Before the lecture, I will make a small interaction. Raise your hand for those born after 90? Well, about a third of people, raise their hands after 80? The rest are post-80 s, so happy, I am like most people. Besides, this topic is absolutely meaningful to most of you.
I have been in business for more than ten years now, and this problem is the most distressing topic in my five to seven or eight years of business. I thought the world was too unfriendly at that time. The internet industry is full of young people. When I was in my thirties, I was under great pressure. The way to relieve this pressure is to do something that I think is more meaningful every weekend. In the final analysis, it is because there is panic in my heart, worrying that I will lose my job one day. If I lose my job, I must find a way out or prepare for a skill, and my income will not drop sharply because I am eliminated by the Internet.
First, the superficial analysis of occupational anxiety
Why is there such anxiety? Do a surface analysis first. I screened three awesome people, the first is Zhang Tianyi, the second is Wang Xinwen, and the third is 09. All three were born after 1985. Among them, I personally admire Wang Xinwen the most. He is the founder of the legend of the Knife Tower. It is said that the monthly flow of the company has exceeded 200 million. Zhang Tianyi founded Funiutang, which is also quite famous in the industry. The third 09 is a game genius. Anyone who plays DOTA should have heard of it. A few years ago, his annual salary exceeded10 million.
Let's talk about which products young people prefer first. These are five signs I collected from the young people in my team. How many do you know?
The second manifestation of occupational panic, I sum up: it seems to be starting to be a little out, panic. The internet is changing so fast that it has fallen behind before you know it. It's terrible. As Pony once said to the product manager in Tencent: You are not wrong, you are just too old.
I want to ask everyone here, has everyone ever dreamed of retiring at the age of forty and traveling around the world? But have you really thought about what it will be like after 40? Below I list some key words, so that everyone can feel the malice of this world.
The first key word is the working environment. Take me for example, it's been nearly two months since 7* 14, and today's PPT is still being changed two hours before going on stage. The internet industry is like this. Hard work, great pressure, and everyone is tired.
The second keyword is portrait. At the age of 40, what is our state? Maybe we were still drifting in the north at that time, and we didn't have an account. Maybe it's a bald middle-aged man or a scruffy middle-aged woman. Oh, yes, we also brought a swimming ring. What a cruel picture this is!
The third key word is market competition. I don't know if you have counted, but I am 25 years old after 90. Do you think they are still children? No, they have reached the legal age of late marriage. At present, all major companies should have joined the post-90 s, and even the post-95 s have already started internships. I interviewed several interns this year. 1995 children are very thoughtful. They started their business in their freshman year and failed in their sophomore year. Their life experiences are so complete that they are much better than mine.
The fourth key word is to support the family. At the age of 40, we should all get married and put family first, especially boys, who are the pillars of the family. We may not be able to afford anything, and our children can't afford a second child. Even our pensions are castles in the air. At the age of 60, can't we live?
Second, the deep-seated causes of occupational anxiety
All the above are appearances. Let me summarize the deep-seated reasons and see why the product's work anxiety is particularly serious.
First: We don't seem to have any skills. You will find these icons familiar. Since axure, PS has been at a skill-rich level, and many people are just drawing boards or taking pictures of Xiu Xiu. If you know Python, that would be great. Absolutely belongs to the technical product manager. Technically, it seems that we are really not very good.
Second: there seems to be no prospect. Should work experience be accumulated in one industry or multiple industries? Not everyone is engaged in or has the opportunity to engage in emerging fields or industries. I have a friend who has been making products for ten years and has rich experience, but she has been concentrating on making PC antivirus engines, all the time. Now let's count, there are no more than five companies that are still doing PC antivirus engines on the market. PC, antivirus software or engine, what a narrow choice. The choice of industry is many for us, but it will also be very confusing.
Last time after class, many people added me to WeChat. Most people came up and asked me, does Tencent still need people? But do you know the position of others in a company like BAT? Many people don't think how good BAT is. BAT people are thinking about where to start a business and where to make a fortune after jumping out of BAT every day. Everyone has his own troubles.
