Break into product management in 2021 | #4: Mastery and the learning process

The learning process is naturally filled with failure as a feedback mechanism to help you optimize your efforts towards more success over time. As a PM, there are many variables that you will learn to deal with that push back on your success rate. Thus, learning to accept failure and use it to inform better strategies and insights over time is how you win in the long run.

Accept failure in your game loop to gain mastery

Know what a game loop is? It’s the core set of actions you take from the beginning of your game experience to the end in a cyclical pattern. Let’s take a FPS game for example. You’re game loop is queueing for a match, selecting a character or loadout, playing the match, seeing results at the end, and deciding whether you’re going to keep playing or quit. One of the things you’re doing as you go through the game loop is learning the game. A key part of that learning is through failure.

This is the same concept you can apply to your mindset as a product manager or as someone looking to jump into a PM role. Failure is not only expected – it’s necessary if you are to learn and grow. You wouldn’t be put into the position of a product manager if failure was not an option. If that’s the case, the team needs a project manager that can jump in and break down the work with the team, form a plan of execution, and execute. You’re here to identify the right problem to solve and align everyone on why it’s the right thing to solve next.

Sometimes, you pick the wrong path or the environment your product exists within changes under your feet. The takeaway from that should be a learning on how to avoid that next time or be ready for that volatility. Engrain the concept of learning from failure into your core loop as a PM and you’ll be on the path to mastery.

See yourself as an apprentice and find a mentor

Side Note: Since we’re trying to land you a position as a PM in games or tech through this blog series, I want to call out that I’ll spend extra time on game concepts so you can use them to learn how designers, producers, engineers, and other parts of a game team think. Mastery and failure are key in understanding how systems are designed in games, so I’ll dig in a bit more than usual here.

You don’t jump into a game thinking, “if I don’t win every match, I’m not getting better” right? You know you’re going to get wrecked for a while before you grasp controls, mechanics of characters and loadouts, maps, weapons, abilities, and whatever other systems the game throws at you. This growth of mastery is a curve you can dig into on your own time if you’d like. I personally learned everything about mastery from Robert Greene’s book on the subject itself: Mastery. I’ll likely dig into this subject separately as it warrants its own post, but what I’ll call-out here in relation to a growth mindset is the concept of apprenticeship as it’s discussed in the book:

Whether you get the book or not is up to you. As always, the internet has great reviews and infographics. How you decide to consume the data is up to you.

Now onto apprenticeship as it relates to your game loop. As you begin this new FPS game, you’re doing a few things:

1. Observing the rule set in the game, each match, the rewards, and milestones the game pushes you towards. Let’s focus here on the rules of play so you can improve your skill.
2. You’re also observing the power you have vs others and how that changes based on skills, strengths, and differentiators through choice such as which character or loadout you choose.
3. You’re observing yourself as you practice various skills within the game and setting things on auto as you gain mastery. You may think about when to run vs sprint or jump and crouch initially. Then, it becomes automatic and you move onto positioning, looking for choke points in the map, and strategizing with others. These are repeated cycles of skills you’re training on in your apprenticeship and hardwiring these skills in as you go.
4. As you jump from apprenticeship and closer to the “journeyman” level, you’re beginning to shed some of the rules of engagement you’ve learned in the game and starting to experiment. What if you choose a different loadout or character for a certain map? Did it work out? This is also a part of your mastery of your skills. Failure is a key part of this because it’s a clear feedback mechanism that offers you clarity on what something works or not.
5. Finally, you start finding others to play with or are already playing with your friends. If you’re the new one in the group, what do you do? You learn from others, find people that can mentor and coach you, or find a group to play with that has experienced players that are willing to pass on their advice. This is a critical piece of the mastery process to speed up your learning and course correct you when you’re going in the wrong direction.

Apprenticeships used to last up to 7 years in the past before crafters were able to become “journeymen” and venture out into the wild to find new work or push their craft forward in a new direction. This is where you are in product management – an apprentice looking to land that first job or transition into this role. That’s what this blog series is aiming to teach you.

Apply the above 5 steps in your path to mastery and you will always be learning, always be ready to try something new out, and always look for data and growth opportunity after a failure (or success).

I want you to see your game loop as a cyclical learning -> experimenting -> analyzing process with potential failure’s engrained into the each phase. It’s great when you’re met with success. That builds confidence in you as a PM and individual contributor. It’s epic when you know how to fail gracefully and get to the other side of that failure and move forward. In that sense, focus on taking the action and get ready to learn.

As always, GL HF out there!

Yoda gif tax: