Groundwork for Individuals
For Individual PMs looking to master their craft
Join the Groundwork Journey!
Learn from experienced product leaders and transform your approach to product management. We’ll work with you to build a strong foundation for success.
Want to be more confident in your product decisions?
Want to be more certain that your product or service will resonate with customers?
Want to boost your PM skills? Or you AI skills?
Program Overview
Based on the Proven Groundwork Method ™
Through our decades in managing product teams we’ve encountered similar problems, repeatedly. We learned that if a few foundations weren’t established early on in a project, the likelihood of success, delighted customers and business growth, was low. We explored the root causes of those repeated problems to figure out how to address them in a scalable way.
And we wrote a book and developed a product management framework, called the Groundwork Method™ that provides the blueprint to establish these foundations and addresses the major causes that lead to unhappy customers and poor product performance.
We’ve now coached hundreds of product managers on this framework and have evolved it based on their feedback.
Come join the program that is proven to change your approach and mindset around product management.
10-Week Program
The 10-week program guides you and a group of your peers from other companies through Groundwork’s three key pillars and three practices and offers two design thinking workshops that teach 10 design thinking tools that every product manager show know.
Supported by AI Tools
In a world where we are increasingly relying on AI agents to generate research summaries, requirements, and user stories, it’s tempting to trust the outputs at face value. But speed without substance is dangerous.
The Groundwork AI Accelerator—our set of powerful prompts that help you create and analyze key product decision artifacts —was built to counter that risk. Every practice in the Groundwork framework is supported by a set of AI tools that accelerate real work without cutting corners. For each pillar, we’ve built proven sets of prompts—designed using prompt engineering best practices from leading AI experts—that help you apply concepts with rigor and speed.
These tools go beyond the program, giving you reusable assets you can rely on to keep making strong, customer-centric decisions long after the training ends.
Design thinking techniques for PM
Our two design thinking workshops equip product managers with the tools to tackle any product challenge. You’ll learn how to identify and define critical customer problems, and explore innovative solutions.
These techniques were carefully chosen to be key components of any product manager’s toolbox, as they range from problem identification and definition, prioritization, ideation, concept development, customer validation and iteration. These workshops will empower you to build products that truly resonate with customers.
Guided by Tenured Product Executives
Each program we select one of our tenured product executive coaches that best fits the product managers that have joined the cohort. This executive coach will provide guidance, feedback, and support your ability to learn quickly and apply the material in an immediately impactful, but also sustainable way.
Get Help with Application
Each week you will have homework in applying the tools and techniques to a project of your choice.
Our coaches are ready to give feedback and answer questions on your homework to help you maintain forward momentum.
You can also learn from your peer’s homework review in the coaching sessions.
* NOTE: We expect all members to follow Chatham House rules.
Structure & Time Commitment
- A series of videos covering each Pillar and Practice of the Groundwork Method ™. Each video runs between 2-15 minutes. No week is more than 65 minutes.
- Simple, downloadable templates to use in your business immediately.
- Homework that applies the weekly framework and tools to the business you’ve chosen to work on. This homework is submitted to the coach for feedback.
- A set of optional supplementary articles and case studies from top product and innovative thinkers and companies. These articles round out the learning, providing real-life examples of the tools and concepts covered in the program.
- A weekly 90-minute coaching session to review the homework, troubleshoot challenges – whether with product, team, process or culture. We’ll deep dive into what’s holding you back from achieving success.
Program Details
The Kickoff & Intros
This is where the rubber hits the road!
In 60 minutes,
Get an overview of the Groundwork program.
Meet your coach and your fellow product managers with whom you’ll be on this journey.
Learn what you’ll be doing each week and how much time is expected.
Session Goals: Have clear expectations on Groundwork program outcomes and level of effort.
Kickoff:
Introduction
Kickoff + Expectation Setting
Define A Convergent Problem Statement
We jump right in! A clear problem statement is at the core of building great products. We demonstrate the importance of having a shared vision with your stakeholders on a clear problem and how to define it in a way that enables effective, efficient, and durable product decisions. We provide a valuable template and exercises as inputs to scope, build and evolve the problem.
Week 1:
Pillar 1
Define A Convergent Problem Statement
Define an Actionable Persona
Now that the you know what problem you want to solve, now it’s time to truly understand who is experiencing the problem. This week brings the value of personas (dusted off the shelves where they’ve been kept for years) and approaches understanding the customer in a new way. Our approach transforms the persona into a valuable artifact that can be used as an input into ALL product decisions.
