Namrata (Nam) Sarmah is CPO at INTO University Partnerships and the founder of Women in Product UK, a community through which she hopes to build a pipeline of female product management talent and finally put to bed the excuses that hiring managers currently fall back on when challenged on their female talent acquisition. She's also passionate about making sure we get more product people into the C-suite, and will soon be launching the CPO Track community to support this. We chatted about all this, and much more.
Episode highlights:1. You don't need an MBA to get into product, but it's not unhelpful
There's a lot of controversy about the merits (or lack of) of MBAs in product management. MBAs are not essential, but they can be helpful when trying to crack the C-suite as you've already spent a lot of time working on your business sense. There are other ways to get this though; the most important thing is to develop that business sense one way or another.
2. Just because you're great a product management, doesn't mean you'll be a great CPOIt's hard to land a Chief Product Officer job, and even harder to stay in there. You require a mix of skills, and just being the best at product management doesn't help. It requires a mix of business acumen, executive presence (sad, but true) and the ability to tell a story in terms that resonate with your leadership peers.
3. Building a community is hard, but you can treat it like a productCommunity-building is not an easy skill to teach someone; it requires a certain mindset and certain instincts. There are different types of people in the world, and some of them are natural "connectors" who just know how to join the dots and get people together.
4. Women in Product UK is its own thing, and its superpower is diversityThere are various communities around the world that support product managers, or female product managers specifically, but a lot of them have quite a narrow focus on certain job levels or roles. Having top female CPOs available for free in a community is a superpower.
5. The name of the game is pipeline building, and allies are welcomeSome sad sacks will sit and grumble about having a "women in product" group rather than just a generic "people in product" group. but the numbers don't lie. Women are still underrepresented in senior positions, and it's easy for companies to blame "pipeline problems". So let's all build the pipeline, so they don't have an excuse anymore.
Contact NamYou can connect with Nam on LinkedIn or check out Women in Product UK, where you can interact with the community and get onto the WhatsApp group.
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Pragmatic Digital Transformation in Traditional Industries (with Dan Chapman, Director, Product Line Leader @ Merck)
Understanding & Interrupting Cognitive Biases in Product Design (with David Dylan Thomas, Author ”Design for Cognitive Bias”)
Building Disruptive Products by Harnessing Power Users (with Moustapha Seck, Founder @ Fluid)
We’re All Responsible For Accessible Product Design (with Holly Schroeder, Senior UX Researcher & Accessibility Advocate)
Aligning Teams with Data & Finding Your Second Product/Market Fit (with Matt Arbesfeld, CEO & Co-Founder @ LogRocket)
Supporting Product Managers & Standing Up for the Value of Product Management (with Princess Akari, founder @ PeopleInProduct)
Adventures in Product Management (with Dan Olsen, author ”The Lean Product Playbook”)
Getting On Top Of Your User Stories & Requirements (with Richard Awe, founder @ Requstory)
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The Importance of Getting Your Product Launches Right (with Derek Osgood, Founder & CEO @ Ignition)
Standing Up for Diversity & Inclusion When No One Looks Like You (with Merina Khanom, Product Manager @ BBC iPlayer)
Getting Strategic to Land Your First Product Management Job (with Crystal Parker, Product Manager & Entry Level Career Coach)
Test Business Ideas Ethically by Experimenting With, Not On, Customers (with David Bland, Co-author ”Testing Business Ideas”)
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Pioneers, Settlers & Town Planners in Performance Design (with Richie Lokay, VP of Product Design and Services @ Wunderkind)
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