Pickup Games: Getting Reps Without a Coach
No good coach at work? Manufacture low-stakes arenas for collaborative problem solving
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 88%
Product management has no practice time — every day is game day — and most people never get a real coach. Idiodi's workaround is to deliberately join low-risk, low-evaluation environments where groups of people solve problems together: nonprofits, community events, church committees, side projects. These are 'pickup games' where you get reps, watch better players, and can afford to make mistakes that would be career-damaging at work.
Origin
Christian Idiodi, extending his sports-coaching analogy for people who lack access to a good manager or coach. It is also his standard answer for how to break into product management without a product title.
Core principles
- 01You don't get mastery by avoidance — you have to be in the game.
- 02Collaborative problem solving is the actual skill, distinct from being a smart solo problem solver.
- 03You need to SEE good product work so you can DO good product work so you can TEACH good product work.
- 04Low barriers to entry, low evaluation, low risk — those are the conditions of a useful practice arena.
- 05The reliable signal of a good coach is repeated good outcomes, not credentials.
How to run it
- 1
Accept that you need practice, not more theory
Recognise that in product work every day is game time, so unless you deliberately create practice, you never practise. Reading frameworks is not reps.
- 2
Find low-stakes collaborative problem-solving arenas
Volunteer at a nonprofit, join a community event, take on an organising role somewhere with real people and real constraints. The requirement is not that it's product work — it's that a group of people has to solve a problem together.
Pro tip Choose environments that visibly produce good outcomes over and over; you're more likely to find a good coach there too.
Watch out Solo tinkering — the person who can fix anything alone — does not build the skill hiring managers are actually testing for.
- 3
Watch other people play
A large share of skill is picked up by observation: see a move, then go practise the move. Deliberately put yourself where you can watch strong operators handle data, insight, disagreement and customers.
- 4
Reverse-engineer good coaching through the people who received it
If you're looking for a coach, look for two pedigrees: someone who has played the game and generated good outcomes, or someone who learned under good coaches. Then go play pickup games with the people THEY coached and ask what patterns their coach taught them.
Pro tip Interview people about who taught them and how, not just about what they achieved.
- 5
Convert the reps into stories
The reps give you the thing interviewers actually probe for: the ability to describe how you worked with others on a real problem, used data and insight, and — critically — what you did when you didn't know the answer.
Pro tip Knowing who to go to for the answer is itself a demonstrable gift.
In the wild
Idiodi advises PMs without a good coach to join 'pickup games' — volunteering at a nonprofit with a team, a community event, a church group — anywhere with low barriers to entry, low evaluation and low risk, and where people must collaboratively solve problems.
→ You accumulate the collaborative problem-solving reps and observed patterns that both make you competent and give you the material to answer 'how do you tackle this?' in an interview.
Idiodi coached his sons' soccer team for eight years. While other four-year-olds just chased the ball around the field, his team had set plays and a strategy — he watched tape with them and treated them like adults.
→ His teams won championships and had a long waiting list, which convinced him that the deliberate practice-and-feedback loop, not talent, drives outcomes.
Common mistakes
Confusing solo problem solving with collaborative problem solving
Being the person who can figure it out alone is a different, and less useful, skill than being the person who can work with a designer, an engineer and a customer to reach a solution. Product hiring tests the latter.
Outsourcing your development to a class or a mentor
Booking a training course, then never practising, produces the feeling of growth with none of it. Skill comes from reps with feedback.
Judging a potential coach by their logo, not their lineage
Having worked at a famous company may reflect a great environment rather than personal capability. Ask what results they generated and who coached them.
Is it for you?
Best for
Aspiring or early-career product managers stuck under a manager who doesn't coach, or career-switchers with no product title trying to build a credible track record.
Not ideal for
Senior operators who already have a strong coach and abundant high-stakes reps — their constraint is feedback quality, not exposure.
From the transcript
“you don't get Mastery by avoidance”
“what you do at practice you do in the game”
“you need to find practice Arenas”
“I always advise produ managers like you need to join a lot of pickup games”
“so you need to see good product work so that you can do good product work so that you can teach good product work”
“a good indication of good coaching is actually good outcomes over and over”
From the episode
The essence of product management
Christian Idiodi (SVPG)