I am a Senior Product Manager at Avail Car Sharing, a startup backed by Allstate. Avail is a managed service that matches vehicle owners with individuals who would like to temporarily borrow convenient, affordable vehicles. I lead a team that helps get customers in cars and on the road through supporting our on-the-ground operations with software products and tools.

How big is it?

‍Avail is approaching ~200 employees (4x the amount of people I started with)!

I have a fully dedicated team organized by a pod structure consisting of Design, UX Research, Engineering, QA, TPM, Product and Business Operations. This breaks down into 7 engineers, 1 designer, 1 UX research / design hybrid, 1 scrum master, 1 dedicated business stakeholder, 2 QA shared resources and 1 product manager. ‍

Where are your teammates located?‍

All over the USA! We value traveling and flexibility as we’re in the biz, so I’ve taken a few remote months myself where I’ve traveled around the country working from cabins, friends' apartments, or our Avail locations to gain more empathy for our customers.‍

What does your team do? What are you responsible for?‍

We are responsible for the product suite that supports our Operations team in facilitating customer transactions. Our goal is to lower operational cost, improve operational efficiencies and increase system usability (SUS). This operational product suite includes +5 home-grown and out-sourced software products that collectively manage all ops-customer interactions, vehicle inspections, telematics, inventory management, maintenance processes, and pre and post trip operations.

Trust, transparency, collaboration, empathy, authenticity, vulnerability, agility, and vision.

I’m a big believer in being fully authentic at work and an outcome of that is a collaborative and transparent environment. I also ensure that each team member is involved in the entire process of the product development life cycle (PDLC). This builds team empathy as well as allows everyone the opportunity to provide opinions before making decisions. This paired with respecting everyone’s boundaries and limiting false urgency keeps the engine running smoothly without surprises. For individual team member pulse checks, I hold monthly 1:1’s to discuss personal goals, exchange candid feedback, and address questions.

Solving complex problems with a team can be exciting and energizing, as well as overwhelming and exhausting, especially when teammates have back-to-back meetings all day. It is a challenge recreating the zeal of a team in-office jam session, where you’re locked in a room with a whiteboard for hours feeding off of each other’s energy and office snacks. We’ve set up no-meeting Tuesdays to help with this, as well as our own team Zoom rooms.

We’ve done it all, and continue to try new activities! We’ve had off-sites at our car-sharing markets, hosted a virtual drag dance-off, held book-clubs, kept ourselves in shape deep pandemic with a #WOD (work out of the day) Slack channel, made a #wordle Slack channel, celebrated big product launches with DoorDash, and had a taco-making contest focused on gut-health (I won, humble brag). I’ve noticed that for virtual events if you personally invite others, moderate the event focused on engaging with everyone, and ask your teammates what they want and really listen, you receive a lot of participation.

My engineers love playing League of Legends and Among Us. Virtual Code Names is my favorite! It’s important that even if the game isn’t your cup of tea, you should still show up and try it. It's important to take everyone’s interests into consideration, and it sets a culture standard.

IMO, the best ice breakers are personalized to team members and require pre-work by the moderator. For example, curate a team-member specific trivia game and utilize the “poll feature” on Zoom to see if your coworkers really know each other. Don’t be shy of showing embarrassing photos of them too (with consent, of course)!

We use Bonusly to recognize each other virtually. The recognition converts to points that employees can redeem in gift cards.

The list is endless. I attribute a lot of my leadership success to a mix of formal and informal learning. As a young professional, you often need to seek opportunities outside of your day job to gain leadership experience, such as through Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) or leadership development programs. I was formerly the President of Allstate’s Young Professionals Organization that had +3k members and a full leadership team. That was a great way to get my feet wet in leadership. I was also in a 3-year rotational Leadership Development Program for Allstate that gave me a different role each year and exposed me to a variety of verticals.

In addition, mentorship and continuous learning can take you a long way. Seek mentors inside and outside of your company to gain a broad perspective on how to tackle your problems. There is a wealth of knowledge out there, and it is likely that the problem you’re trying to solve draws parallels to ones that have already existed and been solved before. I also furthered my education and got a mini-MBA during Covid from my alma mater, Miami University. 

Some consumables that have shaped my perspective include the books Building for Everyone by Jean-Baptiste and Atomic Habits by James Clear. In addition, the podcast How I Built This by Guy Raz is incredible, and it is on my vision board to be featured one day. 

If you’re newer to product management or want to be exposed to more ways of thinking, there are a lot of free resources that can provide exposure to the inner workings of the role. When I started as a Jr. PM, I attended night classes at the Product School of San Francisco to soak up as much information as I could and hear perspectives from more mature products.