Shreyas Doshi: PM Mythbusting—The 7 Myths That Stymie PM Impact (and Careers)

it's an absolute honor to be back at SVP MA after decade I think some of you might remember I was and it's great to be back one thing I wanted to share before I begin the presentation is it was actually at an SVP ma talk for 2005 but I had the realization that product management is my true professional calling so when SPMS we we have p.m. i profusely thanked SP p.m. a disciplined about claiming as we p.m. a showing me the path to product management this straight out with my background you know I've had the privilege of working at some pretty remarkable companies both as a product manager a product leader and what you're about to see today is a combination of what I call the non-obvious lessons that I've learned or my senior career now unlike my last target SVP ma this is not only an 101 this will not make you a good year however all in the right place if you're already a competent en and you're looking to take steps to master that if you're good hit a ceiling impact in terms of now we're going to cover a lot of ground today I'm going to ask you all to hold questions until the end and I want to start by touching on why I think this content is important and how it's going to be different from your typical talks about product management so first in our industry we talk a lot about the analytical aspects of product management whether it's processes techniques or even product philosophy now make the observation that if you're really good yeah you probably know all the analytical stuff so if you are hitting a ceiling of the impact or your arrow what slightly getting in your way of being a great here is your own psychology so that's what your own psychology and the second is managing the psychology and understanding the psychology of others so this is one unique area we covered today second I'm also mission to mystify some things that I believe don't get talked about as much in the van and you know there is a lot of you know easy truths that are thrown around but you know very few people talk about a minion once and last but not least we're going to do a lot of reframing I've seen time and again that the very beliefs and truths that have gotten us to this point can start to hurt us at a certain point so that's why if you want to scale new heights of excellence we really need to you know unlearn the stories we've told ourselves for who we are and what we do and we told others which then brings me to conventional wisdom which is you know the next slide I'm going to show you you know 7ph that seemed right already right and then we're going to spend the next hour or so exploring why they aren't so true after all and how we can actually get from these beliefs to the capital T truth so for a new convention ISM we take these things to be as innocent as possible and a lot of what you'll see is not exclusive to product management it applies to most leadership roles by definition is a leadership role but it applies to most leadership roles the technology companies however in today's talk I'll give you a view of these through the project management lens now each of these topics is a one-hour talk by itself so we're going to cover the first three topics in detail maybe people go to the fourth one if you are lucky and then for the remaining three I'm going to share some really unconventional book recommendations so that's very homework for you so these are the super truths and we are going to okay so let's get right to it first one solve problems you know it seems obvious as PMS we are here to solve problems this is a big danger here in believing that that's our own egos and you know instead of me explaining this to you I'm going to show you a clip from one of my favorite movies from growing up and does a better job of illustrating this myths that problem-solving is a virtue then anything actually start to see and neither cause lot can notice is at this point that there's a child that's about to put himself in great peril right so calls out the child in getting the child away from danger yeah notice what Louis Dane is going there she's not even paying attention to what's going on Rock n goes to Lewis and asks her did you see what just happened that little boy something something had Lewis response hey I'm hungry and you know she asked him to get hot dogs with yes and now the buyer is habited again but this time on the other side of the radio even more danger right there and then shove it out he falls this is when Lois Lane gets into action yes Clark Kent is Superman this is from the eighties the great special effects man somewhere the background says somebody do something super in action Superman action look look at the excitement on people's face and then Superman rescues the boy a few inches from certain death what a nice man the crowd of people there that's now gather it because Superman did something remarkable to save this boy's life again look at the expressions their lowest price and at this point in the movie you know they're on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls when you see the flag right there okay so that's a quick recap of what we did sir I have one question for you if Clark Kent is like almost all of us and what is looking for is a validation from his peers he's looking for recognition for a job well done if he is looking for accusation what will he do next time specifically will he try to prevent the boys from falling all we need let the boy fall and then save him me riches from certain death I would contend that it be the latter now I ask you to do this question then I want you to recognize this is not just a theoretical question and for some superhero heroes you're I think and we don't have to be because what we just saw happens in organizations including companies we work at every single my observation is that companies are predisposed to rewarding and recognizing people who saw problems and they don't quite understand how to appreciate people who prevent the problem from occurring in the first place in fact this is such a common phenomenon that once you understand it you will see it absolutely everywhere in all organizations everywhere companies nonprofits even the government especially they love them so this is so common that you know I decided to name it the mental iteration and just in the tech industry the recent challenges faced by come is like uber or Facebook and others are the result of this paradox so here's my formal fitting description of any complex organization will over time tend to incentivize problem creation more than problem prevention and why do I call it a paradox is the fact because well no organization knowingly wants to