Hey, I'm Corinn and I'm the founder of Speckled, the tool that helps PMs
built the right thing at the right time.
Today, we're going to be talking about a little bit of a niche
topic, but if this applies to you, this is going to be super useful.
We're going to be chatting about your first week as the first
product manager at a company.
If you're the first product manager a company has ever had, you're going to
be in a very interesting situation.
You know, that all eyes are going to be on you.
They're going to be wondering, can you really take this product and run with it?
Do you really have the chutzpah needed to set the pace for this new product?
You don't want to be on some 90 day plan where it's going to take you
three months to deliver something.
You want to really hit the ground running.
And this can be challenging, especially if you're taking over for
a founder who was really the product person, and that was their thing.
You need to really show them that you have your stuff together and
that you were the best decision that they've made for their own sanity.
All right.
So your first week, it's unlikely that you're going to be expected to move
the world, but you're probably going to want to some kind of output out there.
The good news is that your fresh perspective on this is going
to make this really easy work.
You know, people become blind to things that are pretty obvious
to other people, especially after working on them for awhile.
Product people are no different.
So let's get into your first week as a PM.
Days one and two, you're going to be doing any of your required training.
You're going to get access to your customer support tool.
You're going to get an account on your product.
You're going to be doing basic stuff like this.
You're going to want to get a one week check in with your manager scheduled.
And you're also going to start a text document.
This is just going to be a running text document you keep open on your
screen at most times, and you're going to note down anything that is
interesting or surprising to you.
Like I mentioned before, you have a fresh perspective right now, and this
is something that will fade with time, so make sure you take advantage of it.
Okay, so it's day three.
You have most of your necessary training out of the way.
Today is a day for walking through your product.
And you're going to want to use loom or another tool like this, just to
really capture your thoughts and your reactions as you go through
this tool for the first time.
Another thing you're going to want to do on day three is just really read through.
As much information as you can find, really get as much context on your
product and your company as possible.
If there's a central place for documents, scour through that.
Another great source of information is going through customer support logs.
So if you can get access to the customer support tool, make sure you do that.
And today you also want to schedule at least one meeting and that's going
to be with your engineering manager.
You're going to want to make sure that you have a great relationship
with this person, because it's highly likely that you're going to be
working very, very closely with them.
And if you don't have an engineering manager, make sure you meet with the
engineers and the engineering team.
Okay.
So day three, you've walked through your product, scoured for
documents and scheduled meetings.
Days four and five, you're going to want to actually plan and have those meetings.
That's pretty self explanatory.
And you're also going to want to start getting ready for your one week check in.
Now, how do you do this?
This is going to be your output of your first week.
You know, that ideas document that I mentioned for day one?
That should be pretty darn full of interesting ideas and surprises and
possible problems that you've run into.
So you're going to take some of the low hanging fruit on there.
You're going to start shaping it up , really defining what
the problem is and what it may look like from your perspective.
And you're going to shape up a solution to these possible
problems that are out there.
And you're just gonna put it into like a one pager or a document.
You're going to include it as a read ahead for your first one on one so
your new manager can see your ideas and how you're thinking about changing
things and making things better.
And then you're gonna watch us, your new boss breathes a sigh of relief
and goes, okay, maybe hiring a product manager was the right call.
So we talked a lot about why being the first PM be a challenge and how to
show that you were the right decision by presenting a few well-formed
solutions at your first week check in.
If you liked this content, be sure to subscribe to our blog at dot com
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And every Sunday we send out a newsletter with the top three stores of the week
for PMs at small software companies.
In the meantime, best of luck being the first PM.
You got it.