1 month as a product manager at accuRx

Hey 👋 I’ve just come to the end of my first month as a product manager (PM) at accuRx.

For me, taking this job meant quite a few firsts: my first role as a PM; my first role in an organisation with more than one product team; my first role in healthtech.

Despite all this newness, I often find myself only giving pretty surface level answers when asked questions like ‘how are you getting on?’ or ‘how are you feeling about things?’. I continually find this feeling odd since (forgive the cliché) I genuinely am learning a huge number of things each day, so surely I should have a million and one things to talk about when asked these questions.

It’s for primarily this reason I thought I’d add another first to my list and attempt to formalise a few of my recent reflections into the format of a blog post (this one). So first off, thank you for indulging me and I hope some of this may be useful to at least one new or aspiring PM out there.

I often find it helpful to understand the perspective from which opinions are said or written, so before I dive in, here’s a brief background on me in an attempt to add colour to the perspective from which these opinions are written.

Prior to joining accuRx, I’d worked in a handful of early stage startups as a product analyst and considered myself to have a decent base-level understanding of product. I was deliberating whether to go deeper down the technical data route, or to try my hand in a more generalist gig. After originally receiving my application for a role as a product data scientist, accuRx helped me make that decision by asking if I’d instead like to interview as a PM.

Now that you’re caught up, here’s a summary of my musings…

I’ve attempted to structure my thoughts into two categories:

1. what I’ve learned as a new PM in general
2. what I’ve learned as a new PM at accuRx

What I’ve learned as a new PM in general

The PM role is a people role

Running a team isn’t as mechanical as I felt a lot of material out there made it seem. My reading on the subject of teams is far from comprehensive, as is my experience in actually running teams (see title of blog post!), but my initial impression is that the relationships you form in a team are far more important than almost any process you put in place.

The PM role is a balancing act

Being a good PM is hard. Not hard in the way that any one thing you do is particularly difficult or complicated, but hard in the sense that ensuring you’re doing each of those individual things enough and to a good enough standard, as well as always being mindful of what you’re choosing not to do, is difficult to balance.

The PM role isn’t only about innovative approaches to work

In a similar vein, I’ve found that the things which have helped me be most effective so far haven’t been super original methods of working or particularly novel approaches to facilitation. Instead, something I’ve noticed is that it appears to be the smaller, less obvious inputs, or lack thereof as the case often is, which go the furthest in helping my team be as effective as they can be.

As an example: in my first week I found myself commonly being the first to fill a silence during various team discussions. After acting on a suggestion to wait out these silences, I found that the team invariably continued these discussions and resolved them more effectively than they likely would’ve if I’d pushed the discussion along.

The PM role is based on communication

It is impossible to over-communicate as a PM. I’ve already found myself in situations where I’m sure my thinking is aligned with my team’s, or I’m sure the wider business knows what our team is working on, only to find that not to be the case. This is perhaps perpetuated by the fact that we’ve been pretty much entirely remote since my joining (but I’ve no doubt I’d be feeling the same if we’d all been in the office together). I need to fear less the feeling of being repetitive in my communication because the chances are that I’ve probably not articulated things as clearly as I think I have, or that I’ve not articulated things as often as is necessary to ensure everyone remembers and continues to remember.

What I’ve learned as a new PM at accuRx

accuRx loves OKRs

Well defined, and I stress well defined, OKRs are worth the time invested in their setup. I was fortunate enough to join a team which had already done the groundwork in setting their OKRs for the cycle (we work in 7 week cycles: 1 planning week & 6 development weeks), and by virtue of these OKRs being so clear and unambiguous, the team has been able to work at an impressive pace. If ever there’s been the beginnings of confusion around what we should work on next, these OKRs have been invaluable in re-orienting our focus.

accuRx loves user research

User research is everything. I’ve come across many companies who regard themselves as user-focussed, user-centric or any other variation of this phrase, but I cannot imagine any of these companies living up to this in quite the same way as accuRx. The quantity and quality of user research done, and not only by our user research team but everyone involved in product, is astounding. It’s considered table stakes that no design reaches development without first being tested with users by using prototypes at various levels of fidelity. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that accuRx wouldn’t be where it is now if everyone in the company, especially PMs, didn’t fully embrace the responsibility of knowing our users as fundamental to being at accuRx.

accuRx loves collaboration

Getting cross-product communication right is a must. Having previously worked in companies with only one product team, I’ve never fully appreciated the complexity which comes with there being many product teams with closely overlapping products and goals — I’m starting to now. This growing appreciation has led me to consider the product community created at accuRx, and the ceremonies put in place to facilitate this community, to be one of our greatest strengths as a product team. It’s for this reason that instead of being apprehensive about adding many new product teams in the coming months, my overarching feelings are those of excitement and anticipation.

I’m sure I’m currently blissfully unaware of just how complicated the world of PM’ing can be, so I’ve no doubt I’ll read this with a wry smile in a few years’ time, by then knowing just how simplistic a writeup this is. For now though, it’s served as a means for me to more actively reflect on my first month, and also, I hope, as a helpful insight to anyone who is thinking about taking their first steps towards being a PM or is just generally interested in the topic.

If you’re interested in chatting about the experience of being a new PM, feel free to reach out on LinkedIn.