Cheryl Kan, Product Manager
Joined in 2020, from 🇭🇰
What led you to become a product manager?
When I was small, I struggled between being an architect and a psychologist — one who designs and builds from scratch (0 to +1) and one who eases clients’ pain by diagnosing their problems and offering treatments (-1 to 0). Fortunately, I have discovered Product Manager as a perfect occupation which fulfills both my career wishes — we understand what makes our users struggle and deliver innovation / constant improvement to satisfy their needs accordingly. This -1 to +1 journey is exactly the impact I hope to bring and that’s what led me to become a product manager since 2018.
What does a typical day look like?
Okay let’s do it in a more “PM” way — here comes my typical day flow chart:
- Pre-productive stage 🌅
I start my day with Sleep Cycle telling me how well (or bad) my sleep was
→ Have a decent breakfast and a cup of hot Pu’er tea (more is coming)
→ Listen to podcast / radio during commute - Productive stage 👩💻
Start off with the urgent and important tasks
→ Meet with different stakeholders but more often it would be the 1:1 me and myself meeting (basically brainstorming) with huge consumption of Pu’er tea throughout the day
→ Listen to podcast / radio again on my way back home - Post-productive stage 🌃
Enjoy my family dinner and another cup of hot Pu’er tea to recharge myself
→ Netflix and CHEW — for the Netflix part, my favourite would be the Explained series by Netflix Originals and 哲學有偈傾 / 鏗鏘集 by RTHK — these programmes are short but well-structured enough to offer you the basics of different topics and leave you room for further exploration. As for the Chew part, anything would be fine since I really enjoy snacking 😋
→ Have a final check on my calendar and emails, text with friends, do 30 mins reading before sleep to stay away from the blue light
Name three people or things you feel inspired when creating a product.
There are three things I constantly remind myself when creating a product:
💡 Validate hypotheses before jumping into conclusion
During idea generation, very often we will develop intuitions on how the ideal products should look like and go straight to optimise them without validation. To quote what Daniel Kahneman wrote in Thinking, Fast and Slow,
“Jumping to conclusion is efficient if the conclusions are likely to be correct and the costs of an occasional mistake is acceptable, and if the jump saves much time and effort.”
As PMs who are familiar with our products, in most cases our hypotheses should be valid. But I believe if we aim to create products that users truly want, an “efficient way” may not always be the best path we are looking for.
💡 Build simple products that bring values
When planning for a release, sometimes we try to include a bunch of features to maximize the benefits to users, yet it may turn out to be too overwhelming, stopping them to explore more.
With this in mind, we should always prioritize and build with empathy — make sure the products are simple and user-friendly so the users can digest and enjoy our great features bit by bit :)
💡 Communicate effectively across stakeholders
A good product can never be launched if we PMs fail to deliver ideas to and collaborate with our stakeholders well. Here comes the best illustration…
What would your self-portrait look like?
Sitting on a cozy sofa in front of a huge bookshelf, my loved ones and I exchange our thoughts while sipping our cups of hot tea.
🛋️📚☕💭
Anything you want to promote or plug?
The power of StoryListening. While good storytelling skills can help us persuade people, I believe it’s more important to first learn about how to listen so we can see things from a broader perspective and generate sensible ideas that empathize with most people. Sometimes we may also get inspiration out of others’ stories.
Humans of New York is probably too well-known for me to introduce, let’s check out a local one called StoryTeller 說故事
You may also check out their Facebook or Instagram pages:
StoryTeller: Facebook, Instagram
I hope you will also find it enjoyable :)
