The Trouble with Product Management Onboarding and How to Get it Right (with Mirela Mus, Founder & CPO @ Product People)

Mirela Mus is a product manager, product leader, mentor, coach, advisor and company founder who wanted to solve a problem that she kept seeing when she spoke to company leaders; the need to spin up product teams to cover hiring gaps and parental leave. She's doing this with her firm Product People.

A message from this episode's sponsor - Product People

This episode is sponsored by Product People. If you’re a company founder or product leader who needs to get a product management team up and running quickly or cover parental leave check out Product People. They’ve got a thriving community and 40 in-house product managers, product ops pros, and product leaders. They onboard fast, align teams and deliver outcomes. Check out Product People to book a free intro chat and quote code OKIP to get a 5% discount.

Episode highlights:

It's important to support promising new product managers

Mirela is committed to bringing talent into product management with the Product People operating model which gives APMs real-world product experience whilst maintaining quality for clients

You don't have to start a SaaS startup to be an entrepreneur

Mirela wasn't excited by building a SaaS product to solve everyday problems, and she found lots of problems through her own consulting which showed her the real problem and why a product agency is needed

Companies can be pretty bad at onboarding in general

But it's not always the case that good onboarding = a good experience. There are plenty of examples of great onboarding into poor company culture and bad onboarding into a great culture. It's the culture that's important!

Onboarding for product managers is harder than for most roles

Product managers are at the centre of everything and the requirements of the role can be really ambiguous depending on the company. The product culture is often underdeveloped which can drag product managers down.

There's a playbook for this stuff and a structured approach that PMs can take

You need to come up with a plan. There are things you can ask for in advance, stakeholders to map and sensitive topics to uncover. These can help you work out where you need to focus to be successful.

Contact Mirela

You can check out Mirela's blog post, Blazing Fast Onboarding for Product Managers.

You can connect with Mirela on LinkedIn.