Looking to up-skill?

This week, we’re focusing on the cross-functional skills product managers need to excel.

From UX design to engineering, marketing, and customer research, these skills enable you to build trust and drive collaboration across teams.

Your ability to work seamlessly with engineers, designers, marketers, and analysts directly impacts your product’s success. Strong cross-functional skills not only improve outcomes but also build credibility and foster trust among your colleagues.

Many product managers rely too heavily on their functional expertise, neglecting the nuanced skills required to bridge diverse teams.

This creates friction, misalignment, and delays. Without deliberate effort to develop cross-functional capabilities, you risk becoming a bottleneck instead of an enabler.

The best product managers are skilled collaborators who can navigate the complexities of cross-functional teams.

The better-rounded you are in these areas helps you understand the process, effort and challenges these key partner groups are facing. It also helps you become a collaborator instead of a customer.

There is no shortage of resources out there to help you learn new skills and make yourself a more valuable Product Manager. For each area below, I have a book recommendation and tools I have found useful.

Important note: This is not an affiliated marketing thing. I don't care where you buy them. Check them out for free at a library if you want. But I found them useful.

Here are the areas I recommend pursuing to up your game.

Develop a Working Knowledge of UX Design

Effective collaboration with designers starts with understanding their world. You don’t need to be a designer, but you do need to speak their language.

Good design is critical to delivering a product users love. When you understand design principles, you can facilitate better conversations about user flows, wireframes, and prototypes.

More specifically, focus on learning about:

Design Thinking: Learn to empathize with users, define problems, and ideate solutions.

Wireframing Tools: Tools like Figma or Sketch help you visualize and communicate ideas clearly.

User Research Basics: Understand how to gather insights from usability testing and customer interviews.

I highly recommend reading "The Design of Everyday Things" by Don Norman.

Use free tools like a free Figma account to practice creating simple wireframes.

Build Technical Fluency

Engineering is at the core of product development, and technical fluency is crucial for PMs to collaborate effectively with engineers.

Understanding technical trade-offs and constraints allows you to prioritize effectively and build trust with engineers.

If you work closely with tech, I would start by learning about

APIs and System Architecture: Learn how systems communicate and what’s involved in building scalable solutions.

API's are used EVERYWHERE these days. You need to at least understand what they are and what purpose they serve.

Basic Coding Concepts: Familiarity with coding helps you understand engineering timelines and limitations.

It also helps you learn how digital things work at a fundamental level. Both will be useful in talking with engineering partners

Agile and Scrum Practices: Know how engineers work to align processes effectively.

Make sure to read "Head First: Learn to Code" by Eric Freeman for a coding introduction.

FreeCodeCamp.org for hands-on coding practice. They have A LOT of courses to choose from. It's a great resource for kids too.

Understand Marketing Fundamentals

Product-led growth strategies are phenomenal.

But most products don’t sell themselves. Understanding marketing can better position your products and help you better collaborate with go-to-market teams.

From defining product positioning to supporting campaigns, your ability to partner with marketing ensures your product reaches the right audience.

Areas I have focused on are:

Product Positioning and Messaging: Learn how to articulate your product’s unique value proposition. This sounds elementary, but it's VERY easy to lose sight of.

Analytics and Metrics: Understand tools like Google Analytics or Mixpanel to assess campaign performance.

Lifecycle Marketing: Know the strategies for engaging customers at every stage of their journey.

Two solid reads on this list:

"Made to Stick" by Chip and Dan Heath for insights on messaging.

"Crossing the Chasm" by Geoffrey Moore for go-to-market frameworks.

HubSpot Academy for free courses on marketing strategy. You can get the "101 level" kind of training, but also more complex and nuanced areas like brand building or advertising.

Master the Art of Customer Research

Knowing your customers deeply is critical to building the right product. Customer research provides the foundation for user-centered design and helps align teams around real-world needs.

You may already do this as a core responsibility as a Product Manager.

But if you work at a larger company, odds are you have dedicated professionals who handle a lot of this and you are more of an involved partner than a driver.

Critical things to learn about here are:

Interview Techniques: Ask open-ended questions is a great "pro-tip", but there are many other aspects of interviewing that are useful.

Survey Design: Surveys are great for spotting trends or getting quick, fairly specific feedback.

Data Analysis: Learn to analyze quantitative feedback for patterns and trends.

Read "Lean Customer Development" by Cindy Alvarez.

Use tools like Typeform and UserTesting for hands-on practice conducting interviews.

Survey Monkey is far and away the best survey-building tool I have tried.

Final Takeaways

While the skills I mention on this list are not typically core requirements for a Product role, cross-functional collaboration is.

By investing in broadening your skills you’ll build stronger partnerships, create alignment, and deliver better products.

Start small.

Choose one area to focus on this month. Whether it’s shadowing a designer, taking a coding course, or leading a customer interview, each step will make you a more effective partner and leader.

​

​

​

​

​

​
​