How do you spot senior PMs in a meeting? Look out for the ones asking questions related to doing the right things vs. doing things right. Latter is also important, but the more senior you get the more you realise how important former is for step function change for the better.

You don’t need to know a product in detail to think about ways to improve it. What you need in bare minimum is why that product exists in the first place and a system level understanding of how it works / is supposed to work.

It’s quite interesting how well small “bad words” land the message. Most companies show zero tolerance to bad language at work, but I frequently observe even the uppest leaders sparingly use slang-ish words when they try to influence others. e.g. we know their product sucks

Yet, there are a lot of people with tool fetish in #prodmgmt

Everytime I hear “P0 work”, I feel there is something off with numbers and how people understand priorities. Understanding priorities means deliberately not doing some important things now. If you continue trying to get everything done, you’ll end up with a long list of P0 work.

And watching the impact of it on the users ❤️

When we build documents as product managers, we usually focus on addressing the issues of today. However, documents quite often outlive their creators and context they were created. Tip: Unless you create living documents, make sure you reflect crucial contextual changes.

Red flag, to me, is too strong of a sentiment in this case as I prefer no questions vs. meaningless questions (e.g. asking about a simple topic previously discussed) Here is one question that works for me all the time: “How does a day of a PM in your team/org look like?”

Looking at data is good. Looking at data with a hypothesis is better. As long as you are aware of the confirmation bias, you’ll find ways or gaps to the (in)validation of your hypothesis faster if you begin with one in mind.

#til that if you want to influence across orgs and get but in from multiple levels above your level as a PM, you need to align people on the opportunity. Products are built to attack opportunities, no matter how big or small. Everyone should see the opportunity as you see it.

I’d argue more so on execution vs. the idea itself, especially if we talk about startups & 0-to-1 products. In these spaces you keep your problem space constant and pivot between ideas. This inherently means failed ideas along the way. Sharp execution enables ultimate success.

I frequently get asked about how to break into product management. There are tons of threads suggesting different ways, but none gives you the honest answer. Honest answer: You need to build a network and show them you get your hands dirty in product. There are no shortcuts.

Creating sustainable business value by solving user problems through development of products. I’d say the job of a PM is always this. All the other noise you see on job ads and interviews are reflections of organisations and the culture you’d face when you are a part of them.

When building products that need cross department or cross organisation effort, an unpretentious PM hack is to have a shared glossary. It’s staggering how common it is for most misalignments and inefficiencies to be rooted on small differences in meaning of words people use.

It’s common for PMs to have multiple things top of mind every week, which often remain being in progress for more than a week. A simple PM hack to fight the busy mind: take 15 mins to note down your progress Friday EOD and another 5 on Monday mornings to set prios for the week.

We are over-PMing PM artefacts. We think about and constantly discuss perfecting those roadmap visualisations, vision decks, PRDs etc. The most impactful artefacts of PMs are questions though. As simple as asking “why are we doing this now?” or “how do we iterate on this?”.

Advice to up and coming PMs: Keep the people asking tough questions about your product close to you. When I got started in this job, I used to think whoever asks questions I can’t easily answer was trying to make me look bad. After ~10 years, I can say they grew me the most.

During economic downturns like this, PMs often get asked by their leadership to “ruthlessly prioritise”. Okay, but, what do they mean? A simple rule of thumb: If you literally feel the emotional pain of not doing a thing, you are ruthlessly prioritising. No pain, no focus.