do this we take along with the leaders end up doing this anyway so that's the problem preventable problem paradigms now this is such an important issue look at one more example there's no movie clip society but which is let's say you have two possible plots for a movie not a lot be booked blocks are about a ship that is crossing the ocean okay not a dot B this is not a in plot a the ship hits an iceberg is about to sing now however unlike the movie that you're thinking of in this one the captain of the ship they wrongfully rescues all the passengers on board till you do every single one of them and then he's the last one to get off the ship as it sinks deep into the ocean okay so that's plotting this is plot B in this lot the captain of the ship along with the crew has been on the lookout for dangers they get a radio transmission from a ship that's like further ahead on the course that there's a nice book the captain instructs his crew to respond to that radio transmission and they divert from the normal course and so they you know they avoid the iceberg by many miles and then they reach the destination and all the passengers happily disembark okay so that's not be quite an uneventful trip that's Rodney I have two questions for you first question would you like to watch okay question number two [Music] so that is also equally obvious it is be and yet if this were realize it's the captain in plot a who would return home to a hero's welcome he saved everybody for saving all these lives so what would happen to captain me captain people say visit our site in relative obscurity why is that well Roth to belly was written to excellent books that should be on every PM's bookshelf the scribe this is not a and plot the example that I'm talking about and he says that it's because humans in society at large have a much greater appreciation for problem solving for proper interaction this is the other book so why is that but it's because problem solving is all of those things right it's very visible looks thrilling it seems difficult it feels critical whereas trauma prevention is none of those things right it's invisible who knows you prevented a problem you and your team so let's bring this back to chronic management in the earlier stages of your career SVM it makes sense for you to be a problem solver you see a problem solid right well in my observation many PMS after many years of doing this convince themselves that problem solving is the job it come in to work and look for the problem of the day now however I'm contented if you want to be a true unselfish reader of people of your company you need to optimize for works right for the company and you need to be the captain employed be not the captain and not a despite the lack of accolades if we stand gets to this question how do we combat this paradox right the very first step which we are all taking right now is to recognize its existence this is biggest step beyond that a large part is you know what behaviors and outcomes you encourage as a leader on your team I will talk about that for a full day what I wanted to leave you with today on the preventable problem for paradox is a complete technique that it's systematically helped you fight it that's three models raise your hand if you've run a pre-mortem before okay about six seven hands raise your hands if your company in regularly runs three models no hands okay now raise your hands if you come here as a practice or process set up for postmoderns okay so many more the best way to describe a team order is that if you do it right you don't need those models right so and like a person whatever in which you discuss what went wrong in the pre-mortem you get together in early in the project's lifecycle and you say you ask a team to assume the project has paid and then you ask them to come up with the reasons why that might have been the case if you want to read more about three models I encourage you to read this really superb article by Gary Klein I'm going to share with you today obediently that I've created for more effective three models that you will read a Gary Klein Arden and what I found when doing three models for a while now is that the standard script was very engaging during the pre-mortem people left the room now how many times have we had a meeting whether you have any we forget small things right all the time and so I I saw that with three models and so I wanted to address that I wanted the team to be thinking about problems not just during that meeting but it has nice Michael and bring them up in a psychologically safe manner so I decided to use metaphors so the way I like to run three models now is to ask me to list some issues in three different categories the categories are our Tiger team a tiger is a threat that will hurt us if you don't do something like a tiger if that would be nervous energy there's also a paper tiger so that's the second category of things which is a no sensible threat that some people are worried about but you are not lastly and it's thing you're worrying the team is not talking about so it might not be a threat per se but you just worried that people are not afraid so it's the elephant in the room so with this vocabulary here is how I wanna promote a meeting it's about an hour long meeting and the first 30 minutes is basically silent time it's quiet time I ask the team everybody of the team to come up with at least two tigers one paper tiger and one elephant and people you know spend them in it's quiet I mean they're literally not allowed to speak they spend time writing down the tigers and so on and then they remove what other people wrote so it's a shared dock in which this is done and they get to plus one the tiger it's that other people wrote but you only get five words so you need to be quite selective and then you do the sharing around the room then is the facilitator you will sort of like recap some of the key themes that emerged and the most important part of this exercise is what happens after this meeting which is the force pre-modern action is that all right so I'm going to show you a hypothetical post pre-modern action plan so two team sabia worried that a new product launch will create unexpected privacy issues as the facilitator after the premotor meeting i will actually aggregate the verbatim tigers and elephants that people raise this is very important because people need to know that the actual input they gave here in the meeting is being used you have to assign a directly responsible individual in this case it's Alice and then you propose some mitigating actions so this becomes now your action plan to prevent the problem that surfaced in the pre-mortem and this is a sorted list remember you