How do you stay current with product management trends and share them with your network?

Cultivate a “growth mindset”. A mindset fueled by curiosity is open to learning, adapting & continuously improving. 1.Cultivate Curiosity Embrace a curious mindset that seeks to understand the intricacies of your industry, market trends, & emerging technologies. Stay curious about user needs & constantly ask questions to gain deeper insights 2.Seek Diverse Experiences Look for opportunities to work on xfn projects, collaborate with different teams or explore different industries. Diverse experiences broaden perspective, build versatility & equip with a holistic understanding of how different aspects of businesses intersect 3.Embrace Feedback Actively seek feedback from peers to understand areas of improvement and capitalize on strengths

Totally agree with this! You can join ProductDive to connect with product managers in and from Africa. Lots of virtual and physical events are hosted to encourage learning.

In my experience reading books has helped me a lot when I discovered product management world. When you’re still very green you want to touch every topics and it’s easy to get lost. I found that relying on must reads books was an excellent way to avoid it and structure my learning. However getting stuck into theory can prevent you from developing one of the most important skill: critical thinking through hands-on experience. I recently (last 2 years I’d say) became much stricter with the content I read and drastically reduced the number of books and blogs posts, making sure I learn by doing things by myself whereas reading about all the cool product stories of things other professionals have done

I often return to advice, tools or theories I’ve read about in books and blogs and apply them if I think it’s helpful. I like to have this knowledge at my fingertips as you never know when it comes in handy. I especially draw on advice from the best in the field about product management process, roles and team empowerment, hypothesis-driven methodologies and success metrics. ‘You ship your organisation’, so you have to make sure empowered product teams can actually do their job effectively. And I can then share this knowledge with the team.

From my personal journey, I've gained substantial insights by engaging with product management professionals on platforms like Twitter (now known as X), LinkedIn, Medium, and Sub-stack. Moreover, I hold a firm conviction that embarking on a side project provides unparalleled practical exposure to the art of acquiring, engaging, and retaining users while addressing their pain points. Lastly, the practice of reading, generating, and disseminating content serves as a potent tool for broadening our perspectives beyond our narrow focus. Furthermore, I keep myself informed by regularly reviewing quarterly and annual company statements and financial reports. Additionally, I ensure that I stay current with the latest technological innovations.

Creating and sharing content is a great way to keep learning and start a conversation with the community. It can take any form: - product break down/case studies - frameworks and artifacts - challenges and solutions Anything that you can bring from your experience or drive from your curiosity works! It makes you go deeper than you usually would while reading/consuming content.

Follow Product Leaders on LinkedIn and subscribe to their newsletters. I recommend Itamar Gilad, Carlos of Product School, Adnan Boz, Christian Strunk, etc.

Actually all items mentioned above are great ways to keep being updated, but not just for that. These are also great tools for learning and strengthen specific aspects that you might not doing in your daily job. I would also add find yourself a mentor or a mentee, whether it's in your company or outside of it. Both sides of mentoring will provide you lots of value and insights.

Consuming content is great. Applying the learnings from the consumed content is better. This is what we can call applied knowledge. I consider Product Management as craft (as in craftsmanship) and conceive it as something that requires years to refine and attain a level of mastery. It's important that fellow PMs recognize that there is no hack or fast track to mastery in product management. You have to put in the work.