CHAPTER 9The Coaching Plan
In the previous chapter, I defined a tool to assess the current skill level of a product person in order to identify skill gaps.
In this sequel chapter, I would like to share how I coach product people on each of these specific gaps.
In truth, the full version of this coaching plan is really this entire book, but I am hopeful that I can provide enough examples and suggestions in this chapter to help most managers give useful guidance and coaching.
Note that I am using the same people, process, and product taxonomy of skills that I spelled out in the previous chapter, so if you are unsure what any of these topics are about, please refer back to that chapter. And also, as with the assessment chapter, I am using the example of the product manager here, although much of what is written here will also be helpful for product designers and tech leads.
Product Knowledge
To set your expectations, product knowledge is where a new product manager spends most of her time in the onboarding process. It usually requires two to three months of time to ramp up, assuming she is provided the necessary coaching and she aggressively focuses on this for several hours per day.
But to be clear, a product manager that does not have this level of knowledge has no business serving as product manager for her team. And the responsibility for ensuring this level of competence is squarely on her manager.
User and Customer Knowledge
There really is no substitute for getting out ...
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