But when it comes to project prospects, many people may have * * * knowledge. Not everyone is clear about the development and direction of the project. And when we really meet a promising project, there is a great possibility that we will meet a stupid leader. Everyone in the audience is laughing. There should be a lot of knowledge on this question. Too frequent job hopping is not a good thing. Some people will jump from one industry to another, and there is not much connection between them. Last time, many people added me to WeChat and asked Tencent if it still needed people. I feel very sad. Does everyone really want to jump into BAT? In fact, people in BAT don't think how good BAT is. People in BAT are thinking about where to start a business after jumping out of BAT every day.
Third, there seems to be no innovation. In our usual work, we often see such a scene. When writing product requirements, the first thing to do is to see how competitors are doing. The second thing is to see how similar foreign products are made. Euphemistically called, competing product analysis! Is this really a competitive analysis? Competitive product analysis is to copy competitors. If you are a little cynical, you will scold in various forums. Are there any companies in China that don't copy? Is China Suitable for Innovation? What is the role of innovative products here?
Fourth, in terms of information contact, we can't be significantly different from others. Theoretically, there is no information that you know but he doesn't. People receive information from more and more similar sources and channels. With the development of the Internet, the path of information dissemination has become shorter than ever before.
Secondly, there are almost no practitioners who don't understand the Internet. The flattening of information is serious, so it is very easy to share information and express opinions. This makes the cost of innovation continue to decline. Looking at China's good voice, there is a feeling that more and more people sing well. Think about it, this has something to do with the popularity of KTV in China. With karaoke software, you can find a corner to practice. In many things, what is lacking is only the soil of practice. As long as you are willing to spend energy, you will have a chance. In this era of information flooding, everyone can speak freely. These two reasons make our ideas on the Internet less and less advantageous. Therefore, in essence, there are no unexpected ideas and unpublished opinions.
Finally, senior industry experts are also increasing. Experts accumulated in vertical industries have superimposed the basic skills of the Internet, and they have become industry experts. Everyone can see all kinds, including the sharing of steamed bread, and people from all walks of life can see it. Everyone here has something to learn.
Generally speaking, in essence, it seems difficult for us to remain no different from others.
There is also a source of industry anxiety, which comes from the industry threshold of products, which is surprisingly low. All industries, including traditional industries, have the lowest entry barriers, such as intermediary, sales and … products. This industry has a * * * nature, that is, anyone can do it as long as they want. I've seen people who come out from English, mathematics and other majors to make products, and I've also seen people who switch from testing and technology to making products. More and more people are pouring into this industry, and the technical threshold of this industry is relatively low, which leads to unprecedented pressure on everyone.
What's more cruel is that in this industry, a lot of people who are better than you work harder than you. Let me give you two examples. The first one is pony's. A few years ago, Tencent's input method was actually a very small product of Tencent. At 2 o'clock one morning, I was dragged into the WeChat group and saw Xiaoma send five very detailed suggestions, including that the back button of a page should be placed below rather than above. About five points are like this. The last one is that I usually rest late. If you feel disturbed, you can mute it first and reply after seeing it tomorrow morning. According to incomplete statistics, Pony experiences a lot every day, and then feeds back these, some even very detailed questions to each product team. Another example comes from a friend of mine who posted a picture in Xiaomi one day, which read "9: 30 in the company basement on Saturday morning". Can you tell? Both cars are Porsche. Local tyrants go to work so early on weekends. What should we ordinary people do?
In fact, physical exhaustion is not a big problem. The biggest trouble comes from the spiritual level. You have worked hard, but it seems that eggs are useless. To sum up, it is a question of one direction.
The deep-seated pain of people comes from the mismatch between ambition and ability. In fact, this is the biggest source of your anxiety. This is also your motivation to move forward.
Third, what can be done to get rid of such occupational anxiety?
