Career chats: Every job function has its challenges
About this video
Three professionals describe the biggest challenge in their job function. A product manager juggles many competing priorities, a trainer helps people with different needs and attitudes to new tools, and a police officer describes how people treated him differently in uniform and how that motivated him to change the culture from within.
You'll be able to
- describe a key challenge in three different job functions.
- explain how a challenge can motivate someone to make a change.
- recognise that every job, even one people love, has difficult parts.
Key words
- product manager
- A person who decides what a company should build or improve next and keeps projects on track.
- prioritise
- To decide which tasks are most important and should be done first.
- resistant to change
- Unwilling or slow to try new ways of doing things.
- culture
- The shared habits, attitudes and ways of behaving in a group or organisation.
Transcript
(bright music) - The biggest challenge in my role is juggling multiple priorities, multiple requests, everything that might come in to a product manager's plate. And the reason why this is challenging is because you may find that the company prioritizes on project X because an angry customer emailed the CEO and then the CEO forwards email, that gets forwarded to more people and that gets forwarded to me and then I have to ask the question, is that thing more important than some project we've been working on for the past four or five months?
And of course, this is just a one-to-one example, but as you can imagine, there's 20, 30, you know, who knows how many projects that you could be involved with that you're juggling all at the same time.
- So the biggest challenge is how do you help people who need different things, who need to develop different skills, who may are more resistant to change, more resistant to trying new systems, new tools, or maybe who overuse and over rely on systems and tools and don't have the confidence in their abilities and their skills yet?
- So I remember the one day that I went back to patrol and I had the uniform on, and I started talking to folks just like I used to when I was in plain clothes. I was like, "Hey, hey, how you doing? How you doing?" And I get these looks like, like, "Yo, what are you talking to me for like?"
And I think that was like, like, that was the, that was the day I think it kind of, I mean, it always hit home, but I was just like, "Yo, this sucks, like this sucks to be looked at like that." And like I was like, "Okay, this needs to change, like, I want to change this, I wanna change people's perspective."
And so I do what I have to do. And I was so excited to get this position because it gives me that opportunity to change the culture from, to change the culture from within. (bright music)
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