don't have to solve all problems or prevent all problems but you identify the top three top 5s my team and now we have a plan to mediate so I'll stop this section there with the request and you all run three models and I didn't want to say that it's me as PMS do this often enough you see a dramatic change in the impact that our technology products can have an industry where we have you know fewer privacy gaps and you know security issues on time and generally time they stay don't fail products okay so there you have it solving problems is good but waiting problems is much better okay next one focus on your spends in your books don't worry buddy weaknesses focus on your strengths and you why use is not entirely the truth and to do that let's take a common situation Bob he's checked all the boxes has to get the recognition that he wants from the company Alexis come pains within a few years but I was getting resentful now and it's just showing the company maybe a year ago or something and she's been up here just for three years and you know despite the fact that bar that has like sort of like a better resume Alice got promoted to director the Box going I don't get it what why did I not come out it with the rector in this situation is my comments like Hollywood career trend so in order to understand how one can overcome the p.m. career triple I need to introduce another framework which is the three essential senses of OPM and these are the senses execution and a reticular in product sense so there are the frameworks that you'll find in medium posts and other things on product management competencies I really like this one it's it is it's simple and it can be very helpful in creating a very clear in your ladder for yes however like most places leave you and it's like go figure it out but everywhere not define what each of these is so product sense is the ability we usually make the right decisions even when there's ambiguity and those decisions can be both macro and micro analytical sense the ability to frame the right questions so we're not talking about just data by default a lot of people think that analytical is about not enough it's about really thinking about the situation knowing what questions to ask you know evaluating multiple facets doing the Monte Carlo simulations in your head and you do that based on available data but as well as any Joe's execution senses the ability to you know line people rally people towards a particular objective many people think execution is just about project management it's not it's about or that but it's also about exercise in creativity that's creative execution empathy persuasiveness so now in this video we can answer why Alice director while bob is still stuck that's because alice is what I call about 10:30 50 p.m. what is a pen 32 ppm but Alice is top 10% in her fear group on products and in her case it's that's her area of strength top 30% on execution sense and top 50% on analytical sense that's what 1032 ppm is and the actual order of which sense in your top 10 doesn't matter all that money matters a little but not all that much what's most critical is that as a p.m. you become a 1033 male this once you do that it opens up all sorts of doors for you now 1032 PDMS are made they are not born and PM's who successfully become 10 30 50 Young's break one very popular rule of career management and that's this one right focus on when your friends don't worry about weaknesses this is generally very good advice it is not good advice for things yam you need to be well rounded you know you cannot say like oh I just create your DS for execution we cannot do that or just use my instinct without using data so how do you become a 1032 ppm well the main thing is you have a default sense every km has a default sense and so you can figure out which one of those three is and that's the one that you should start percent and then you should work towards improving the other two senses if you're curious about how to improve your do not default senses ask me about that in the Q&A section all right touch up do more things here first one I see this all the time curse of being a great execution here the curse of the execution superpower is that what it does is it leads to rapid promotions early on if you good at execution naturally expect it to do early on in your career so you get promoted and you get validation I must be doing something right which is why the organization is rewarding me as you keep doing that right like you keep uplink down and putting down your execution cells and then all of a sudden progress stops that you don't get promoted beyond a certain level and so you wonder why and your first instinct is oh I just got to work harder so you work hard it being a great executable that doesn't work out so like okay maybe the company I joined like you know do the right time you're gonna join for this is no longer the right Tommy go to another company same issue since you remember it's really important to remember execution sets in only eight you to a certain level because after a certain level of incompetence it's not you are not executing right you are enabling others to execute and that's where product sense and analytical sense you are framing the question you're not answering the question is certainly not executing on the implementation second thing I want to leave you with is the product sense advantage because it can be a real differentiator for you as a p.m. products and so long as it's first cousin strategic sense it's the most short fire way to get promoted especially at high will come and even it's something you want to see your founder of your own stardom you need to know that most if not all products of the CEOs at product sets as their superpower this is what I ask people to do like you have to invest in products sense let's talk into any section actually have some extra slides that I'd love to show you on product sense so somebody here is that as a PM you need to also fix your weaknesses you need to become a 1032 ppm and nothing unique especially without your constants let's go to the next one always putting your best effort again this makes sense you shoot to work Cooper you should do great one right but that doesn't equate to putting in your best effort for every single thing so the observation I made is many early and wait for your VMs are struggling with managing their time for those of you manage PMS you must have heard like the constant of man who wants to do I think to stress like do not do it if there's too much to do I need to we need another VM whatever like I need to delegate make me a manager blah blah you stirred another time and I know this very well because I was that yeah right like when