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

GoF, 15: Passive-Aggressive Girlfriend