Week 2:
Pillar 2
Define an Actionable Persona
Collaborative Problem Exploration
This workshop shows you how to explore the problem with your product teams.
Explore the scope of the problem as well as the symptoms and root causes that have the biggest impact on the customer and business
Learn the most effective design thinking methods that enable a collaborative path to an actionable problem:
- Abstraction Ladder
- Rose, Thorn, Bud
- Affinity Diagramming
- Silent Voting
- Problem Tree Analysis
Session Goals: Learn problem exploration methods while furthering your definition of the problem.
Week 3:
Workshop #1
Collaborative Problem Identification
Debrief & Iteration
Unpack learning from the workshop, understand the impact on the problem, and frame key questions that must be answered.
Debrief with your coach to discuss any open questions, challenges, and ideas.
Session Goals: Revise the problem statement and or personas where necessary
Week 4:
Debrief
Discuss & Iterate on the Problem/Persona
Developing Hypotheses
Before moving to our third Pillar in the Groundwork Method ™ we need to introduce our first practice. Both our problem and persona will include guesses, assumptions, or hunches. As product managers we need to get into the habit of establishing hypotheses to understand where we need to learn and why. We share why it’s important to document and test these hypotheses as part of our day to day to ensure we evolve our problem and persona and ensure that our third Groundwork Pillar, Individualized Needs, is formulated based on data. Before we do research, we utilize well-formed hypotheses to ensure the output of any research is actionable.
Week 5:
Practice 1
Developing Hypotheses
Prepare for Scrappy Research
You now have formulated testable hypotheses around the problem and persona, now it’s time to test those quickly to maintain forward momentum. This practice is about conducting research with a small sample in a way that holds high integrity and provides direction. Our Scrappy Research Practice is the set of practices and tools that support that integrity and allows us to gather insights on a rapid, ongoing basis so that a majority of our decisions are customer driven. And this week you’ll prepare for interviews.
Week 6:
Practice 2
Prepare for Scrappy Research
Scrappy Interviews
Time to talk with customers!
Based on the prep you’ve done and the hypotheses you’ve identified, you’ll learn directly from customers.
You will use the tools and techniques covered in the previous 2 weeks to prepare for these interviews.
We encourage setting these up ahead of time in order to ensure the team is poised to complete them as input into the next set of homework and workshop.
Session Goals: Build muscle in scrappy interviewing as a way to establish a scalable insight gathering process.
Week 7:
Scrappy Interviews
Conduct Interviews with Customers
Discover Individualized Needs
Okay, research has evolved the problem and persona to a higher level of confidence. Now we dig into needs of each persona. Prioritization is always a challenge. Especially in more complex businesses and B2B. We often jump straight to solutions and features without understanding needs for each persona and how they prioritize those needs. Without that, then we glomb (yes, a technical term) all the needs together and pick and choose based on what we think we should be solving for first. Developing a set of prioritized needs by persona, even if there is overlap, allows us to make better informed tradeoffs and a clearer roadmap.
Week 8:
Pillar 3
Discover Individualized Needs
Solution Ideation & Concept Development (4 hrs)
This workshop helps product managers inspire big thinking.
Develop the skills to facilitate large quantities of ideas and how to decide which to move forward with in confidence.
Learn how to rapidly prototype and iterate on an idea.
Build muscle in 5 design thinking methods perfect for product managers to facilitate innovation:
- How Might We Statements
- Creative Matrix
- Importance/Difficulty Matrix
- Concept Poster
- Critique
Session Goals: Learn methods that take a well defined problem and turn it into innovative, testable concepts that can be iterated on quickly.
Week 9:
Workshop #2
Solution Ideation & Concept Development
Getting Commitment
As a product manager, most of the decisions we propose must get commitment by many cross-functional team members; most of which don’t report to us. This entire week is devoted to the best practices in doing just that. We share a step-by-step presentation outline that has been proven to drive shared vision and commitment!
Week 10:
Practice 3 & Wrap Up
Getting Commitment
Community of Practice (Optional)
With the conclusion of Groundwork, product managers have an opportunity to join our community of practice and continue with the coach as we offer a ways to reinforce learnings, share best practices, and continue to help the product team thrive.
* Additional fees apply.
Community of Practice
Optional Post Program Support
