Quick Clarification and How to Convince Your Boss to Get You Training

Just wanted to clarify the Cranky Product Manager’s previous post on training.

The Cranky Product Manager is NOT against training for product managers.  Not at all.

In fact, she HEARTS training, and any effort product professionals make to improve their skills and knowledge.  There are some really great classes out there! (see note 1)

It’s the PASSIVE nature of the ‘sit-back-and-train-me’ attitude that drives the Cranky Product Manager bonkers.  Especially when used as an excuse for not getting the job done.  

The Cranky Product Manager says this as someone who has supervised a fair number of product managers: if you want to use ‘lack of training’ as an excuse, your performance review had better NOT be the first time your boss hears about your training needs.  

Instead, you should have been making the business case for training as soon as you concluded your skill gaps were getting in the way.

Now, here’s the Cranky Product Manager’s recipe for “Convincing your boss to give you training.”  It works.  Really.  Well a lot of the time (probably not in early-stage startups).

1. Make a 30 minute appointment with your boss.  

2. Go into this 30 minute appointment with a half-page, bulleted printed handout that he/she can review.  This handout should make the case for getting you trained and give your boss several options to consider.

3. If you’re stuck, structure your doc according to a classic “Situation, Complication, Recommendation” outline.

Situation:

• The specific skills you already have
• Where you would like to be, and why your boss should agree that this is a good goal for you. (maybe refer to a previous performance review)

Complication:

• The gap between your current skills and where you want to be
• If you were to remedy this gap, how would the company benefit? What’s in it for your boss?  In which release would your boss’s life improve, due to your improved skills?  

Recommendations:

• List a few different options for closing the skill gap (bosses love to pick from different options).  For each, list the pros/cons, the cost, and the time frame. 
• The Cranky PM recommends that you suggest at least one option that involves no budget but instead involves time.
  • For example, your boss could tutor you in this specific skill and meet with you once or twice a week.  In proposing this option, you should be very specific about how often you’d want to meet and what you would need from the boss (without seeming too needy).  Example: (provide face-to-face feedback on the latest version of my product strategy document once a week, help me brainstorm how to segment the market, give me a lollipop and a “you’re a SUPERSTAR” sticker at the end, etc).
  • Note that the bigger the time commitment needed for your “free” option, the more likely your boss is to pick another option.  
• Make sure you highlight which option YOU recommend and why. 
• Acknowledge that there are several constraints at play: budget, release schedules, who will pick up the slack while you sit in training, etc. Explain how you will minimize these impacts.

4. Go over the handout in the meeting.  Get your boss nodding “yes” as you mention each point.  Hopefully that yes-nodding will get her/his neck limbered up, and s/he will also agree to one of your training options.

5. If your boss immediately picks an option, great. Go back to your desk, write an email to the boss saying something “Thanks for meeting with me today. We agreed that I should sign up for training class X.”  Then go sign up. Hurry. (But pray there is a decent cancellation policy if your boss is one of those people who changes his/her mind every 3 minutes).

If your boss wants more time to think about it, do NOT leave the meeting without nailing down a time frame for a decision.  Immediately set a meeting for follow-up.

6. Remember, NO WHINING!  No “you owe me.” Keep focused on the benefits of your training to YOUR BOSS and the company.  

7. If the boss says “no,” be mature about it. Try to understand why. Then go educate yourself as directed in the previous post, using all the resources of the online PM community.  And then, in a few months, try again.

Now, you might worry that all this would be pestering and annoying to your boss. That’s a valid worry.  But more likely is that your boss would be 20% annoyed (because now s/he has to make a decision and maybe spend some money) and 80% patting him/herself on the back for hiring such a high-potential, results-focused product manager. Because the way you approach the training issue shows how you would also approach the rest of your job.

Note 1: The Cranky Product has partaken of many training opportunities (a self-funded MBA, Product Camps, UC Extension, Pragmatic Marketing), but her employers never paid. Apparently, she did not master the above-described technique until too late in her career, when she became the boss and found herself on the receiving end.

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Tagged as: product management, training