A customer-centric training for our Product Managers
On our journey for continuous improvement, learning and development of our colleagues, we were pleased to provide a three-day training session for the Product Managers on October 2022. Hosted by Martha Hernandez from Product Focus, the teams from our different Lines of Business got together at our headquarters in the Valley in Amsterdam to learn more about product management strategy and how to embed new approaches into their day-to-day responsibilities.
We spoke with Annamaria Bernadas-Thurzo, Associate Product Manager from our Barcelona office, to get a glimpse of her experience and thoughts about the workshop.
“It was very nice to finally connect face-to-face with PMs from different locations and to participate in a live training. Online trainings are useful, but you are a lot more focused sitting in a room. The training and the exercises were very Praxis-oriented, so you could try out the methods with the other PMs 'in action'. The workshop was overall very professional, and I clearly recommend it for anyone looking to learn more about the PM world.” Anna told us.
What were the learnings for the PM teams? “There was a huge variety of PMs from the different Lines of Business and locations, with distinct backgrounds and product management experience. We exchanged best-practices and talked through our process at BMS, shared our own experience and learned from the rest,” said Anna. “Moreover, we created a great basis for future discussions – indeed, we have already created a new online internal channel for PMs to be able to share knowledge.”
How valuable was the workshop for her day-to-day responsibilities? Anna explained to us that the workshop was a mixture of theory and practical exercises. They gained focused insights into customer-centric product development methods that they can now use for future projects. “In the end, this is one of our main goals in the company – build products that customers want and like, based on customer feedback.”
“In the end, this is one of our main goals in the company – build products that customers want and like, based on customer feedback.”
We also spoke with Paul Verheijen, VP Product Strategy and Partnerships who said, "in the past year, we had a larger group of people joining the various Product Management teams, all more or less around the same time. We have new joiners from outside the company and people growing into the Product Management role internally, coming from a different department within Bridgestone and Bridgestone Mobility Solutions. Previously we had very good experience with the company providing the World Class Product Management training with Niels Vos and Thomas Hagenau and we knew that the training connects well with our Product Creation Framework processes and has the right balance between theory and practice."
Paul concluded that "with so many new joiners in the Product Management team over the last year, having the opportunity to complete this training face-to-face was the perfect opportunity to connect with one and another, create a common language and culture in the team."
Thank you, Anna and Paul, for sharing your experience with us, and thank you Product Focus and our learning and development team for shaping this experience for our PM colleagues!