Four courses to help you transform into an AI product manager

Course 1: Product Thinking and Product Sense

What makes many product managers suffer? It’s the entanglement. Is the demand a false demand? Should the function be done? Should A be done first or B? Especially when customers are putting pressure on you, data is incomplete, and you are in a state of chaos, what do you rely on to make decisions?

So the first course we want to solve is not “better at writing documents”, but to first learn to think and establish a user-centered value judgment paradigm: how do you define value, how do you break down value, and how do you turn value into priority.

If “product thinking” can help us make correct judgments based on facts and logic. What should we do when facts and data are missing? This is exactly what we often face when we do cutting-edge innovation. Therefore, the more important thing is “Product Sense”. Many people think that “product intuition” is a talent, or even “metaphysics”. But in fact, the core problem that “product intuition” really solves is: how to make decisions in extremely uncertain situations?

This course will help you wash away those outdated thinking habits and use a scientific perspective to re-polish your “intuition.” After completing the course, you will find that the “product intuition” that excellent product managers talk about is actually like a treasure map of a maze. They know exactly where the treasure is, where the fork is, where the mystery is hidden, and where the secret path to success is.

Course 2: Mental Model – From User Experience to Business Model Design

If the first course is a map, then this course is the compass in your hand.

The course is rich in content: user research, product design, behavioral design, business model… But its real value lies not in the “complete modules”, but in giving learners a main line: “mental model”.

“Mental model” is the internal mapping of our understanding of the world. Different users have different “mental models”. For example, B-end products and C-end products seem to be clearly defined, but the real difference behind them lies in the “mental model”.

For product managers, our real job is not to draw prototypes or write documents. The core of the work of an excellent product manager is to “identify” and “translate” the user’s mental model, and use technology to design the product into a product that can be accepted by the user’s mind, providing a pleasant user experience.

AI can generate hundreds of interaction schemes in one second and write perfect copy. It can even appear to be full of emotion. But these are all “pretend” understandings. It doesn’t really understand what greed, fear, vanity, and loneliness are. It has no body or hormones, cannot understand the true meaning of the subconscious, and has no real “empathy.” The fundamental difference between humans and AI is that humans can truly understand the “mind model” from a deep level. It is also a key ability that we cannot replace in the AI era.

But the “mental model” compass in the hands of the product manager is not just “empathy”. It will guide us in many specific tasks, from user research to product design, behavior design, and business model design. There are a large number of processes, tools, and methods in this series of tasks. With the compass of “mental model”, we not only know what to do and how to do it in our work, but also know how to think from the perspective of users’ mental model, why to do it, and how to do these jobs well according to users’ mental model.

To truly understand the “mental model”, you must first master “product psychology”. If you master this course, we can build a defense line that AI cannot cross. You are not understanding the needs, you are understanding human nature. You are not designing functions, you are designing people’s hearts.

Course 3: Product Leadership

Many product managers encounter some challenges when they first start working, such as other departments not cooperating, no one listening to them, and the technology department saying that they cannot do it when they make requests. And often they wonder if they should learn a little development themselves?

But in reality, the real problem is often leadership, which is usually not a technical problem, but a team management problem. Unlike other managers, product managers face leadership challenges early in their careers: they have no executive power, but they have to mobilize other departments and be responsible for the results. Innovative projects are even more difficult: the direction is uncertain, failure is commonplace, and the team is prone to discouragement. To succeed, you can’t rely on chicken soup, but on methods.

In the battlefield of innovation, no one is born a general. The so-called “product leadership” is actually a kind of ability to “drive the team to go thru failures and achieve goals without authorization.” The value of this course is that it breaks down the seemingly mysterious leadership into methods and tools that can be trained, implemented, and improved: how to explain the vision clearly; how to break down the strategy; how to do competitive analysis; how to do influential communication; how to use project management methods to grasp the development rhythm, and how to leave exploration space for the team? It can help you complete the most important leap in your career: from a “transaction manager” who handles miscellaneous affairs to a “captain” who truly steers the ship.

Product manager is a leadership position, and the real key to leadership is: you have to learn early, the earlier the training, the better.

Course 4: AI Product Development

You may have noticed that the first three courses, from learning to think, learning to do things, to learning to manage people, are actually helping us to systematically master the knowledge and abilities that product managers need to have, especially those differential abilities between us and AI. This course is actually to give you the wings of productivity. AI is not our opponent, but our assistant.

The feature of this course is that it does not analyze AI technology from the perspective of technicians, but truly structures AI technology from the perspective of product managers. Teach you how to turn AI into a product that can be implemented, iterated, measured, and commercialized. You will systematically understand: What scenarios are large models and intelligent agents suitable for? How to design them? Why are data and evaluation the lifeline? How to calculate the cost, latency, risk and experience together? More importantly, how can we use AI, a revolutionary productivity, to reconstruct the existing industry?

When you finish this course, you will no longer feel fear when facing the AI wave, but excitement, you have already ridden on the back of the dragon. Because you know it’s time to say goodbye to the small, shaky boats of websites and apps. You can now drive a real aircraft carrier, a legion of robots, to challenge the real blue ocean of business.

In the future, there will be two paths for product managers. On one path, product managers will gradually become executors in the AI automation process, and this path will become narrower and narrower. The other path is to become a “humanist who drives AI.” We understand technology with our left hand (the fourth course), understand people’s hearts and human nature with our right hand (the second course), have a clear mind and bright eyes (the first course), and have a team behind us (the third course). These four courses are actually a complete path of evolution.

We, the product managers, are standing in the gap between the end of an old era and the beginning of a new era. We embrace AI, but we must first have our own value. The key is already in your hand. Open the door and you will see a great era.