AMA: Asana Product Management Lead, AI, Rodrigo Davies on Establishing Product Management

The one attribute that is hardest to coach and most likely to be make-or-break is customer centricity. It's essential that PMs always start with the customer and their needs, and are extremely curious about them. This often comes through in case study-style interviews: some candidates can generate interesting solution ideas without being customer centric, but they will likely then find it hard to explain why they made certain choices over others without a foundation in which customer they're ser ...Read More

If you're the first PM, building trust is your #1 priority. So I'd start with curiosity about their ideas – where are they getting them from? How are they validating them? What have they learned so far? Where are they getting stuck? It's possible that their ideas are based on some notion of a customer that you can expand and make concrete, by introducing the team to real customers and their needs. If they're not, it's likely the team is running into trouble getting traction for their ideas, and ...Read More

This is obviously very context-specific, but here are some ideas: 30 days: Understand the business strategy, what stakeholders want and levels of confidence Understand the customer base, what's known and not known, and sit in on sales calls and UX research (if that's happening). Understand how the company is shipping product today and where the problems are Understand what data the company has and what else could be collected Build high-trust relationships with your peers and leadership stakehol ...Read More

It's important to differentiate size of company and stage of company here, although there are some overlaps. The larger a company, the more stakeholders a PM needs to manage, and the more important it is to scale impact by having defined processes that speed up decisions and drive alignment. PMs are usually the folks who design and run these processes, so at a larger company that becomes a greater part of the role. The more mature a company, the more the role of PM is dealing with known problems ...Read More

I think this starts with making sure that your design counterparts understand the business strategy and have deep empathy for the customers you're serving. Without those two ingredients, it's hard for anyone to think strategically. As a PM you should invest time in helping design understand the business and customers by sharing what you know – that's a prerequisite – and then regularly invite designers to co-create strategy with you. For instance, share a strategic problem you're struggling to s ...Read More