In the workplace, you need to consider two things. The first thing is a clear understanding of personal development. In layman's terms, how to become Altman? The second is to clearly know the development of the industry, where is the monster?
First of all, talk about the improvement of personal development.
Today, after 80s, I take the Saint Saint as an example. The growth of saint seiya, a saint, comes from three most important points: the first is skill, and he is proficient in the skills of Tianma Meteor Boxing; The second is mentality. He persevered in pursuing his goal, was killed countless times and got up countless times. The third is the stage. He is well aware of his state. The challenge is from silver to gold to Neptune. Although it is a cross-level challenge, he has a clear understanding of his stage. If comics start challenging boss, it won't have a good result, will it?
Let's start with the skills section.
After ten years in business, my interview topics have not changed much. First, do you have an ideal? Second, do you have any special skills? What's your hobby? The third question is different from the others. Are you different? What are the advantages of being more suitable for this job than others?
The third question actually cuts into different levels. Your ideal is your future, your specialty is your present, and the difference is your perception of yourself. On the surface, these are just three seemingly unrelated questions, but from the answers to these three questions, we can know whether you have a clear understanding of your state.
Why are these three questions important?
There is an answer from our company vp, which I think can better explain why: When introspecting, you should distinguish whether this is your long board, short board or bottleneck. In the past, we always talked about making up our own shortcomings, but in the rapidly changing era of mobile Internet, fewer and fewer people in the workplace care about how short your shortcomings are, but how long your longboard is, how much core value you can play, and how to solve the bottleneck problem. The interviewer's answer to the question, in my opinion, is a good way to ask yourself questions and a good starting point for investigation.
Fourth, the core of the product quality model
I refined the core of the product quality model, which is basically summarized as these four points.
The first point: insight, insight into the deepest reasons from the chaotic and complicated appearance.
I used to be an exploration engineer in sogou. This is a particularly forward-looking project. Simply put, it is similar to google now. In the user's browsing page, I recommend related reading. Because this recommendation is not based on simple keywords, for example, if you enter keywords in the search box now, there will be a drop-down suggestion prompt. This recommendation has some semantic leaps, but it is easy to understand. For example, if a user browses a guide to Phuket, it is very cheap to recommend him to go there. Come on!
When this project first started, many people thought it was difficult to do. What does the team say should be done? My answer to you is to look at the user session first. The so-called user session refers to the details of a user browsing the page, how long it took to search, whether to turn pages or scroll the screen, where he clicked and where he spent money. I have an impressive case. A user looked at sports shoes on Taobao all afternoon. She tried to search for the sports shoes she wanted by changing various keywords, such as Nike, pink, size 37 and so on. She tried all kinds of methods, and finally it should be time to get off work. It took her less than three minutes to jump to three pages: search page, product details, payment, and bought a purifier.
I believe many men can't understand women's shopping thinking, just as they can't understand why the upper limit of Taobao's shopping cart is 99, and most women are full all year round. Therefore, from many appearances, we need to have a profound insight to better understand the basic situation of people standing behind these phenomena.
The second important ability is empathy.
All product managers know some very popular words, such as user pain points, user value, demand, etc. They talk about them every day. But let's seriously reflect, have you really thought about it from the user's point of view? Let me share it with the case of WeChat. Recently, I had in-depth business contact with their team, and they really gave me a great impact. Everyone has fully thought about the various ways of playing this scene after completing each function. If it is not polished to the extreme, it will not go online. You may not be satisfied, so ask yourself a question. When KPI conflicts with user value, which one will you choose? Many people will say that you can choose KPI, but WeChat chooses user value. The hardest thing is that when their team size has reached one or two thousand people, everyone who makes products can still think so. This is where the WeChat team is very awesome.
The third is inductive ability.
There must be clear logic. To make products, we must deal with development. Without logical support, you can't recognize it if you skip development.
The fourth is the last one, that is, deductive ability.