I was 13 my cam 3 or 2 years into my career I was at Google I was stretched I was in the new environment it was a high performance at 1:00 p.m. and you know like I had a lot of gold like I would breathe with the stress home my family then I got stressed about the stress so anyways sure it was not a good time for me and but everything changed for me when I learned about one thing and that's this right leverage and so the way it was explained to me was by a p.m. but been at Google are really not that his name is Daniel do this and you know what I was trying to do was to be more efficient with my time that was quite self-aware I was very self-aware about this issue you know from my day and what that they pointed out to me is that I'm seeking an efficiency when I should be seeking effectiveness but most of you have seen this so I reframe the question right I think we have the question from how can I be more efficient so how can I be more effective for the company for the team for the rock and just around this point I came across an article and I don't know I really need to thank the author of the article but I don't remember where I found it describe how you should think about the tasks that you do so you know as PMS we have a task list whether it's a task all of us have a method for managing our tasks and what I've learned is steps right leg all tasks are not created equal but it was quite counterintuitive to me because I was a perfectionist furniture so because I cannot locate the original article then share modify version with you but I learn which is a framework that I'm calling this LNO effectiveness framework it's a simple framer any task you do can fall in one of three categories that's L which is leveraged assets right you put it X and your company gets back large multiple events there are neutral tasks put in X your company gets back tax and then there are overhead tasks put in actually somebody gets back there sir the concrete picture is that when you are deciding on your task list in which task you will do or are given take in anything through what category each of those tasks belongs well let's put this looks like seven hours to do this is nice 10 hour day five well let's apply this framework now let's apply here and off they go right here we have a same fastest all of them is the crucial differences are prefixed it with the type of a sentence Thank You Tube videos and when I start looking at it this way I look at this make the protests make progress of the tyranny for the next gen messaging that is clearly I am responsible for messaging say it's clearly an extremely high leverage task now anyone spending remember two hours on it today using my old approach but I'm actually gonna spending hours on that because it's a leverage - so but if an extra hour going to come from so actually the next hour is going to come from the first half which is somebody somewhere in the organization asked me for 24 months resourcing plan and I'm sure there are great reasons why they want it but like let's face it right leg is the organization changing the number after being 24 verses 20 to 24 months from now no right and and so there's this sense of false precision that everything needs to be done perfectly it needs to be perfectly analyzed which makes that task instead of a 30-minute or even a 10-minute task but to our task it so that's where you save your time again it's about being effective okay so this is about your tasks now we're going to take it to a higher level which is products okay so I'm gonna share a sort of scenario for you and you should tell me any of you can identify with the scenario in your life SPM so there's a disagreement between engineering and the disagreement is you know design points a certain button in that UI to perform a certain way so they say do it this way and she says well first of all it was not in this bag second it's actually hard to do it third it's so hard to do it it's gonna take just an extra month just to do it this way one month just to do it this way and fourth I really don't think this is necessary and you you're in character mediate this conversation is like yeah I kind of see what the designer was saying but I also can't see what they're and he's never said right so does this seem familiar okay so I make the observation that is in the in the course of development of products this situation comes up dozens of times and then dozens of meetings as a result of litigating how should this work and escalating and asking somebody higher up because they will have the answer like mixing of this time all we need to do is use this framework which I probably agreed target quality framework so it is a framework I learned from Jeff's iPod and Twitter and modified it to over the years so what is his framework whether the framework says you can shoot for one of many different levels of quality for a given product and I start at the bottom a privately brokered level the next level is Lord is expected these are now most companies will by default in for expected that's why it's called expected or sometimes it ok so now that we have this framework in solve this problem forever design because the issue is not how the button should behave that is not the issue the issue is that design wants to build an exquisite forever without a link just in their mind they want to build an exquisite product and engineering is thinking we are building an expected Laura and the PM musical like I'm maybe it should be a living will it's a hideout its feature or product but they're not talking about that they talk about how the button should work and which an engineer should meet needs to be reallocated and like which feature needs to be be prioritized to make room for this issue it's the wrong conversation to be having can you imagine this like doing this for like twenty four features over a six month long project they did not sit down and agree on what level of quality that they were shooting for so the reason this is important the most important thing with this green table quality framework is now you on the team with the lexicon that still be disagreements of course but now it is a disagreement you can use this lexicon you can say oh actually the issue is you are you thinking will trying to build is exquisite product we do want to build an exquisite product but for one they're actually aiming for somewhere between elegant and expected right and if that's the game then it's fine that this but it behaves this way so just like tigers paper tigers and elephants earlier the lexicon here is the most important thing so remember you want to be effective not efficient and the takeaway here is be very intentional or do people leverage for your company