Be Better at Product Ops-ing - Learning, Developing, and Growing Professionally

In today’s rapidly evolving professional landscape, roles like Product Operations Lead are pivotal in driving business and operational success while fostering innovation. In the last few years, we have seen a rise in the number of companies that understand the tremendous advantage and contribution this role has to their success. These companies are creating Product Operations positions inside the organization.

Since this is a relatively new profession, the knowledge and expertise in this field have not yet been fully constructed. As a result, most of the people working in this position face professional growth challenges. Considering that most of the positions are created entirely from scratch with no previous infrastructure, the challenge is even greater. Furthermore, this is often a sole position at the company, which means no other employees are facing the same challenges, tasks, or projects.

Taking all of this into consideration, professional growth in this field is challenging. Nonetheless, it’s crucial for Product Operations professionals to build and improve their knowledge and expertise in the variety of fields required to succeed in this role, and keep up with the ever-evolving information in this fast–paced environment.

So, what should you focus on if you are a rising Product Operations Lead that understands the value and importance of constant learning and professional development?

1. Soft Skills — One of the most important things a Product Operations professional should have and work on is their soft skills, as well as — Problem-solving skills, effective communication, and analytical skills, are crucial to be successful in this position. You must have a variety of skills and know how to put them to use in different situations, projects and processes you are facing.

2. Processes and Methodologies — You need to fully understand the role of a Product Manager. It’s also important to gain knowledge about the processes, methodologies, challenges, who are the relevant parties you work with, and their needs and inputs. You should aim to understand the dependencies and how they impact one another in order to identify gaps and blockers in the product-related processes you need to amend and optimize.

3. Project Management — Even if you have an amazing project manager in your company and on your team, as a Product Operations Lead, you need to have those skills as well so you will be able to build, lead and manage long and short-term plans. You should also be able to teach and implement these skills to those around you.

4. Data & Analytics — Good decisions are made based on data and analytics. You should understand what available data there is, the missing\needed data, understand what kind of insights you can extract from it, and in general what and how we should measure ourselves as a product team. Reviewing the data can help you understand where you need to invest your efforts and what you should focus on.

5. Professional Product & Market Knowledge — Knowing your company’s product inside and out, while understanding the market you operate in, the technologies, and the trends. Learn about your company’s customers (and prospects) — What they need, how they use the product, and what their journey within the product is. Gain knowledge on the company’s future plans, and what you can do to help them achieve them.

After understanding the importance of constantly learning, improving, and adapting as a Product Operations Lead (the Why), and after we discussed the type of information, skills, and knowledge a Product Operations Lead should have (the What), let’s now focus on how Product Operations Leaders can keep themselves educated and up-to-date constantly (the How).

Since there is no formal program that is dedicated to this field, we can’t go to a specific place to learn about what it means to be a Product Operations Lead. But what we do have is a wide variety of resources we can learn from:

1. Internal knowledge and how-to’s: — The most basic knowledge for any Product Operations Lead is to have a very good understanding of the company, the product, and the market. Speaking with stakeholders throughout the company, understanding what is happening and why, and learning who is the user and what is the customer journey. Watch demos, listen to customer calls, and speak with both customer-facing and internal positions throughout the company to learn the big picture, and understand the main gaps, blockers and potential improvements.

2. Courses — As mentioned above, a Product Operations leader needs to have a variety of skills and knowledge in a variety of professional fields. Although there are no “Product Operation” courses, a Product Operations leader can take courses on many topics that can help them improve their skills, abilities, and expertise. These courses focus on Product Management, Project Management, Business Analytics, UI\UX, Negotiation Skills and so on.

3. Professional articles — Professional articles provide a great way to learn about a specific subject that interests you or if you are looking to deepen your knowledge about specific topics (BTW, we have some great professional articles in our Product Ops blog).

4. Professional Community — Yes yes, I’m biassed, I know 😉 But believe me, a community is one of the most amazing things you can have. It’s a great way to get to know other people from your profession and network, while also learning from one another. The professional community can be a great platform where you can consult with your peers and ask them how they handled a certain challenge, which tools they use for specific needs, or share a great insight, study, or video you encountered that you think can contribute to them as well. If you speak Hebrew, you are welcome to join our Facebook “Product Ops IL” community!

5. Peer learning — Peer learning is a learning approach that includes multi-directional knowledge transfer. That is, we don’t have one person passing on knowledge to many people, but knowledge is shared among many individuals in a group. Through the peer learning method, you can benefit from the shared expertise, experience, and collective perspectives of others on specific topic. Peer learning can be done within a community, like a professional community such as a Product Ops \ Project management \ Product management professionals community, or within the organization, where employees from different departments gather to share knowledge and expertise like cross-company Operation functions.

6. Meetups, conferences, webinars — Participating in educational events and learning from other professionals about their experience, knowledge, thoughts, insights and expertise about main topic and up-to-date challenges. Get to know, mingle and network with other people in your profession and industry. These kinds of events can help expose you to a variety of interesting and important topics, enrich your knowledge and open your mind.

7. Mentoring — Find an experienced mentor in your field of expertise. Someone with vast experience you can learn from and consult with when you encounter major challenges and are unsure how to deal with them. It is great to be able to consult with someone ‘on the go’ or to meet periodically where you can exchange thoughts and doubts.

8. Self-learning — You can transform many of your experiences into learning. What do I mean? Whenever a big project or process is completed, think about what happened, what can you learn from that, what can you do better next time, and what worked well. When you reach or complete a certain milestone, review the actual vs planned in terms of success criteria, scope, time, or other KPIs and understand if there are insights that you can see and learn from.

As you can see, whether it’s ongoing, ad-hoc, per need, alone, or together, learning can be done at any time and should be embedded in your professional journey. Learning and improving professionally is a must, and especially in these times, so people working in an emerging position such as Product Operations should put an emphasis on learning and growing.

Link to the article on meduim.com