Many people only have the process of induction, not the process of thinking. I don't think product demand comes from induction. If the product demand from the induction world has already been completed, in fact, many places need to jump. Then the part that is pushed back after the jump is completed is the deduction.
These four are the most important cores of the product quality model. If you have these four qualities at the same time, congratulations, you are very suitable for making products.
5. Mapping from quality model to personality
A good product manager's personality is manifested in: first, he has a wide range of interests and hobbies, is skilled, and has the ability to appreciate many beautiful things, such as music and art; second, he is easily moved by stories, has a perceptual layer, is prone to empathy, and can better empathize. Third, I am rational and calm, pay attention to order, have the good quality of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and don't give up resilience when encountering setbacks. Fourth, there are split, random and unrestrained parts at the personality level, which is the basis for your thinking jump.
The fundamental reason is that the product is not a work based on reason and logic, and it needs a lot of imagination and perceptual perception.
Then most people may think that none of the above types have been hit. Don't worry, from a big perspective, the product industry has planning, operation, data and other branches. Taking specific product planning as an example, there are many subdivisions, such as business, strategy and client, and their requirements for capability model will be different. There are many practitioners here today. Let me give you a suggestion. If you change jobs across industries, you'd better jump in a vertical dimension. You'd better jump into the depth dimension of your own industry. For example, you can jump from the commercial product manager of Baidu HIVE BOX to the vertical O2O like 58.
Of course, the most important thing is to find the one that suits you best. For example, strategic products actually do not need strong jumping ability, but need very strong data mining ability and reasoning ability, and the logic should be very strict and accurate in order to cooperate with the team well and make the whole strategy very good. So everyone needs to have a clear understanding of the product industry they are engaged in. Especially when we have just entered the workplace, we must find the most suitable market segment for our own development. Just like a product, if the tone is right, the follow-up can have a longer-term development.
Sixth, mentality: the practice of mentality.
Let me talk about mentality first, which means a little chicken soup. But if you only treat chicken soup as chicken soup, it can only be a bowl of soup. It would be very helpful if you could feel the truth.
Many people talk about opportunities. Actually, have you ever thought that we make choices every day? For example, if you have a meeting, whether you are silent or active at the meeting, whether today's plan is conservative or radical, and every step in your work is a choice. Choices will accumulate into opportunities, and opportunities will eventually lead to qualitative changes. Opportunities come from the accumulation of quantity, and opportunities will not come out of thin air.
Every success is not accidental. I'm not that great. More profound are WeChat and App Bao. With their personal thinking and the overall state of the team, success is definitely not accidental. The reason why Great God becomes a Great God is that even if this person is not engaged in the product industry, they must be top-notch in other industries.
People who can control the overall situation should have three abilities:
One is called passion, and passion represents your eagerness to learn and thirst for knowledge.
The second overall situation is that in a fast-growing industry, if you only look at the immediate things, you can't do great things.
The third is in charge. When the boss really blames the product manager for the problem, he can stand up bravely. Only those who face up to their own problems can get rid of them. When something bad happens, they desperately push it on others, in fact, they are giving up their chance to change. These three points are for everyone.
Seven, the four stages of product manager
Finally, talk about the stage. Everyone who makes products needs to know what their current state is and what the next stage will be like, so as to have a clear goal and better promotion. Here is a summary of the product stage, which is divided into four stages. The first stage requires introduction. Generally, it is a product manager who has been employed for 1 to 3 years. He can disassemble the complex requirements below the medium level into documents, and the key issues will not be reworked. This idea will have an effect when it goes online. In particular, what I am talking about here is the effectiveness of the results, not the measurement of the process.
The second is the initial demand. Can completely disassemble very complex requirements, complete logic and reliable requirements.
The first stage and the second stage are together. I call it the stage of "looking at the leopard in the tube" Because it is only partially understood, it is inevitable to be "visible".
The third is the middle level of demand. Being able to implement the target direction into the plan and further disassemble it into a version from the plan is a plan-level product stage, in which a small and medium-sized product can be basically covered. I have a more popular name, "Seeing a mountain is a mountain".