and your team and like you know meaning that more important insistence in your perfection all right I think we have time so we have we can get to move the number four which is and this is this is as PR aspire to become the product you should aspire to become SVP product you should have start become CTO that's new title now instead of Yahoo baby and so you need to be back and if you're not that then you're a failure I measured hundreds of VMs or layers and when I asked them the standard question what would you like to do I want to share like my own scientific results of the answer 702 tell me or I will be five years there's a DVD product etc you know I want to start my own company in this p.m. thing is you standing there saying certainly has been my experience I'm going to point out to you a common error especially of the high performing teams that have entered for the years and that is they change the weeping product again and again you know this talk is not about just telling you the convenient foods right I'm going to tell you this is not the right answer for everybody before we get into that right there is this question of like why does this NECN wondering like what is the strength even exists why do people buy two for one to be beating Prada I think I have the answer and I think it's because of LinkedIn don't get me wrong lick 10 is a wonderful tool it is amazing but SPMS progress in their career they need some benchmarks of how well they're doing and the benchmarks they use are there etc right and liquid like I said great tool I love it but one of the challenges it's created is like every once in a while linked into Mercedes is notification the notification says Bob your friend became VP carved right congratulate them you're not going to be caught up in this point and so you wow that's cool and then you know the CEO of the startup that hired Bob is tweeting welcoming Bob to the team and like people are retweeting it and but you know there's a press release maybe you're looking at all this and you were saying what am I doing wrong if I tell you you're bad winner Bob right so that your nickname Emmy what I say to people is like actually you know you could really need to understand what you are looking for because the biggest mistake I see is like they just change titles without actually understanding what matters to them so when somebody tells me okay I'm looking for a beauty product excellence I do the five white or the seven wise right neck why he won't be with your product these are the answers I get you know I want to have more influence okay so my second one why do you want to have more maybe so you keep asking the question and some of these factors with emerged some some people who have done it up learning it so as they grow and become a VP product and learn more I'll get to do more interesting work I'll get better people that is and like what people are considering a new job they also think about a mission right the power line aren't they with the mission of the government that's really important for me the one thing I'm extremely partial to the people I will compromise on other things I will never compromise on people I have learned that the hard way but it will be different for you right like it could be any one or more of those things that you don't want to compromise what I tell is high-performing nians that are meant to be so then create PM's like they have a great future ahead is that I think high-performing here actually all of these factors should be given again in the next role you are considering you should look for everything that I just listed there because if you compromise you are going to be unhappy and then I go to the tough question which is after all of this is a given right what do you want to pick between title and money and this M word it's it's just bizarre right like you celebrate from the value we celebrate like dollar amounts in start-up funding fundraising we celebrate exits you know this entrepreneur like has a six billion dollar agent that's amazing when it comes to talking about money in the context of us as individuals somehow if you bring it up in the job search process you're consider uncool and that's at best right like you're considered to be a mercenary it doesn't have to be this way so now a lot of you tell me like well but like why is this I feel like this is a false dichotomy between title and money maybe they're actually correlated right like more title higher title means more money they're correlated and that's what people are making a mistake a mistake is this is simpler idle and money are a meal correlated when you're looking at a single thumb but when you look at the industry in the world there isn't that much correlation between that left so again if you're a high-performing yeah you have your pick of companies right so you one company wearing a high title less money vice versa let's take just for example Salesforce and Google if you look at Glassdoor individual contributor PMS at Google make more money than directors and senior directors at Salesforce this is just a pack right and we are we are in this special time in the by I don't know how long this time is going to laugh laugh but we are in this special time the very well this is true but most people don't understand this right this doesn't get talked about you know in fact there are like you know groupie amps at Facebook making more money than now VP is that Oracle like that is true doesn't get talked about because it doesn't get talked about people end up making thank you even if you're after money like you end up making the wrong decision because you think the title is going to get you the money so here's a common situation and describe two situations that come up in my mentorship and like somehow they they got this then they want to be VP product is going after the title they're not getting it but all of a sudden like after a long search they found something it's an unknown startup don't know what's going to happen right they asked me what should I do and then I say like look each you are optimizing for title right leg again remember titled money not correlated and if you are optimizing what I believe that's what's gonna give you satisfaction go for it which is stoned so like buying to the life that you are also going to get money because a lot of people say no no no look this is an unknown company but it's going to be big I got like a 100 bits of equity like you know if they would give me GE but I can ago she ate it it up to 100 you know where it's like a 10 billion dollar company that means whatever that it is like hundred dollars or whatever and so I'm going to get the money but they are forgetting one thing which is like