Senior Product Manager Review

As a senior product manager, my role is concerned with managing products through their life cycle, managing change (large and small) and looking for improvements and efficiencies in customer journeys for our postmasters and customers. Simplification and improved profitability wherever possible and helping manage the relationship with Royal Mail and their products.

The MBA apprenticeship has taught me to question all assumptions, demand data to support arguments and analyse thoroughly before suggesting improvements. The skills of stakeholder management and influencing are absolutely essential as are the analytical skills provided by the MBA to cover areas as broad reaching as corporate finance and strategy development.

The apprenticeship has been mostly enjoyable, very hard work and generally rewarding. The level of commitment and work involved has been phenomenal, and if anything has been somewhat helped by COVID as it means there has not been much else to do outside of work. Most of the material has been good, but some quite old ( it has been revised for this years cohorts).

The OU MBA programme is long established, the addition of the apprenticeship module I believe was probably quite rushed and the requirements are quite ambiguous in terms of what is expected by the way of evidence . The tutors seemed to know little more than the students, and sometimes the advice given was contradictory.

As an MBA the assumption is that candidates are senior enough to be self supporting and just get on with it (which I agree with). Support was available and my line manager has been very supportive when I have asked. I have been able to take the 20% of my working week to help with study.

The OU tutor was able to provide some support (given that I scored highly on the assignments I guess I was on the right track). What would have been appreciated was a greater understanding of the expectation in the terms of evidence as fellow students on my cohort got widely conflicting advice.

My MBA apprenticeship has been fantastic in giving me extra tools to do my role. It has improved my confidence and it has allowed me to carry out my role more effectively with greater efficiency. The theory and frameworks that were introduced have been very helpful in assisting with analysis and improved decision making.

Normally, there would be many activities and opportunities to get involved at work, but due to COVID this is limited to online, which is not ideal. I think Post Office could do more in this regard and hope there are more options in the future, as sharing experiences are important.

Yes

It is a fascinating organisation to work for that is trying to change. It is at a crossroads that could see some fantastic and exciting developments happenings in the next few years with some really challenging and interesting projects to work on to help prepare the organisation for the future.

Bring in experience of working elsewhere, challenge everything as there is a very bureaucratic culture (it is changing although slowly) and many are not receptive to change, be bold and don't expect no for an answer and ask for data to back up any arguments or assumptions that you are presented with.