn how to listen and empathize: with your users, your stakeholders, your team, and everyone who reaches out to you with an idea. 

And when I say listen, I mean really listen. Listen to understand why a person thinks an idea is fabulous even if you do not see the potential in it. Listen and observe to see if your team or yourself are under stress and therefore could be making poor decisions, listen to really harsh criticism without feeling hurt (ok, this one is hard, you can feel hurt and get defensive, but make sure to get over it quickly). Listen to all the feedback you and your product are given always assuming good intention and aiming to get to the bottom of it without labeling it as ”oh well, it is just one person’s opinion”.

Being empathic is hard, it requires an immense amount of energy and time and a curious mind. But make sure you take the time and do not overlook human interactions in your work. Because you won’t be able to drive a complex thing as product development without connections, trust, and the ability to walk in someone else’s shoes.

Being good at hard conversations 

One of my mantras is: 90% of the product job is about saying no to create focus. No to bad opportunities, and especially no to good ones. But saying no is not an easy task, and mastering how to do it while keeping good relationships and trust with your stakeholders is a next-level skill.

This is an area that I constantly struggle with, as I tend to be direct and sometimes to see in bold colors instead of nuances.

Yet the more my job gets complex, the more I realize that becoming good at hard conversations is the only way to create influence and change in one organization.

You won’t be able to go further if you don’t have some people on your side, you will spend a tremendous amount of time talking around a problem instead of solving it, create a lot of frustrations, or even worst, people will try to get behind your back to get ”their things done".

You can’t delegate this, you can’t hope that it will magically solve itself, you just have to take the time (and sometimes the struggle) to sit, listen, explain, and sometimes find a compromise. And if you are like me you’ll have to learn about how to take your diplomacy skills to next level and recognize when you should give something, and when instead a hard no is the only viable way for the business's best interest. 

I’ll be focusing some extra attention on these 4 areas during the year, and the part that I am most excited about is that for all four of them, I will never be done. I am looking forward to the new challenges that I do not know (yet) I will face.  If you also choose to put your focus on one of those areas, let me know how it goes!