The PMwheel in Action: Conversation with Sophia Höfling, Head of Product, Babbel
In the past, I’ve written a few posts about the PMwheel, a tool I created to help define product managers’ roles and responsibilities. Here’s an overview of what I’ve published so far:
I shared an overview of the PMwheel.
I described how product managers can use the PMwheel as a self-assessment tool.
And I explained how product leaders can use the tool to help coach the product managers they manage.
But today, I’m excited to share someone else’s perspective. Sophia Höfling is a Head of Product at Babbel. She’s been using the PMwheel as a coaching tool for the product managers on her team. My blog editor, Melissa Suzuno, conducted this interview with Sophia to learn how she’s used and adapted the PMwheel to meet her team’s needs.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and your role.
I work at Babbel, a digital language learning company in Berlin. I’m a product leader trying to support my teams with delivering awesome user experiences that generate business value and help the individuals get better in their craft.
I originally joined Babbel as Head of Product to build a new learning product called Babbel Travel. The idea was to send learners on a language trip where they could immerse themselves in their chosen language and culture. When the coronavirus crisis hit the travel industry, though, we decided to take the product offline until people start traveling again. Since then, I've managed two product development teams that are exploring new language learning experiences to enrich our app, such as some fun games to repeat formerly learned concepts.
How did you come across the PMwheel?
Petra and I met during a kitesurf vacation in Morocco. We stayed in touch and later Petra started coaching me. Last year, I had the honor of giving feedback on the manuscript of her book, STRONG Product People. The book is full of great, actionable advice for product leaders. One of the techniques that I found most helpful and applied right away was the PMwheel.
Why did you decide to use the PMwheel specifically?
The PMwheel is a coaching tool and I think coaching—which to me means helping the people on my team develop their skills to reach their full potential—is my most important responsibility as a manager. I think it’s also the most fun and rewarding aspect of my job. Hence, I try to spend a lot of time on coaching my team and learning how to become a better coach.
To provide feedback and guidance to PMs that helps them become better at their job, I need a definition of what makes a good PM and a way to evaluate where on the scale from okay to great one is. The PMwheel does just that.
At Babbel, we already had a list of all the skills and knowledge that are expected from a PM. But it’s a very long list and it’s used to evaluate the seniority of a PM. I needed something that was easy to grasp and that put the focus on personal development rather than career progression.
"The PMwheel is easy to grasp and it puts the focus on personal development rather than career progression." – Tweet This
What were you hoping to achieve with the PMwheel?
My main intention when introducing the PMwheel was to create a more structured way for discussing personal development with the PMs I was coaching.
Additionally, I wanted to set clear expectations for those PMs that were rather new to the job or company. Product management—especially in Germany—is often defined very narrowly with a focus on the product ownership responsibilities. With the PMwheel, I wanted to highlight that I expect a PM to be much more than a product owner.
How did you introduce the PMwheel to your team?
After I had created a first draft of my version of the wheel, I introduced it to the PMs in our 1:1s. I asked them to take a look at it and come back with feedback and questions. I didn’t get a lot of feedback on the skills and knowledge, but I got quite a few questions around how we would actually use it.
The PMs were wondering how they should rate themselves in a category without knowing how other PMs rated themselves. I tried to underline that I don’t consider the PMwheel a benchmarking tool, but rather a tool that should help reveal their personal strengths and the areas they wanted to focus on for improvement.
"The PMwheel isn't a benchmarking tool. It should help reveal your product managers' personal strengths and the areas they want to focus on for development." – Tweet This
After we had clarified this, I asked each PM to evaluate themselves using the wheel. In our next 1:1, we looked at their self-evaluation, talked through the different categories, and adjusted them when I saw them differently or when we figured out in the discussion that what was on the sheet wasn’t accurate. Thus, we identified the one or two areas that the respective PM wanted to focus on.
In the following 1:1s, we centered our discussions around these focus areas. Also outside our 1:1s, I tried to keep their focus area in mind when providing feedback and inspiration. I now have a Post-it with each PM’s focus areas pinned to my monitor. Whenever I stumble across a helpful article, podcast, or book on one of their respective focus areas, I send it over to them.
So, yes, the PMwheel certainly helped me to become more focused and structured in my coaching and it created a common understanding of the role of a PM at Babbel in the team.
Have you made any modifications to the PMwheel?
I modified the main categories a little bit—mainly to fit our existing role description/list of skills and our Babbel internal terminology. I merged some categories, e.g. the “understand the problem” and “find a solution” categories are now summarized under “product discovery.” And I added the category “PM knowledge” (inspired by Marty Cagan’s skill assessment dimensions).
I added some subcategories to each category to describe in more detail what I meant by it. Every company is slightly different in the way they work and how they approach product management. This is where I tried to bring across the Babbel way of doing product management.
Lastly, more on the operational side of things, I added a quite detailed description of what this wheel was all about and how we would use it.
What have been the results you’ve seen so far?
I think using the PMwheel has helped me to improve my coaching practice in three different ways:
Thanks to the wheel, we are now all speaking the same language. “Product discovery,” for example, is a big term and everyone might mean slightly different things when referring to it. My coaching conversations have become more concrete and actionable.
The one to two development areas we have defined per PM help us to stay focused. Instead of only discussing day-to-day challenges and how to solve them, we zoom out more often to talk about the high-level development goals, the actions to achieve them, and how they potentially relate to some of the daily challenges.
As the PMwheel nicely visualizes where a PM already excels and where there is room for improvement, it became more obvious to me how different PMs in the team could support each other. Now, I find it easier to refer one PM to another when they are struggling with a particular topic.
So far, I have received very positive reactions. The PMs found it helpful to see the different categories and understand what was expected of them. One of them told me that the self-reflection triggered him to think and be more proactive about his personal development.
I believe it also showed my team that I care about them and their progress—not only about our business results.
What’s next? Do you have further plans for the PMwheel at your organization?
I would like to start using the PMwheel more often to explain the role of a PM to other disciplines. I believe that in cross-functional teams it’s super important that everyone knows what the other people are responsible for and what is expected of them. When PMs are asking for peer feedback, for example, I would like them to send around the PMwheel so everyone who is providing feedback can refer to the respective categories on the wheel.
Since I’m also managing a product designer, I started to create a PDwheel as well. I think the concept behind the PMwheel is great and can easily be translated to other product development roles—design, engineering, product marketing etc.
Curious to give the PMwheel a try with your team? Download your copy here.