Recently, I was tasked to solve a problem that required looking into the data and find answers for improving a part of our business.
I managed to bump into some insights which were important for us to track. That stumped me in two ways:
Why wasn’t anyone looking into this?
Do we need someone special to look into this?
A bit of context, we already have Product Managers compartmentalized according to the part of the business they were looking at. They were already doing a great job at what they were asked or supposed to do.
I called up my manager and we deliberated on it. We thought of the following solutions:
Should we hire a business analyst who comes with business experience to solve this?
Should we ask our AI team to look into this and help us solve the problem?
Should we tell our Product Managers to do this?
We knew hiring someone makes no business sense. We would be questioned on the ROI for this resource. If we ask the AI team to solve this then the AI team won’t be able to solve AI problems.
Well, we thought, aren’t Product Managers supposed to be doing that? That’s the core idea, right? Then why is it they weren’t doing it yet actively?
Before we went about telling the team, we asked ourselves how did we get motivated to look into the data? What happened during the career that forced us to get insights using data? We narrowed it down to 3 situations:
Business heads / CXOs would ask business questions
Our client partners or customers per se would always ask us to show data reports, justify to them the ROI on the solutions we gave them.
Our own inquisitiveness to improve the product and solution we were offering.
Not everyone comes across such situations in their early days.
So where did we begin?
“Throw them to the sharks and they will learn how not to get eaten”
We decided on a format. Create a forum for the product managers to present the answers to the burning questions.
Business Heads / Product Heads would ask questions to the product management team. The team has to get those answers in a week’s time.
Our role will be limited to helping them with filling in the gaps in their presentation. Helping them draft the narrative of the answers.
We will then present the first version to the Business Head, clean up the presentation with more questions for the next round of meeting with our CXO.
So where do you begin?
If you are a product manager and if you are thinking, that I should be spending a lot of time being inquisitive and keep looking at the data. And come with something suitable. But here’s the thing, “our own inquisitiveness to improve the product and solution we were offering” doesn’t come so easily. Your own inquisitiveness rarely helps because it comes with a bias. Points No.1 and 2 are the most important.
You must proactively speak to your stakeholders
Speak to your immediate managers, CXOs, stakeholders, interview your customers (if B2C), or accompany your sales (if B2B) to get those questions.
Ask them to ask you questions about what they want to know.
Learn from them how the business is being done operationally & technically.
Once you have gathered this information, you need to dive into the data to get basic insights.
You must learn how to use tools
Use excel which includes learning how to do pivots, write formulas.
Use SQLs to query the database to pull information.
If you are adventurous, use Python or R to compute insights.
Once you have derived some variables from the data, done some pivots, got some answers to those questions.
You must learn how to stitch the story
Craft a story wherein you explain the problem or the question by explaining the part of the business you are going to answer.
Give the breakdown of the processes that are part of the question using data.
Create a forum to collect suggestions, new inputs, and arguments.
As a Product Manager, your job is to organize this event. And design an environment around this. You won’t get it right the first time, but as you keep repeating this, you will keep getting better.
What skills would you have picked up doing this?
Networking (because you have to approach stakeholders and talk to them)
Interrogating (because you have to ask them questions about how things work)
Business (because you would be forced to understand a lot about the business your project is in)
Data Analysis (because you would have analyzed the data and understood how to interpret them)
Story-crafting (because you have to build a presentation and craft a narrative)
Communication (because you would have to communicate all of this to an audience)
Challenges like these are great training grounds for one to become a better version of themselves. I hope all of us get to work on an opportunity like this that amplifies and yields an assortment of new skill-sets.
Awesome piece Pratik. This is “Bhagvad Geeta” for product managers for building data first mindset.