As a product manager at accuRx, your main responsibility is running your product team and delivering value to users, customers, and/or staff. However, being a product person here also means you are part of our product community that prides itself on being safe, supportive, and collaborative.
This brief summary come from a living document for what being part of the product people team at accuRx entails. We wanted to share it more widely because we feel fortunate to be in such a positive group setting, and we think what we do might inspire others!
Our ceremonies and touch points
Product lean coffee (Tuesday lunch)
- Temperature check (everyone gives a “thumbs up” to “thumbs down” evaluation of how they are doing, and gets to share briefly about why if they like).
- Lean coffee (everyone suggests topics they want to discuss and we vote to decide which we want to talk about as a group).
- A place to discuss bigger topics (e.g. running planning sessions, sharing a case study of a success/failure).
Product school (Thursday lunch)
- Each week a different topic from the progression framework is presented and discussed in order to encourage professional development within the product manager role.
Product (and optional friends) standup (Friday lunch)
- We review our product community Kanban board and update on progress of things we have committed to (this includes things like product people hiring and onboarding, writing blog posts, updating internal documents like ownership maps, etc.)
#productpeople Slack channel (ad hoc)
- A place to share ideas, elicit feedback, or general fun/silliness.
What our culture is
- Safe — We encourage everyone to feel comfortable sharing how they’re doing (related to work but also outside of work), and aim to have a secure foundation of trust.
- Supportive — We help each other, even if other’s goals are not our own. As a product people team we are all invested in ensuring everyone achieves.
- Collaborative — Individuals or teams do not compete with each other. We encourage collaboration, helping each other out, and viewing each other’s problems as our own problems.
- Open — There are no dumb questions. We all speak up and share our thoughts.
- Feedback — We are eager to give each other feedback all the time, both positive and constructive, and encourage ad-hoc and timely conversations.
- Learning — We all have things we are working on in terms of learning and growing. We are open about our own strengths and weaknesses, and ask for help from others to up skill ourselves.
- Everyone can learn from each other — No matter what level you are at, you have things to teach and learn from other product people.
What our culture is not
- Alpha — We aren’t dominating, and we don’t view skill or experience as a proxy for being “the boss” over others. Everyone is encouraged to speak up and share their opinions on the same level. Everyone is expected to listen and treat everyone else with respect.
- Blame — We don’t point fingers, but take collective ownership over our mistakes, and support each other in solving our problems.
- Competitive — We always encourage collaboration, and discourage competition.
- Individualistic — We don’t optimise for individual gains or goals, the wider team and company vision is more important.
- Hierarchy — We don’t operate hierarchically and everyone is encouraged to speak up, share their experience, or muck in — no matter their background or role.
- Talking behind each other’s backs — As product people, we are a team that stands up for each other. If something is said about someone else, we defend them in the way that we hope they would defend us.