ordinarily they were not getting this VP product job right so this to me is clearly and this is the hard truth this company has lowered the power to give this interview for whatever is in the VP toilet and that should be a signal because the company is not just gonna do it for you it's going to do it for more hires right so the company that is willing to do that can give you that big title has a lower chance of having that outside outcome that you are hoping for right so one percent of zero is still zero this is actually the more pernicious now you get an individual contributor p.m. offer is like again your great am i CPM offer at a fast growth startup right what should I do and I see most people just like find it extremely hard to make this decision and the reason I say it's pernicious is because in most cases the majority of cases end up making the wrong person why because even though like for them money is what they care about you just cannot get themselves to get that leg down level in title they feel like the value needs to be monotonically I'm here to tell you the truth is it doesn't matter if money is what you're optimizing for just equally on now at this point the really high performing the ends you've got it all wrong because there's this person X you know people caught up that Instagram snapchat some chat whatever chat and and like they were featured in 30 under 30 40 under 40 whatever they have everything shares so it can be done and to that I say well simple communication your bias which is you're falling prey to the survivorship bias for every such video product that's 28 years old there are 98 other either product and whatever that like don't have that sort of career that I'm not on this particular 13 years right but you're not seeing those you only see the one instance so what I like to remind people is that if you could run a hundred simulations of you career absolutely it makes sense cause like two of those hundred simulations would end up with that outside outcome you just pick that but you have only one variable you cannot run these hundred simulations and so you should think strategically about it career think in the valley in the body career in terms of twenty year increments right and like make six to seven strategic melts right and sometimes she likes it early if they are not doing so well and on the bed she'll stay longer if they are so I come back to this which is this needs to be they don't chase titles unless added what you want okay you should also in this one this one should in fact like almost every interview question like who who runs this place and the implication is like how it's better to work it's better to be so so let's do it you're behind is that right I think is to have more control over the product like over what gets built and of course the ego feels great when you're in charge of the charts what I regret to inform you that it almost always leads to inferior products right that's what I say work at current offset something's because if you are yourself obsessive particularly products and you shouldn't care about whether it be a driven wrench in this book by Ray Dalio he talks about the concept of the idea meritocracy which is effectively that writings it's America if you want to learn more about shame your ego and being an even keel p.m. there is no better book than this one the practicing so it Restorick by alright so like this one more okay you ready for what one last one which is this is a real course about and they actually some gender differences here that like on average p.m. for women achieved much more confidence versus their actual level of competence and so so my key message here is for a competence and confidence to be in check and I learnt this from step solar with my forte well she said like what you want to do is if your competence is here you don't want your confidence to be here is you leave the team they will be like the team will be excited to have you as a leader because you're handsome and if you're confident they will lead the team down like really bad facts right and you just won't know better because like this is like reality distortion field around so and you also as leader you don't want to be this way like you don't want competence to be hair and confidence to be very low that's not good either but you what is a balance you want your confidence which is slightly above this is what step are you you want your confidence to be just slightly about your level of confidence that's the right place to be so um this is a book I recommend very highly we all doubt infallibility and this book explains really well what causes us to make mistakes we make mistakes up all these reasons could be fundamental attribution error as well so and the charisma by olivia fox to be beautiful right among other things described it a tenth equate to bathe an excuse confidence okay it's me captain remember the suits solve problems yes but also prevent problems focus on your friends yes but also fix your weaknesses put in your best effort may be actually better to seek leverage become weekly a product maybe that's what you want to do but otherwise these strategic don't is a status make logical decisions yes be logical but remember that I just want you will not be only to work at ppm driven companies no love product will get fun a success companies be very confident yes but also first people so now that you've completed the table these are the frameworks you learned about today my sincere hope is you can apply these frameworks at your job and over the course of a career and now all I have to say is Congrats but what I can share with you there's many many years to learn and it certainly helped me make a greater impact two products are both on the team to work with and the companies that work for and the best part personally for me is also that it's helped me move my career in the direction I wanted on my own terms not on somebody else's not based on some medium post I'd read but truly authentic to what it what's right for me so if wish you the very best in your journey as a product manager thank you [Applause] let's go till 9:00 and for folks who have other questions but and three models are explicitly supposed to work with your existing prophecies so you do have some companies that do a pretty terrific job of identifying the risks and the problems that might occur up front and immediately have strategy review right like many agile organizations these days like web companies they don't like you study which is wrong they think like strategy is a waste of time but it's not right and so so those processes should be in place where three models do come in useful in almost every case is if you don't apply any stage