04. Know Your Company

Know your Company

What do you need to learn?

Start with the Mission, Vision, and Strategy

Knowing your company starts with the mission, vision, and strategy. It is important to understand the company’s purpose i.e what does it exist for, what is it trying to achieve and how does it plan to achieve. This is called a company’s Mission, Vision, and Strategy.
Depending upon the company’s culture, you will see these printed and posted on the office walls or on their website. The purpose of this is to constantly remind everyone what the company stands for.

Example:

Revisiting Sworkit. Take a look at Sworkit's About-Us page to get familiar with a company that talkies about itself very well.

As you explore Sworkit, also think about:

• Who is their target customer?
• What are the unmet needs of the customer?
• What are their needs that are not satisfied by any other alternative in the market?
• How does the company create value?

Knowing your company goes beyond the mission, vision and strategy. It is about knowing the details that go into defining the strategy to support the company’s mission and achieving the vision.

• Who is the target customer?
• What are the customer’s unmet needs?
• Who are the competitors?
• How does the company create value?
• How does the company grow?

I highly recommend spending the initial 2-6 weeks of joining as a Product Manager to acquire the above knowledge to believe in your own message, define the problem to solve and identify the solutions.