Product managers face many challenges in their work, such as insufficient project budget, lack of cooperation from other departments, lack of marketing investment, etc. These seemingly external resource issues are actually problems with the product manager’s own capacity building.
First and foremost is to enable product managers to have strong leadership. If the product manager has strong enough leadership, even if team members have doubts about certain issues in the project, they will follow you forward. In his day, Jobs was famous for his “reality distortion field,” which was actually a reflection of his strong leadership. Of course, for product managers, having such leadership is a very high requirement. Because leadership itself is a composite ability and its cultivation process is also very long. But there is no doubt that the earlier product managers start to cultivate their own leadership, the more beneficial it will be for our own career development.
Of course, if we don’t have a “reality distortion field” for the time being, we need to show our leaders and colleagues enough evidence so that they will support our project. The most powerful proof is profit. If the product manager can make their new product constantly make money, our project will be very easily supported by various resources. This is actually a business model design issue. An excellent product manager must be a master of business model design.
But to make the product profitable, you must first make the product truly popular with users. This requires the product manager to lead the team to develop a truly valuable product. There is no doubt that to achieve this, you need to run faster than your competitors. In the field of product development management, we also have many professional skills to help us achieve these goals. So product managers need to master many professional tools and methods, especially more advanced methods. You can’t beat an enemy armed to the teeth with a spear.
The real problem here is how to use these methods. In fact, most of the processes, tools and methods in the product field are transparent. You can use them and your competitors can also find these methods. The real key behind this is product thinking. That is, how to use some more underlying logic to drive these processes, tools and methods? In other words, without product thinking as a guide, product managers can easily become “tool people.” On the contrary, once we master product thinking, you can see the essence of many phenomena behind it and find the real key.
From using tools to using product thinking to business model design and forming true product leadership this actually represents four levels of product managers And UCPM certification is a competency assessment project based on an advanced product manager competency model Therefore it is both a comprehensive knowledge system and contains advanced theories processes and methods in the current field of product development More importantly its capacity building process also corresponds to these four different levels.
In UCPM courses we can see that Introduction to Management and Product Psychology are the knowledge foundation of the entire course system Introduction to Management can be seen as a more advanced mini MBA Especially for technically trained product managers it can help you quickly understand the evolution of management concepts sort out which knowledge is outdated which is advanced and which are the core concepts that current managers need to master Product Psychology is truly basic for product managers Whether it’s understanding our users or leading our teams we face a lot of psychological phenomena in our work Only when product managers truly master the characteristics and causes of various psychological phenomena can they really use our various professional tools well in actual work.
And what’s most in the course system are actually various professional abilities of product managers including Innovation Tools and Methods User Research Methods User Experience Lean Startup Agile Development Business Model Design User Behavior Design Data Management and Product Documentation These contents cover various stages in the daily work of product managers including many specific processes tools and methods Especially what’s taught here are currently more advanced skills And it’s also necessary for developing truly innovative products.
And commanding these professional skills is Product Thinking Although Product Thinking is very important it is often misunderstood Many people mistake tools and methods for thinking In fact true Product Thinking is the underlying logic of Product Management It will be reflected in every specific piece of work in Product Development and Management It can be widely used and used as the most fundamental judgment standard for Product Managers So Product Thinking is often seen as the underlying logic of Product Management And this course in UCPM really clarifies what Product Thinking is which is also one of the most popular courses in the entire system.
In addition, what is very characteristic in the UCPM system is the Business Model Design course. If you purchase courses separately, you will find that this course is also priced the highest. Because its gold content is also the highest. It teaches you how to design excellent business models, not just ordinary ones. In fact, one of the challenges faced by business model design is that it often lacks sufficient intellectual property protection. In other words, this is a field that relies purely on innovation. If our product’s business model is copied from an existing business model, it often means that our product has already lost at the starting line.
There are also four courses that are specifically targeted at senior product managers, such as senior product managers, product directors, and even chief product officers. They need to focus on mastering team management and business analysis skills, including Product Leadership, Systems Thinking for Product Managers, Product Portfolio Management and Team Facilitation. Although these four courses are elective courses for product managers, we still recommend that everyone study these courses carefully. On the one hand, these abilities are actually the core abilities of senior managers such as product directors, and at the same time they are also the key abilities for product managers to be promoted to senior management positions. Therefore, for product managers, it is better to cultivate these abilities earlier.
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