How to study Product Management and elevate your PM game
Whether you want to enter the field or advance further, you probably seek guidance on the theory and practice of product management.
I've recently read Learn Like a Polymath: How to Teach Yourself Anything, Develop Multidisciplinary Expertise, and Become Irreplaceable, by Peter Hollins, and thought it had quite an interesting overlap to do with writing. (It was mentioned on a
’s podcast episode; I unfortunately forgot which, but that pod has been responsible for many books in my TBR list).It's a short book, covering what polymathy is (and isn't), the core idea of skill transfer, and how to break knowledge down and adopt the right mindset. The short version, is that for practical reasons polymathy isn't simply high intelligence (for many reasons, not the least of which is the difficulty in defining intelligence). Rather, it is the ability to study one area and then abstract learnt skills to apply in other areas and situations. An example would be studying creative writing and applying it to business writing.
Hollins goes further in defining the types of transfers, about thinking in analogies and using tools like mind-mapping (which anyone who’s seen the shitty soft skills post knows I love). The last section is generally about keeping an open and adaptable mind, the beginner mindset (seeking continual learning), and thinking in experiments. Those last aspects are pretty much bread & butter for product managers, so you can see the applicability. It also got me thinking on how to study (and teach) product management, which is the reason for this article.
How to study Product Management
Here, for example, is how I map the various areas you need to study in and around product management:
These are just the top level areas of the practice itself, without going into the specifics of your own product. There are a lot of areas you need to cover, from soft skills to strategy, from knowing your business domain to personal attributes. On top of that are all those books, frameworks, and methodologies that you need to keep abreast of.
I often recommend
’s master lists of books and videos (particularly this one). He has a knack to collect useful information and present it in a logical manner, where you can scan the topic to see available options.But before you jump in and read everything start to finish, you need to understand the extent to which you need to learn a topic. Don’t read all books, cover to cover, and expect to fully grok Product Management. Remember that it is a practice, an applied discipline, and a lot of your learning will be hands-on and by mentoring & coaching from seniors. What’s the balance, then?
Breadth and Depth
There is the concept of a "T-shaped person", ie having broad general knowledge and deep expertise in one area. The expertise for product managers would be the craft of product management itself (eg continual discovery and delivery), and the broad knowledge would be all the subjects they pull in: the domain (eg FinTech), their business setup (eg company goals and business partners), the technology, regulatory and legal constraints, etc.
The flip-side of the breadth of topics is that you can’t expect to study everything. For example, both user interviews and pricing are key concepts — but which is the problem you are facing now? You need to know what tools are available where, what use-cases they serve, and where to go and learn in depth when needed. Just reading won’t make you understand a topic, you need to experience it first, and that often relies on available opportunities.
In contrast, polymathy is described as a π or comb shape, as having several areas with deep knowledge. But in reality, you don't have to become an world-leading academic expert; the Pareto principle applies: you can spend 20% of the effort to understand 80% of the material, which is often good enough to understand key principles and know where to look further. I think it is a matter of degree, not absolutes -- if you know enough about an area to carry an intelligent conversation, if you can translate a customer issue into potential product solutions, you have successfully performed a knowledge transfer into your PM practice. Note that this is more than just talking about the concepts in the same context, but actually being able to inspect them dispassionately with a different point of view and adapting them to the world of product. You aren’t just using the customers’ words to build empathy around problem, but you can go further in mapping the context in which those problems manifest to a new world where your product solved them.
Another similar concept is that of being a generalist, rather than a specialist. If you aren't familiar with Robert A. Heinlein quote about specialisation I suggest you memorise it. Although specialists might object, I find it puts what it is to be a human quite succinctly. Alternatively, the book named Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, by David Epstein also covers in depth the cross pollination between fields. Although not specific to product management, it makes a great reading for those interested in learning and cross-pollinating across fields to excel in creative, cross-disciplinary efforts such as product management.
So how to best learn Product Management?
Keep those book lists handy, watch the videos and skim through the books, listen to podcasts, follow blogs, and build your breadth of knowledge. When needed (eg you embark on a pricing exercise, or finally get that data feed and dashboard working), go and use problem-based learning to deeply understand the subject.
At the same time, don’t do this alone. So much of product management is an art form, and those are best learnt as an apprenticeship, ie as an applied discipline with corrections and insights into specific problems by those with more experience. If you have someone to mentor or coach you at work, great! If not, you still have many good options. You can find someone through ADPlist or MyMentorPath (I’m on that last one). Or even just get a bunch of like-minded product managers in a small group, and coach each other. It could be informal open discussion, but having sat through peer-consultation exercises they are surprisingly effective. You will both learn a lot (from thinking and talking with others) and get help with particular issues you’re facing. You can find the format tool kit for free here, and all you need is a 2-3 other people and a couple of hours.
Reach out to me if you’d like more info on that. I’m always up for a discussion and guidance (aka mentoring 😄).
Back to Learning Like A Polymath
The book is a quick read and has some insights and links to research and further reading. If you're naturally generally curious, it's a good read (as is Range). Don't expect a miracle recipe that will turn you into da Vinci, but it will strengthen your meta-cognition, your thinking about how you think, and perhaps help you make a more conscious effort in studying a topic and transferring learnt skills. So much is made about product management being about learning, that we should invest some effort in learning how to learn effectively.
Lastly, if you are already a practicing PM, take a moment to map all the things you have to understand, from the tech-stack to the domain, from the legal constraints to the user’s job-to-be-done. Stare at that map in awe for a moment, and take a moment to call yourself a polymath and have the drink of your choice. We all know other accolades are too far between 😅