Alex Alexakis Talks 90 Days of Wisdom for New Product Managers

Inside Blueground picked the brain of Senior Product Manager Alex Alexakis from Blueground’s Athens office. He gave his tips for product managers starting fresh at a new company, with many of those lessons also applicable to lifelong product managers who seek to challenge their own team’s status quo.

Inside Blueground (IB): How was starting at Blueground as a Senior Product Manager different from past product manager positions?

Alex Alexakis: In the past, either as a Product Manager at Workable or as the product guy in a number of indie projects, I was building products from scratch with a team of engineers and designers. Though you get to mold things from the very beginning, add your personal taste to the product, you also have zero (or close to zero) traction.

IB: So you show up on the first day and you’re straight out of the gates. Where do you start?

I had to resist my temptations to jump in and start changing things — in short, check your ego at the door. Whatever is already in place, is there for a reason (right or wrong) be it in product, processes, people, etc. Give yourself time to get familiar with the product, team, company, and market before you start adding your own items in the backlog, establishing new processes, etc.

Of course part of your job is to introduce new things and this should happen soon after you join the team. Product Managers are often people with big egos, so this is usually harder than it sounds. It is rewarding as you minimize the risk of changing things that are already established and work well or avoiding conflicts with other stakeholders.

IB: And you have another piece of advice along the same line of ‘reeling things in’.

Exactly. Save your moonshot goals for later. In your first few months, you may not have the context about what is feasible (in terms of metrics and what the team can deliver). Set realistic expectations at first to avoid setting yourself up for your first big miss. Look to your team’s goal setting system (OKRs, for example) for a better idea of the company and department’s goals. As a product manager or owner, you should focus on delivering value from the beginning rather than promising things you likely cannot achieve.

IB: Keenan wrote about getting to know the product from the beginning in another Medium article. How did you familiarize yourself with Blueground’s offerings as newcomer?

Especially when coming from another industry, use your new product religiously. Record and test all customer journeys, user flows, emails, push notifications, everything. This might be a very time-consuming task for most products, especially if they have a pretty wide scope. However, it will reward you soon enough when you start adding the first epics that affect existing user flows.

IB: And what if you’re not necessarily one of the user personas?

The first 90 days should include lots of discussions and informal coffees and lunches. First of all, talk to your customers from all different user personas, if possible. Answer customer inquiries, participate in sales calls, join communities where your customers hang out, etc. By all means, try to find ways to get unfiltered feedback from your users. While it may be convenient to speak just with sales and customer support, you may be missing out on the bigger picture.

Second, talk to key stakeholders inside the organization, including your main business contacts, operations, sales, marketing, or whoever can give you a good idea of your product’s context. Understand what makes an impact on the business, what roadblocks they have, what are the decision making principles and values. For some of our internal platforms (BlueB, Channel Management Tool), they are the end users. What matters most in the first 90 days is to get clarity on strategy, otherwise, there’s the risk of diverting the product’s deliverables from real business needs moving forward.

Last but not least, talk to your team. In the case of Blueground, there were 21 engineers, three product managers, and two designers! These are the people that build the product with you, so their ideas and feelings about the product, processes, users, market, team, company or even whether they are happy with their lives or not will affect the way you work and collaborate with them. In my first weeks, I met with everyone from everyone from the product designer to the engineering lead to the DevOps engineer.

IB: So I take it, it’s about being humble and maybe putting yourself into research mode. How else did you educate yourself at the beginning?

So, your product is always part of a wider market with several bigger and smaller competitors and substitutes. What are the solutions people find these days to remedy their pain points and your product is trying to solve? These are questions you should seek to answer when reviewing the market landscape.

IB: And on a personal level within the company?

Aim for one big win! First impressions are usually hard to change. Ideally, prove yourself through your contributions during your first days in the company. This could be everything from a new feature that your team released, helping with a big hire in a key position for the company, delivering a great product analysis where you identified certain strengths and weaknesses, introducing a much-anticipated user research process, etc.

IB: Ok, and then with your immediate Engineering team?

This lesson can closely be linked with the one above, earning the trust of your teammates. What can you do to make people’s lives easier? Take a load off their back.

If you want to establish this as one of your principles moving forward in the organization, then your first 90 days are crucial for setting the scene. Understand what are the main problems that your managers, colleagues currently face in their day to day and help if you can. This could be things such as helping to attract and retain talent, communicating company vision, etc. However, try not to become the owner of tasks whose responsibility falls outside your realm of expertise, as you might end up biting off more than you can chew!

IB: And I’m sure they’re tons for them to learn from you.

Yes! Record and share what you have learned with the rest of the team. Especially in a team with an existing product, the feedback of a Product Manager is valuable around both what works well and what doesn’t. From a UX glitch and the latest trends of the industry to the feedback your customers are sharing during discovery calls and the improvements that can be made in your agile processes, you should take advantage of your fresh eyes and share your feedback with your team or other stakeholders.

Finally, don’t forget to have fun!

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