After working 7 years as a Software Engineer in mobile app development area, I got an opportunity to work as a Business Analyst. After accessing the opportunity and the risks, I took the offer.
Best mentor is the one who guides you to take actions. You can learn all what you want, but unless you act or create opportunity for yourself, it won't matter. Justin Welsh's tweet reveals the same.
It was a challenging time but with the right guidance and mentorship, I quickly embraced the role.
Here are 4 most important things I learnt from my mentor that helped me go through the product role transition:
Never be afraid to fail. You cannot learn if you won’t fail.
Problem Statement is the most important piece for any requirement.
Consider yourself to be a user in the entire product development lifecycle. You’ll see the best outcome.
Leadership without authority is the key to a healthy team collaboration.
Never be afraid to fail. You cannot learn if you won't fail. During the onboarding, as I moved along, I did multiple mistakes. The confidence was all over the place. My manager, Setareh helped me get up and said this one thing - Never be afraid to fail. Not only as someone who is new in certain area, but also experienced professionals can make mistakes. And that is fine. As long as you learn from those mistakes, you are always progressing. Her statement shifted my focus from being demotivated to being focused.
Problem Statement is the most important piece for any requirement. Where most people try to find out the solution at the start, Setareh asked me to focus on problem statement. If you know what the issue is and understand the value to the user, you can solution it in the perfect way.
Consider yourself to be a user in the entire product development lifecycle. You'll see the best outcome. Forget being a Business Analyst or a Product Owner for a minute and try to think from user's perspective. You'll find new, more and better ways to create or improve your product. Right from the start till you are verifying the functionalities. User is the best person who can test your product.
Leadership without authority is the key to a healthy team collaboration. When I took over the new role, I always took the lead with the right intention of moving the product forward. As I did that, others saw me as authoritative. No matter my intentions were positive, but we could see a slight friction in the team. In one of the 1-1's, we were talking about the situation. And Setareh mentioned about Leadership without authority and how it promotes positive team culture. I read about this which really helped me see it's value but more importantly how it would impact me in my professional and personal life. I changed my perspective which led to better team collaboration which ultimately led to better results.
CONCLUSION
Mentors are the first people you can leverage to help you learn. Here are 3 things you should do working with mentors, if you are not:
Listen
Setup weekly 1-1's
Ask for Feedback
If you found this useful, I can help you facilitate product role transitions and coaching. Contact me here.
Nitish
Comments