Remote onboarding: Tips for Product Managers
I was excited and nervous starting at a new company during the pandemic. In this essay I share some ideas on remote onboarding, especially for Product Managers.
I've been a product manager for 10 years in the Bay Area and worked at both large and small organizations. I love my job and have had the good fortune of building cool products along with talented people who I now think of as good friends.
A key aspect of the first year at new company is building trust and credibility. Pre-pandemic, we had whiteboards to map out ideas, casual chats near a water-cooler or happy hours to bond with teammates. With remote work here to stay, how can we prepare to build the same connections digitally?
Here's some advice oriented towards delivering impact early.
#1: Share a story about your life outside work
This is an obvious tip, but I think what you share about yourself in intro conversations can serve as an interesting way to get to know people.
In addition to sharing your professional creds, it helps to share a story about what got you interested in the company or product. Additionally, sharing a pandemic hobby or what you like doing post work and on weekends can help folks get a broader picture of who you are.
#2: Find a small problem to solve
Everyone loves problem solving. I believe it is why we work and why humans have invented so many great technologies.
Every person we meet at work is working on a problem. By being curious about the problem and offering to help is a way to start feeling useful. Something as simple as - offering content feedback, design feedback, or documenting meeting notes. These are easy but helpful efforts to showcase you care about helping your team form clarity and move forward.
#3: Share first impressions of the product
Starting at a new company and on a new product, we are likely bursting with a thousand ideas for improvements.
Document and share a note about your first product impressions. The note likely has bugs encountered, areas of confusion, and broader strategic opportunities to explore. It is a great way to showcase your thought leadership and learn about the product without biases.
#4: Have an intentional 30-60-90 day plan with milestones
It is helpful to look up online for a template and draft your own expectations.
These would include product fundamentals like meeting folks, reading all the available research, understanding user needs, getting familiar with processes, etc. It is also important to set milestones of delivering something - a doc with learnings and opportunities, small projects shipped, a good sense of how the roadmap could shape up and ideally present a plan to senior leadership.
How do you know you are doing well?
If it is starting to feel like you've been at the company for a lot longer than reality and people around you start to validate the same feeling, you are probably doing something right. Ofcourse, it is also important to enjoy the journey and trust your intuition on company and product fit. More on signs of when to move on from a company in a future essay.
Remote work is here to stay. I'm a proponent of mixed work environments as I love meeting people in person too, but I feel more confident to deliver impact as a remote PM today.