5 exercises to help build a ‘product mindset’
Have you seen JDs that say ‘Looking to hire someone with a product mindset’ and have you ever wondered - “What in the world is product mindset? Do I have one? How do I develop it? How does one test for it?”
The good news for you is that you are not alone - we’re all wondering the same thing. Often.
When I interview candidates for product roles, I’m always trying to determine if they have a product mindset. Let me tell you though, it’s not easy to spot. Often it’s a ‘sense’, and doesn’t make for a very objective decision. It’s hard to explain to people why you didn’t think the person was a good fit, even though they checked a lot of the boxes. Intuition plays a role. You have a feeling about it. Your gut says ‘nope!’. And that is why hiring product managers is tough - you’re peeling layers to determine if this candidate has something you cannot concretely define.
Here’s one articulation of the definition: Product Mindset is a way of thinking that constantly focuses on problems, ties them to people’s needs and finds smart (and quick!) solutions to eliminate the problems. If we distill the statement, you’ll find there are competencies you can associate with it, and these are also terms you hear thrown around in product management:
Customer empathy
Problem statement analysis
Solutioning
Hustle
At this point you’re probably thinking - sure, those sound like skills I can develop. Yes, friend, you can. But the skills in themselves are less valuable unless they are applied together, and applied instinctively. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. This, for example, does not demonstrate a product mindset: a customer told you they’d like an export function, you think it makes perfect sense, and think there’s a low-effort way to get it to them. You demonstrate customer empathy, maybe even hustle, but does the export function really solve their problems? What are the customer’s pain points, really? You forgot to narrow down to their real needs and understand the problem statement.
Product managers make umpteen tiny decisions a day, and some days they make big ones. Unless the product mindset is deeply ingrained in them, these ‘instinctive’ decisions can be off, and can cost you time, effort, money and customer dissatisfaction. So yes, product mindset is a way of thinking. It’s a habit. It needs to be developed and nurtured.
Here are five exercises to help you do just that:
I. Do app/product teardowns
A product teardown is an in-depth analysis of the product through the lens of a specific persona. It is done to understand features, business-models, pricing, onboarding or any other aspect of the product, usually from an end-customers’ perspective. Here are some examples:
Onboarding teardown of Netflix
Pricing teardowns of Asana vs Basecamp
Cab booking experience teardowns of Uber vs Ola
Pick a product, pick what aspect you want to teardown and try and answer the following:
The user: Who is the typical user of the product? Why do they choose this product? How do they discover it? What pain points does it solve, and solve well? What pain points does it not solve well?
The UI/UX: Was it easy to onboard? Was it easy to search? Does a user immediately understand what they need to do? What emotions does the UI invoke? Was the copy friendly or functional? Did it take time to load?
The ecosystem: Is the product in a crowded marketplace? Who are their top competitors? What does the product do better, and how do they differentiate? How do they position themselves?
II. Wear a different PM’s hat
In the exercises above, you played the part of a customer. Now place yourself in the shoes of the product manager of the product. And use the template below to practice:
Improve or Increase X for Y.
Replace X with the following: acquisition / engagement / onboarding / retention / monetization.
Replace Y with your favourite product. And then pick a different product. Rinse and repeat.
Examples:
Improve onboarding for Asana
Increase engagement for Twitter
Increase monetization for Airbnb
This is an excellent exercise to train your brain to think about different problems you face as a product manager, all the while giving you the opportunity to think for different industries and domains. You’ll be surprised at how creative you can get.
If you want to challenge yourself a little more, throw in some constraints. Product managers almost always work within constraints. They could be time to ship, developer bandwidth, lack of strategic alignment, or an engineering manager who doesn’t believe it is the right thing to build. Conjure up a few scenarios and think about how you’ll work through them.
III Analyze your own product
This is especially useful if you’re not a product manager currently, but work on building, marketing or selling the product.
Teardown your own product. But this time you have the advantage of talking to the people who built it. It will help you understand constraints and how strategies drive product development.
Ask yourself: What are three things you would have built if you were a PM? Why haven’t they been built yet? Now talk to the PMs :)
IV Sketch a UI from memory
This is a great exercise to hone your design thinking. Think about Instagram’s inbox page, or LinkedIn’s home page. Draw them out. This helps you double click on certain design aspects - How is information laid out? Where do the sort options go? You’ll also find yourself noticing these more closely in the future, and you’ll build a pattern in your head around what good and bad designs look like.
V. Start side projects
This one is high-effort, but the best way to learn by far. Pick a small problem to solve. For example - how do patients affected by Covid get food at home? Can you match them with people in their neighbourhood who can cook and want to help?
There are plenty of problems around us, all the time. Pick something small. Find a solution. Many no-code or low-code platforms are available to help you build an easy website or app. Go through the entire cycle of researching, building, marketing and reiterating. Nothing comes close to learning in the trenches.
Here are some good resources to supplement the reading above. Hope they give you a little more inspiration :)