Transitioning To Remote? Maximize Product Management Success With These Practical Tips
Steering stakeholders towards a common vision in the highly cross-functional product manager role doesn’t have to be daunting when working remote
I’m used to having the discipline of planning my life around work in the office. I’ve enjoyed remote work once or twice a week, but I’ve always been the person in the office that engineers can talk to regarding requirements, sales can come over and discuss handling objections from prospects, and marketers can discuss upcoming releases with by the watercooler.
All this changed with COVID-19, popularly known as the Corona virus. I had to transition into being a fully remote product manager, working alongside other remote members of my time in engineering, sales and marketing.
There’s a lot of resources for people to work remote, but while teams who’ve been remote-first might have an easy transition, I also know there’s a ton of folks who aren’t used to the lifestyle.
Over the last few weeks, we’ve all had to transition into full remote work, alongside others with different home-environments and commitments. Having dealt with remote work a few years prior with a global engineering and sales team, I’ve learned some best practices to better ease this transition and maximize your success as a remote product manager.
Set up boundaries between work and leisure
Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior.
Productivity is a mindset, and getting into this mindset requires having an environment that’s conducive to work. As James Clear writes, our behavior is a function of our environment. If we see a cookie, we’ll probably eat it, if we hear music, we’ll tap our feet, and if we find a nice couch and a TV, we’ll probably want to watch Netflix.
This is why having clear boundaries between where you do your work, and where you eat, sleep and amuse yourself can have a profound impact on how you approach your day.
Some simple tips that worked for me include:
- Creating a ritual around my work, like getting dressed in clothes different from my regular “home” attire, and making some coffee.
- Setting up work in a designated area of my house. Avoid using places like your couch, or worse, your bed, to accomplish professional work goals. A casual environment leads to a casual mindset towards accomplishing your goals.
- Maintain strict boundaries between work time and personal time. It’s very, very easy to let work seep into your personal life when your home also happens to be your place of work, which has proven long term health risks. I have a strict 8:30 AM to 6 PM work schedule, and I plan my product management tasks within these bounds.
Be available
A good product manager is the lynch pin for the successful coordination of a business between engineering, marketing, sales, finance and other disciplines. These stakeholders are used to relying on you for clarifying their questions on issues like feature requirements, goto market plans, health of the business and positioning. With the transition to remote, you should make sure they still know you’re there for them.
There’s easy ways to make sure you tell your teammates you’re there for them.
- Take advantage of instant messaging services like Slack, Skype for Business or whatever other system your company uses. These services show others you’re online, and let you change your status depending on your availability.
- If there’s upcoming releases, check in with them just like you would in person. But don’t become a helicopter PM, constantly hovering over teammates. Many may prefer less impromptu check ins since they’re in the zone working, for which you can always have calendar scheduled meetings over video.
- When you need to chat with someone, video calls may be worth it. I feel I can convey my ideas with almost 5x more efficiency over a quick call than going back and forth over email or IM trying to get each other on the same page. That said, make sure you message the other person first if they’re available to chat on video/phone before calling to respect their time.
- Sometimes, even a simple “Good morning” to core members of your team goes a long way in telling them you’re there in case they have questions. It’s also a subtle way of building your own accountability in being present mentally at all times during work.
Take advantage of work-from-home benefits
While you’ll miss the impromptu water cooler conversations which is an important form of building trust, there’s also some great advantages of working from home.
- As a product manager, you’re probably always having people stop by with questions. Use the quiet time you now have to focus without distractions and plan ahead in an otherwise constantly distracted setting.
- If you’re like me, you probably enjoy some background music to relax and get into a deep state of work. I can listen to some of my favorites like Kanyakumari’s carnatic melodies, Miles Davis’ introspective jazz or just some ambient chill without having to worry about distracting anybody.
- Make sure you move. It’s very important for your mental health. I’d recommend doing some form of physical activity, be it jogging, taking a stroll or just regular push ups during the day. I learned the important of physical activity the hard way, which eventually led me to my regular practice of Ashtanga yoga.
In closing, as much as things may look bleak with the virus, it’s also a forcing function for us to be resourceful and learn to be just as effective with remote product management. A good PM is already used to dealing with uncertainties in budget, time and manpower, and I believe we can be successful with the added factor of dealing with remote work.