in your project but if you apply it to say length at a time that said if you have a launch coming up for software product that you say just three months before right because three months is like adequate time for you to be able to respond to new problems that get surface but it's also like not so much in advance that like people just don't even know people have had now by now it feels of leaving the project right so whereas some of these earlier stages you know you might not have data yet or contacts yet on what could go wrong what can go wrong because you've been building the product right and again the three-month period gives enough time to respond to the highest priority issues and mediate those messes so that's how I would think about introducing of the modem to a company that already has so the question is how that are given companies product themselves actually many games a product obsessed compass will obsess about every detail related to the product they're putting out so the first place I'll ask you to check is go look at their blog posts just look at them check the quality of writing on the intention to be here the media that accompany the blog post go check out their website and this applies put usually you enterprise companies there's an enterprise company that has a fantastic product and this product or says it will also obsess about its website right here again you will see that in the design I work for a company that mainly strike which mainly offers an API many ways the talks or the product right that the Help Center is great there and the support process is another term right click is in obsessing about the customer and the customer journey throughout that journey or is it only like about pushing some pixels then of course take if you are able to use a product which is sometimes hard for enterprise currency then you use it and that's another take but I will say that like law posted like so so that if the support experience is not great if the help content is not very well organized the website is just man probably not I'd like you would mention customer obsessed rather than product obsessed over there surprised to see that part they are not missing right so you can have a family that I go possesses a little too much about the product but it doesn't care about the other parts of the customer journey when I'm talking to you know general leadership folks they cannot specific maybe density or some marketing here or something else I actually encourage travel to Tom I uses customer obsessed I've just found as a technique from a cup cells resonates more with product managers and customer obsessed can have some negative baggage for some product managers where they might think oh customer obsess means or we just gotta do what the customer does VP of Sales is saying yeah you're saying what is the roadmap you're the person taking the request from the sales or marketing department to the engineering department classic so so that I think that's what I wanted to avoid which is why I was lucky in that I was just born with this tendency to find insurance wherever I go and not even like officially like will you be my mentors right leg out I try to learn from everybody like whether or not like they are in an official mentor Rose or not right so the thing I found that works really well is you become a default a student of organizations right you look at an organization like big picture and you try to figure out like you ask yourself why does it work this way like what are the factors again what are the psychological factors what you saw the analytical stuff that result in the organization making this decision and it's brainless it's not over now this person is like income no it's not about that it's not like they are waking up in the morning thinking they want to do a great job nobody's picking up in the morning is thinking about the company right so what are the psychological underpinnings of these actions in these decisions and if you use that lens in your job and in almost every situation you will find mentors everywhere you learn from pretty much everybody like you learn what to do and also more importantly learn what not to do right so like one thing I did not mention you know it's very common it's considered great and popular and amazing and humble in the valley who say why I'm successful but I've made a lot of mistakes right like let me tell you what all the mistakes I made right I think yes you should not make mistakes like you should just look at other people then learn from their mistakes you're making mistakes so that's my the other one is you know situation myself situation [Music] so first question around team organs you know how do you know that you are not doing a little too much how do you know we were not slowing her team down by trying to avoid mistakes you can never solve all the problems in the world right leg if you solve one problem like a solution to that problem is actually dating some other software this nuts up it's not about solving all problems it's about which problems are you willing to live with right and those are the ones you create and the other ones you saw right I say that because yes you could over to this B motor right well now the problem you've created with Sony North Robin hi everyone is now you're like going to so the best way to avoid that tendency is the prioritization right so in the pre-mortem a lot of issues come up literally like each one of the watermen like again you 8:38 to establish a psychologically safe environment for people to express their body issues input and then you're saying okay so yes it it's slowing down but it slows you down the right amount that's how I will do it what's it like solving every single problem your second question I think but for what you think what you meant is like how you distinguish between this like egoic desire to be in the 30 under 30 versus the genuine trying to make an impact [Music] yeah who has their hand raised for a while so one of the higher language skill sets that sets how do you ask a question so the question is how do you develop products and so in order to develop product sense what you need to understand what for expenses what are the components of products and I contend there are three components of product and it's domain knowledge you need to understand the domain you're working in in order to have any good opinion of what the right thing is to build and then we clearly so empathy is about understanding how people who are not used with respondent react how will users react how with partners react how will regulators react that's empathy the main knowledge is just like a core domain knowledge of like how does this system work what are