The Power of Cross-Disciplinary Learning

As a coach for product leads, I've noticed an interesting phenomenon: Some of my coachees make much more progress than others. And as a naturally curious person (and someone who’s invested in my coachees’ success), I started trying to get to the bottom of this. Why do some people make progress in leaps and strides while others only improve gradually? I’ve come to the conclusion that while there are several key personality traits that can help someone become a great product manager—emotional intelligence, adaptability, and intellectual horsepower—there's another skill that's often overlooked: cross-disciplinary learning.

What is cross-disciplinary learning? Put simply, it's the ability to learn from diverse sources outside of your own field of work and apply that knowledge to your own situation. By exposing yourself to new perspectives and ideas, you gain fresh insights that can help inform your work as a product leader.

The reason why cross-disciplinary learning is so important for product leaders is that it allows you to develop a more nuanced and informed understanding of your industry and the broader business landscape. When you explore diverse views, you challenge your existing mental models and core beliefs. This can help you to create more varied, rugged product strategies and inform better decision-making.

Let's explore in more detail why cross-disciplinary learning is so valuable for product leaders:

Gain Fresh Perspectives and Insights

When you're focused on your own industry or field, it's easy to become stuck in a particular way of thinking. But when you dive into new ideas, stories, and learning from people outside of your field, you can gain fresh perspectives that challenge your assumptions and help you think more creatively. This can lead to new insights and ideas that you can apply to your own situation.

For example, one of my coachees, a product lead in the software industry, was struggling to find their own personal leadership style. I suggested that they read articles and books outside of their industry, such as Becoming by Michelle Obama, which is a memoir about leadership and personal growth. They found inspiration in the book and applied those principles to their way of leading, which helped them to establish some really great personal leadership principles.

Keep up with the Rapidly Changing Landscape

In today's fast-paced digital landscape, product leaders need to stay ahead of the curve in terms of technology, customer behavior, and market trends. By learning from diverse sources, you can keep up with these changes and gain a more informed understanding of the broader business landscape. This can help you make more strategic decisions and stay competitive in the marketplace.

For example, another coachee of mine, a product lead in the healthcare industry, was struggling to deliver on the innovation goal the company had set for them. How should they innovate? Where should they get ideas from? How should they decide if new technologies would be worth trying in their field? How might they learn from new, emerging technologies? 

They struggled to keep up with the latest developments both in their own industry (healthcare) and in technology in general (things like AI, no-code, etc.). I suggested that they explore conferences and events outside of their industry that touch on technology trends like artificial intelligence or digital transformation and their first “real use cases.” By learning about new technologies and trends from other industries and hearing stories about how people were using these technologies to solve real-world problems for the first time, they were able to come up with novel solutions and new directions to explore.

Drive innovation and growth

By applying insights gained from diverse sources to your own work, you can drive innovation and growth in your organization. By thinking creatively and looking beyond your own industry or field, you can identify new opportunities and approaches that can help you achieve your goals.

For example, a third coachee of mine, a product lead in the travel industry, was struggling to grow their business. They'd optimized the heck out of the existing product and its business case and had come to the conclusion that they needed to add “something new” to their portfolio. 

They knew they had to find something that provided additional value to their users. But no matter how hard they analyzed the competition in their field, they were not able to find the one thing that would have the desired impact on their revenue. 

While going through all of this, the product lead I was coaching realized that there was no way that they could solve this problem alone. They had to encourage the whole product organization—maybe even the whole company—to get involved. And they had to inspire others to “think outside the box” as well and to look in all directions to find something worth building.

During our coaching sessions, we realized that great storytelling was the skill that would help them to inspire the rest of the organization. So they worked their way through several storytelling books like Selling the Dream (Guy Kawasaki) and Illuminate (Duarte, Sanchez) and we discussed how some of these tactics could be applied in their situation. Adding storytelling to their toolkit has already brought them some major wins.

Conclusion

So cross-disciplinary learning—learning from folks in other industries, from companies that operate differently, from people who work in different environments—has been a key skill in all three of my examples. Limiting yourself by saying, “Oh, this would never work in my organization” or “This book talks about a B2C example, but we operate in B2B, so none of that applies to us!” is definitely not what I see my successful product leads doing. They embrace new ideas from all sorts of people and companies and they try to understand how what has worked for others could work for them. This is an amazing skill to have and maybe a muscle that you want to build as well.

Here are some cross-disciplinary books I’ve learned from that might help you to get some inspiration as well:

Successful product leaders share a common trait: the ability to think outside the box and learn from diverse industries, companies, and individuals. Through cross-disciplinary learning, they unlock the potential to drive innovation, foster growth, and stay competitive in an ever-evolving landscape.

Indeed, the power of learning lies not only in the mastery of your own field, but in the ability to connect and apply insights gleaned from beyond your immediate circles. The most successful leaders understand and embrace this. I challenge you to consider how you might foster some cross-disciplinary learning of your own!

Looking for some extra support as you begin your cross-functional learning journey? This is a topic I regularly cover in my individual and group coaching for product leads. Learn more about how we might work together here.


Product LeadershipPetra WilleProduct Leadership, Personal Growth, Learning, Cross-Disciplinary Learning