Starting a career in Product

I never imagined myself in Product Management, truth be told, I didn’t know it was a career when I was younger. I started my career in Sales at 16, then moved into Customer Service and later Business Analysis. Looking back, this path actually laid the perfect foundation for Product Management. I may not have had deep technical skills, but I’ve always been driven by a deep curiosity about customers, whether I was selling a washing machine or a 70-inch TV. It was always about understanding their needs and delivering something that delighted them.


It’s true when they say listening is half the solution. Being an excellent listener is the most critical soft skill you can have. As a Product Manager, it is crucial that we listen and understand the problems we’re hired to solve. Empathy, the ability to obsess over users and truly step into their shoes is, in my view, half the job in Product Management and comes hand in hand with excellent listening. If you can work towards refining these soft skills and avoid solutionising, making rash decisions and truly understanding the problem that needs to be solved, this makes it easier to think holistically and apply a pragmatic and rational approach, thus ensuring what your team builds is fit for purpose and solves the right problem, without reworking and missing the mark.

Secondly, it’s worth talking a little about curiosity. The best questions beat the best answers and clarity lives on the other side of a good question. Remember this for the next time the thought of asking a question or not runs through your mind in a meeting. Beyond this, behave like a sponge and try to absorb everything you can. When you start a new role, understand your role, your colleagues’ roles, the political situation, the client relationships, the history and previous challenges and not just what is specific only to you. Aim to be an SME in what you do by making being obsessed your primary job role. From my experience, once you can understand the organisation, you can understand the problems and once you understand the problem, only then you can work on a solution. Putting the organisation aside, it is also extremely important to continue your personal development outside of your engagement, however, be specific and targeted e.g. If your role relates to FinOps, consider a FinOps certification to deepen your understanding, If your role involves being a Scrum Master, perhaps a certification in Programme Management isn’t right for you at that point. By taking this approach, you ensure you learn what your brain really needs, when it needs it and avoids you spending money on collecting badges that have no value to your current role.


Over the years, I’ve worked across diverse domains: Retail, Banking, Mortgages, Insurance, E-commerce, IoT, and Government. This wide-ranging experience helped me develop a deep well of domain knowledge and become a more versatile, well-rounded Product Leader.

To succeed in Product Management, you can’t rely on a single skill set or stay within one familiar domain. Growth often comes from stepping outside your comfort zone – taking on new roles, learning new disciplines, and immersing yourself in unfamiliar industries. In my experience, that kind of breadth is often what separates a good PM from a great one.

While I can (and will) discuss the technical skills required to succeed in Product, it’s essential to understand that without the proper foundation, making a career switch can be a significant challenge. If you can demonstrate exceptional communication skills, a user-centric mindset, a broad understanding of business and domains, and a relentless appetite for learning and curiosity, then you already have what it takes to become a great PM.

TL;DR

1. Soft Skills are the foundation
2. Curiosity and willingness to learn = Everything
3. Stay out of your comfort zone