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What it takes to move to Product Management from another function successfully.

When I reflect on all the mentoring sessions that I have had so far, I can say that the different sessions couldn’t have been more colourful. I tested several early stage versions of apps, I brainstormed on new ideas, I have shared career advice and I spoken to many product managers who are in a similar state as I am and we exchanged experiences and learned from each other.
Nevertheless, I do see some patterns of topics, which occur regularly and I want to take one of those today and write down my thoughts for more people to read. The topic that I chose for this blog post is around how to transition to product management from other disciplines. Spoiler alert: it is possible, always. But it requires endurance, passion and commitment.
Tl;dr For me, far and foremost it is the passion to solve customer problems, which means to be 100% customer centric and have the ability to put yourself in your customers shoes at any given point in time. The more empathy a product manager has towards their…
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12 surprising facts about what happened since The Mentoring Club started

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How Disruptive Innovation is changing the face of new business strategies?

In the current uncertain times, many companies are facing the test of redefining their strategy in a very very short time frame, not even weeks but days. This is the only solution to not only the economic pressure but also the way the consumer has started to think. Getting a better understanding of disruption will help you define your new strategy of becoming a disrupter or avoiding being disrupted, or to better scan different opportunities and path your way to what’s next. How to put together technology, customer value and experience, new business and supply chain models and an out of the box approach as a whole.We have set up a complete DISRUPTION series that brings a step by step perspective for you to deal with challenging times and define your new strategy. This includes tools and examples to distinguish between developments that will last and drive changes, versus developments that are fade away with the changing world.The term “Disruptive innovation “coined by Clayton Christens…
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Taming Advice Monsters While Mentoring

Let me introduce you to the advice monster that I got to know in Michael Bungay Stanier’s TED talk “How to tame your advice monster”. Imagine someone asking you for advice. Before they even finish explaining the problem, your advice monster awakens already waiting for its turn to burst out all the brilliant advice. That advice monster is convinced that you know the situation well even if you may not have the full context at all. 
When we think of a mentor, we often expect someone who is capable of giving great advice. We may also become mentors because we feel we have enough experience, passion, and ability to advise people. However, mentoring is much more complex than simply providing advice. And, mentoring environments usually are extremely satiating spots for advice monsters. For a better mentoring experience we need to tame our advice monsters.
Mentoring requests often start with a small description of a person’s challenges and often it ends with a question: “What could you advise m…
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How to get the best out of Career Coaching

Once you find the right career coach, it takes some effort to make the experience effective and rewarding. Here are a few tips.
Consider scheduling recurring sessions (e.g., once a month) instead of a one-time meeting. In my experience, coaching works best when you commit to it for a length of time. Lasting changes take time and require your coach to work with you over multiple sessions to go deeper into your specific areas of focus and understand the context of your unique challenges. Regular check-ins are important to tailor the process and assess progress and receive feedback. Also, effective coaching is built on trust between the two parties and this takes time.Before you begin your first interaction, send your coach a few details about your background and what you plan to discuss. This allows them to be prepared and keeps the conversation focussed and specific.Tailor the frequency, time and duration of the sessions to meet your needs. For example, if you don’t need an entire hour…
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Are you willing to take risks, as a leader, to be your authentic self?

Are you willing to take risks, as a leader, to be your authentic self?Hand to your heart, what does being authentic mean to you?Let’s get one thing straight. Being authentic is not a cop out for staying within our comfort zones and sticking to our impulses of protecting our very precious identities. Being authentic does not mean that we don’t evolve. Quite the contrary. We are not perfect but a constant work in progress. Situations where we are unsure of ourselves or our abilities to perform provide the perfect opportunity for us to grow and question who we are andhow we want to develop. Life and work situations shape us. More often than we would like probably. They demand us to be courageous, to question who we are.I learned the hard waythat the toughest thing we need to do as humans (and what we really need to do as leaders!), is to take a deep look at who we are at the core. It’s rarely the easy route! Most often we choose to binge on Netflix, deep dive into our social media accoun…
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