A reflection from one year journey as PM in HappyFresh
This week marks exactly one year I joined Happyfresh as Product Manager. Time goes so fast that I feel like it just happened yesterday; I resigned from the previous company (and industry) and got a job as PM in one online groceries startup in SEA. Not to mention that one-year working can be categorized as a long enough period if we see the fast-moving headcount and turnover rate in startup industries. Still, I feel like time goes by really fast — or just me dived too deep in my job, or simply because I love this job.
I feel that there are so many changes in myself (in a positive way), at least I think the betterment of myself, even much better if I also could give positive impact to others (hopefully, who knows). Besides that, I would like to share several points that I get from work for the last year.
Release (responsibly) fast, fail-or-success fast, learn fast
I realized in my job that everything is so fast: customers’ needs, business requirements, operational processes, even what we all faced today: situations such as a pandemic. We have to release fast, get the result from the release — fail or success, get insights and learn from that.
One thing that should be kept in mind is that because everything is so fast, it doesn’t mean that becoming reckless is forgivable. It is similar like trying the Russian Roulette in product management — and it will be costly, in term of time and effort spent.
Yes, we are always in a rush, but still keep in mind that everything we do is still aligned with company goals and business objectives, is relevant to solve the problems, is decided by deep understandings, research, and considerations. If all of that things are fulfilled, we are allowed to make something happened. And after released to the user, get the result and insights from it, then we are forgivable to be failed — or from this case, we didn’t get the expected result. The last thing, make sure that we follow up the results, even if the result is a success, because, aligned with the mantra: there’s always a better way of everything.
We are allowed to fail if and only if we already decided to make things with all of the considerations above, got the learnings from the results, and continued the iterations.
Question everything, communicate everything
As a startup, we might not find the answer to our faced problem on the internet that already solved by another company — or as known as best practices. As well as use cases that might help us provide or run services and operational business process, which not all the third-party service providers are familiar with our business and able to cater to our business requirements.
One thing that I realized important when facing problems or challenges is to question everything. Why does this critical? Because by questioning everything, you could get the insights from other points of view, e.g. maybe previously we faced and solved the similar problems, perhaps previously we decide to not see that as a problem after being reviewed from another point of view. Questioning everything also could lead us to sharpen our assumptions and hypothesis, that could guide us on what actions, steps or solutions to be taken. Again, not all of the questions can be answered directly, sometimes it needs more research and analysis, needs the right people to answer it, or it just needs more time, so be cool with it.
Another thing that also valuable after we question everything is to communicate everything. I have never feel open and transparent about what I worked to anyone within the company previously. When we communicate everything and be transparent, it will lead us to become more accountable and responsible; meanwhile, the others’ expectations from us could be managed (more detailed on the next point).
Expectation kills unless you can manage it
One of my daily task as PM is collaborating with the other part of the company. It is included, but not limited to relevant stakeholders — in my case mostly operation and finance team, our scrum team (engineers, researchers, designers), another team (customer-facing team, internal-facing team), other PMs, even our line managers. When there are communication and collaboration between us and the others, along with their interests, come their expectations.
Me, as a PM, should be aware and identify their expectations. After that, then I should try to manage it. To do that, you could learn by yourself from any source on the internet, but I would like to share several key actions that I found useful. First, do not overpromise, but do underpromise and overdeliver instead. Second, be transparent. Keep communicating things based on reality. Third, always capture their concerns and tell our concerns — or you can say it — find the mutual understandings.
One major learning that I get from expectation management is that we could not fully meet others’ expectations, yet we could not please them all. But still, we could manage their expectations, and a win-win solution could be achieved.
Self-management is important
“Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power.” — Lao Tzu
For almost all of my time working this job is done remotely due to pandemic. It’s not that easy, working at home with all of the distractions, meanwhile facing the world crisis. Although almost my daily job could be done online, the challenges come along that also arise. One of the challenges is self-management. Your line managers might not always supervise and control you; you can deny the notifications coming to you; you can be the evil of yourself because of the lack of control. Self-management and self-leadership could keep us productive, achieving our goals and objectives, yet still considering your work-life balance.
This hard times would define who you are. Are you the one who lacks accountability and responsibility or not — and I choose not to be one of that (hopefully my coworkers are not too). My company also gives us the things that we need to achieve this, such as reimbursable WFH setups, exercise-at-home utilities, and the most important: unlimited mental health consultation with professionals. I think it’s enough to support us to work optimally.
Self-management is challenging, yet it is crucial. Before we could manage other people, first thing first, we should be able to manage ourselves.
Other things I could not mention…
It has been a roller coaster journey — with too many ups rather than the downs. I learn more about the startup ecosystem in Indonesia, meet many great people, handle challenging projects, follow company program (last holiday bingo was total spectacular), and work and collaborate with people whose various backgrounds and nationalities (including Thai and Malay). I could not wait to face other challenges — with current market situations, be involved in other projects, collaborate with other people and learn a lot from them.
Maybe one last hope in the coming future is that I could meet all of the coworkers directly. It also means that I hope the pandemic ends soon, hopefully. Also, kudos to myself that has got through this one year (self-appreciation is important, lol), best decision ever.
Thank you 2020, welcome 2021!