The last one is high demand. I'm groping myself, and I can only sum up here and above. The core of this stage is to build the product structure, and I think the essence is the stage of insight into human nature and returning to nature. Such experts can find the most critical points in very complicated clues and build the whole product architecture. The architectural level is a state of "looking at mountains instead of mountains". In the master's deconstruction, the mountain is no longer a specific mountain, but a very clear path and the scenery seen on this path.
Time is limited today, so I mainly disassemble the first stage and the second stage in detail. Wandering outside the door and just entering the door basically belong to the first stage, the entry level. Many people who criticized our team in the past are just graduates and need to write very student-oriented.
The first is that there is no user demand analysis. They think they do, but in my eyes, it's not user demand analysis, but yy.
Second, it is easy to do too much expansion in unnecessary places. When we make products, it is easy to satisfy ourselves. When we get a point, we feel that this point is really awesome and perfect. We must make a very good picture, describe in large paragraphs, do too much preparatory work in unnecessary places, but ignore the elaboration of core logic and reasoning. In my opinion, putting the cart before the horse is a bit.
Third, everyone has just stepped onto the position of product manager. I wonder if the title of manager is easy to cause some illusions. Therefore, this inertia of identity makes everyone care about their identity, and hopes to reflect the right to speak and authority of my product manager in every place. Obtaining demand is more direct from the perspective of resource and grand strategy analysis, not from the dimension of users.
Primary Demand: Why Still Wandering?
For people who have worked for two or three years, what is most needed at this stage is to make progress. At this stage, there will be fatigue. Why do you think I feel as if I have not made progress? I have been standing still. Why is it always like this?
At this time you should ask yourself, the first question, what is your thinking structure? Linear? Face? Still structured? The height of thinking determines your progress stage.
Second question, do you really understand what "express well" means? Many people are interviewing, and I ask "What do you think is the most important quality of a product manager", and 90% of them will answer communication skills. In fact, I think everyone's understanding of communication skills is very one-sided. Communication ability is not a question of skill in essence, but a question of the logical structure of your thinking. Many times, communication is not clear because of bad attitude, but because our way of thinking and the person we are listening to are not in a dialogue state.
The third question, what is the fundamental point of your foothold in your career? Is that clear? Do you remember my starting point for the interview before the reunification? Does what you do match what you are good at? We should have a deep understanding of this matter.
In the process of making version planning, many people who have worked for two to three years may have this experience, writing a complete and planned plan. At first glance, it seems all right, but is the thinking really clear?
Many project plans, in my opinion, are just lists. What are the key nodes of your project? Is there a relationship between one, two, three, four and five key nodes? Is there a main line? As a product, write a project plan first, not to mention what user needs your product needs to meet. What experience do you need to bring to users in half a year? Returning to user value should be the main line of the product.
Eight, sand in long running shoes
Execution is the greatest enemy of imaginative people. Execution is a very important thing. When wechat is mentioned many times, we are all talking about the product. It is strongly recommended that you check the earliest release schedule of WeChat and study what kind of version attitude the WeChat team was at that time, which went against the market. Execution is the premise of all work. Without this, let alone product design. How about a good idea? Without execution, everything is empty talk.
In the long career, we should keep enough curiosity. Curiosity is easy to maintain in a short time, but it is really difficult for a long time. In fact, few people are willing to take the initiative to learn. I often recommend many books to people around me, but the effect is not very good. I've thought about this question. Why don't people want to learn? What I wanted to understand later was that if you didn't have a problem and didn't want to find the answer through books, you wouldn't want to study.
Learning is a very tiring thing. Everyone should find curiosity and be willing to stand at that point, so it is best to cut in from that place instead of following other people's advice. Ma Yun's book list will be published online today, and Ma Hua Teng's book list will be published tomorrow. Let's start reading. It won't work like this. I'll forget it after reading it.
