How the “Learning Menu” Concept Can Help Develop Your Product Team

As a product leader, an important part of your job is to help your team grow and develop. This is the key to keeping people motivated and engaged in their work—people want to have a sense of progress and mastery. But it also makes sense for your business. The more you develop your product team, the better they’ll get at key product skills like user research, prioritization, and communication with stakeholders. And ultimately, more skilled product people will build better products that have a bigger impact on your company’s bottom line.

But when it comes to offering development opportunities, some companies struggle with doing this in a strategic way. They essentially throw money at the problem, opting to pay a premium for coaching and training. So what’s wrong with this approach? As a coach, shouldn’t I be happy to take money from any potential client who would like to pay me?

To answer these questions, let’s take a look at the “Learning Menu,” illustrated below.

Thinking about development opportunities as a “Learning Menu” means you can include a wider range of learning resources that are more scalable and adaptable to individual needs.

The Learning Menu presents a range of learning resources and formats. The options at the bottom of the menu are free or low cost. As you move up the pyramid, the items become more expensive. 

You can see that coaching appears at the very top of the menu as the most expensive offering. This is because it involves working one-on-one (or in a small group) in a real-time setting. As you move down the menu, options become more self-service and less time-bound. Reading a book or taking a self-paced online course is still a bit more time-intensive than simply reading a blog post or listening to a podcast, for example.

Why is this important?

Not all people have the same learning needs. Different options from the menu make sense for different people at different stages.
 
It often makes sense to start at the bottom of the menu. You can encourage your team members to explore all of the amazing free and self-service content that’s out there as a first step. This approach has a number of benefits. First, it’s a more cost-effective, sustainable approach to employee development. But, perhaps more importantly, it puts the responsibility on the employees themselves. They can discover which resources and formats they most enjoy and while gaining the essential skill of self-directed learning. Rather than waiting for someone to tell them what and how to learn, they can take the initiative to design their own learning journey.

Make it a Team Exercise to fill out the Learning Menu Pyramid.

This doesn’t mean that you have to throw your employees in at the deep end. You can work together to create a list of trusted resources such as your favorite blogs, videos, or Meetup groups. In fact, it could be a fun team exercise to fill out the Learning Menu pyramid with some of your recommended resources at each level. Encourage your team members to add to the pyramid as they find more resources, or revisit it as a group from time to time.

Once they’ve developed some foundational knowledge, you might encourage them (or give them discretionary budget) to pay for a book or self-paced online course. Then, after they’ve explored the free and low-cost menu items, that’s when it makes sense to invest in higher-ticket items like training or coaching.

When leaders push their team members to activities at the top of the pyramid too quickly, they risk making a limited impact. Training, for example, is often a one-off event that’s disconnected from day-to-day work. And coaching is generally best reserved for people who have already spent time learning and practicing on their own. And, as I mentioned earlier, if you jump to the top of the pyramid too quickly, you’re also depriving your team of taking responsibility for their development and deciding the areas where they’d most like to focus. 

So how diversified is the Learning Menu on your team? How will you expand your current offerings and encourage your team members to sample what’s available?