18: Transferrable Skills and Mastering Product Execution

In this episode of the How to Succeed in Product Management Podcast, marketing professor Jeff Shulman and The Product Management Center advisory board members Red Russak and Soumeya Benghanem welcome Diego Granados (Microsoft), Welly Lee (Microsoft), and Shyvee Shi (LinkedIn) to talk about the value of transferable skills and experiences. It’s never about building from scratch, it’s all about the journey that helps build your skills as a PM and the experiences you can bring with you wherever you go and whenever you work on a new product.   Support for How to Succeed in Product Management is brought to you by Apptentive, which enables product managers to measure shifts in customer emotion and gather actionable feedback across the mobile customer journey. To learn more, go to Apptentive.com/UW.   What to Listen For: 00:00 Intro 01:35 Some PMs aren’t aware of the multitude of experiences and skills necessary in other roles 13:15 The most valuable transferable experiences or job roles 19:27 Create a compelling argument why an undervalued area can work 23:52 What aspiring PMs should have: transferable skills & complete understanding of product management 27:21 Product management is about managing risks 32:41 The PM role is a practice of balancing tension 35:16 You cannot be a good product manager if you don't like people 44:51 Resources to look into to learn product management 48:49 Start by doing the baseline, understand the gaps, then create a plan 52:49 At the beginning, you have to be good at execution 57:51 PMs a lot of time wear multiple hats 58:47 Important career pivoters 01:00:34 No single recipe is going to work for everyone 01:02:49 It’s the journey to learn new things