Speaking of insight, I have emphasized it many times today. This quality is very important to product people. The epiphany I am talking about here is not a simple scene association. You see an escalator and say, "Ah, this design department is ergonomic." This phenomenal association is too superficial. I would like to ask everyone here, have you ever taught new products for beginners? Have you done product guidance? Why do you want to do it?
If you don't like learning yourself, why let users learn? Therefore, I especially agree with Zhang Xiaolong's sharing. It is very anti-human to set up new user guidance and new user process teaching for users, and I don't like learning why learning should be imposed on users.
I just said personal development, followed by industry. Due to the limited space, I can only find opportunities to share with you in the future. This industry is changing very fast, with each passing day. Everyone must stay awake in order to develop in this industry.
Nine, the common misunderstanding of demand
Finally, share some words about the bottom of the closet, the so-called common demand misunderstanding.
First, do not do competitive research. I have been in business for many years, and there are really too many such cases. When the product meets the demand and gets it from the big boss, he doesn't look at what you think, but asks you what Baidu says. How did Tencent do it? How does Taobao do it? This cultural atmosphere, or such leading principles and guiding principles, has a very big problem. I believe that many people here are doing competitive product analysis at the beginning of their careers. I think this is a very bad habit.
When you study competitive products, your market and your goal have been limited to the competitive products you study and imitate. But in many cases, subversion does not come from the same dimension, just like the subversion of Weibo by a circle of friends, it is not a direct competitive relationship. Therefore, everyone must be very cautious about the investigation of competing products.
What if we don't do competitive research? Do competitive insight. Let's take WeChat as an example. Brother Long said, you should observe how users use it in the user trend. For example, when they observed Weibo at that time, they mainly looked at the posting time and the text type. Do you want to be yourself in the eyes of others or yourself? From this, we can prove and observe the user trends, rather than see what functions Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo have. This imitation is too elementary.
Insight explains why, not how. I read a book "A Brief History of Mankind" these two days and found it very good. I have doubts about the origin of human reading. For example, we know that this dynasty followed this dynasty. We know it is, but we don't know why. I don't know why the logic behind this matter can't be well understood. I think it's really superficial to copy competing products.
Ten, do not do divergent user interviews, do user insight.
Another common misunderstanding is not to do divergent user interviews. User interviews are like Schrodinger's cat. When the observer bothers the user, it already shows that there is no correct answer. Let's look back at Schrodinger's detailed theory of cats, so I won't go into details here. We should also have user-level insight. I am a circle, and there is a circle outside of us. Because of the natural exclusiveness of human nature, we will subconsciously ignore our own kind-them. For users, you are not in our circle.
Our knowledge of "I" is far greater than our subconscious thoughts. After being substituted into a group, the product manager will enlarge the level of "I". However, the number of people labeled as "we" is far less than expected. Usually we say "we have sex", "curious", "we are all fashionable" and "what are they like".
Therefore, products should be kept in awe. Don't bring yourself in easily, do a good job of user insight and understand what "they" think.
There is another misunderstanding. Many people say that technical problems should be considered when making products. I always instill an idea in the team that technical issues must not be considered when writing requirements. When you are making a plan, you have too many technical ideas. If you make a compromise and have too many practical ideas, how can you clearly know where your ideas are wrong? Don't think about resources, technical ability, realization, etc. Therefore, the product must be bad, which does not represent your level, so you must make a perfect design for users, and don't make too many complicated imaginations.
I think success may be just a short process for everyone. When people reach a higher level, they should think about where my next stage is. How to get to the next intersection? So I think pain is just the normal state of life, happiness is not a short-term node, and life is a practice. After such practice, I believe everyone will find a place where they can stand for a long time in this industry.
This thing that can be supported will not be lost when you are 30 years old or even older in five years. It is something that grows in your heart, your grasp of future life, your cognition of yourself now, and your understanding and curiosity about the whole world.
I believe that everyone will find their own answers in the process of spiritual practice.