Learning Product Management in Uncertain Times: How to Get In, Move Up, and Stay Today – with Tanja Lau (Founder @ Product Academy)

Skills, Resilience, and Product Leadership in a Field That Changes Faster Than Its Textbooks

In the nineteenth episode of the PRODUKTKRAFT Podcast, I talk to Tanja Lau about a question that is currently on the minds of many in our profession: how do you still get into product management successfully today – and how do you stay successful in it? Tanja has been accompanying product people on their journeys for years, has seen countless career paths, and knows the field from the teaching perspective as well as from her own practice.

The challenging part: getting into product management has felt harder and harder in recent years. Layoffs, AI, constantly shifting expectations of the role – between agile, PO craft, user-centricity, business focus, product sense, and AI literacy, the list of what you’re supposed to be able to do has gotten longer, not shorter. We try to reconstruct the curriculum someone would have to put together today and ask ourselves what really matters among all the moving parts.

From there, we move on toward product leadership. Can you even be prepared for it, or do you learn it exclusively on the job? How do you stay resilient as a product person in an environment that changes faster than the textbooks can keep up with? And how do entire organizations actually learn what good product work concretely means for them?

So we talk about the current job situation. How do PMs successfully start in new roles today? What distinguishes those who become leaders from those who get stuck in their role? Tanja shares her observations from the many career paths she has accompanied in recent years – and makes tangible what really makes the difference in the transition from hands-on work to leadership responsibility.

Have a listen to the nineteenth episode of the PRODUKTKRAFT Podcast to find out what learning product management looks like today – and what it takes not only to get into this profession, but also to stay.