the regulatory issues here who are the main competitors what are their strengths and weaknesses and so on where is this industry headed and then creatively which is saying oh this is a problem here is a different normal way of solving this problem right these are the three elements of profit sense so now we have a question if you want to improve your products and you have to improve along these three dimensions how do you move along these three dimensions empathy it's a skill most people are like most people who are great at it are just born with it thanks sorry not everybody is select there is the natural disadvantage there so how do you weigh that empathy what I found useful is to read a lot about psychology about cognitive biases and talk to people right so one model the common the common solution to this which i think is necessary but not sufficient it's just talk to us once yes of course you need to talk to customers but you also need to understand what is not being said right that you only have if you actually understand how you like my books it's really important domain knowledge it is the easy one you can brute force you like all you need is hard work and then he's one of those again like everybody has a certain base level sure but you know least radio to the most creative despite what however have some good news which is you can actually brute force your way through creativity as well as it pertains to products how do you do that saying you are building acts that's the product we working on is a mask right you've been through for stability by being the most prolific user of the acts they come mobile apps right like in this case if you understand you know the user on board calm they do tear downs of these products but like why do they decide to have this screen you're wise to but in this place why does this have this thing have this coffee in love this other coffee why is it black or white redneck all of that they they they do would tear down the UX right what that is doing is it is helping you understand the the myriad different wage set like you wouldn't have thought about yourself of solving a given problem the situation where you have interaction you can bring that up so that's how you people who have really liked the question so what I found useful is photo for major launch to run political thing orders around the same time and so this is what heck works for me for my team I will run a set of one or two more depending on the size of that you see that we just like kind of engineering focus and then we bring in the engineers of the team we will run a team whatever with the people who are directly building the car so that's one or maybe cover that the game is not and then we will report the results to the people you know one from now people yeah that's the tiger right pointed out instead of that's the issue remember this so so that's one sort of and then I run another promoter with people who are responsible for the promoting and setting the translucent go-to-market okay so in that bill it was the marketing meeting the sales we have sales DRI and LA what's fun is like very different issues come out in the engineering courses need is you see the one and each you big baby thank you who did I who have a personal question thank you [Music] my question is you've moved from company to company [Music] what decision-making process did you go through when you fellows time to move on to next challenge three men working in constant C so the so one realization I had I was an engineer who you know this opinion should be a product knife okay I guess I got a few things so how does one get into product management when was your knee there which was my first but like when I was going through the transition one thing I realized is interviewing is actually great because when you interview like there's always this is this inertia around what is the other end of that process is amazing because interviewing made me smarter like in very clear ways it made me smarter both of them prep that was necessary to do well at night abuse but also the conversations I ended up having the never get said but like interviewing is actually a great way to expand your network right with the right people not just like in a random way and so so when I had that realization right it's now get to your question which is I immediately started like welcoming that right like anytime I felt like well you know I feel like a change I did not have anything I did I no longer had that inertia around like oh just going out and talking to a few people right it doesn't have to be this like it's not like or anything like it's just like you're doing interviews it's fine and so early on that was my approach now I get to the part that up to now you should refine after a lot of trial and error and it's to be very clear about what am I looking for so so so with this thank you Mary scope I can look at my current situation and I say like okay what is important for me and then am I getting in my current situation that which is important for me and if I'm getting it make sense to stay put if I'm not I gotta explore but now I can be very strategic about those explorations I'm not randomly like walking through the forest I am saying like okay I want a title I am NOT getting the title like in my current age so like that's what I could optimize for first and foremost now that needs so different setup they just look at me like I am NOT going to be an SVP and oh it is like no way that I will not get that job right so now I thought I need not apply for that job like the right jobs there so that's sort of like the tiny body scope thing work is [Music] first thing I the main thing that causes unhappiness is the constant pursuit so if you're pursuing success you can be sure you're actually not going to be so you you need to be clear on what success means for you I'll share my personal journey which is you have to get success standing here is not gonna convince anybody that everybody wants to change their money in a title then like prestige and power and all that and then you get to that next stage and then when he still unhappy psychic as you look you're not elect 30 under 30 you gotta be on that little straighter or you're 40 already go there's gonna be other 15s so now it's like you know Fame and notoriety again you get there and then there's still somebody more successful than you again you can see them so so most people keep changing is that's the economic unit cetera supposing it which is they said choices are not so I [Applause]

Channel: SVPMA

Views: 16,131

Keywords: product management, careers

Id: jLH9xaerIB0

Length: 88min 38sec (5318 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 20 2020