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Middle managers in big companies

Mission: Why Vision: What Strategy: How Segmentation: Who Positioning: Where Roadmap: When

Let’s talk about High Agency: an attitude I’ve seen in every successful product manager & leader I’ve known. Some ppl are born/raised with High Agency. It can also be developed later in life. High agency is a prerequisite for making a profound impact in one's life & work 1/20

Advanced time management principles: (for senior product managers & leaders)

Just a few notes to myself (a driven & ambitious person): 1) Kings are overrated and usually unhappy. It is much better to be kingmaker. 2) Eventually, everyone realizes that they don’t want to be Elon Musk or Steve Jobs. How quickly do you want to get there? 3) Legacy is

There are Good Product Managers and there are Great Product Managers. There are also Okay Product Managers and Bad Product Managers, but we will focus on the Good and the Great here. Good Product Managers, Great Product Managers, a thread:

A B2B Product Management Story: on discovering problems that customers actually care about Very visual story thread👇🏾

A thread of product management frameworks: (this might be useful if you are a product manager, product leader, or founder)

Some people who succeed wildly in school don’t achieve their apparent potential in the business world. Some others who do okay (or worse) in school manage to build an extremely successful life. Why is that? What we learn in school & must unlearn in business & in life: (1/10)

As they grow in size, teams within megacorps and startups tend to implicitly bias more towards Project Thinking and not enough Product Thinking. Product Thinking is a mindset and a process that, once you see, you cannot unsee it. Product Thinking, Project Thinking, a thread:

Since time immemorial, when a CEO asks a PM at Product Review, “what do you need to 10X users/revenue?”, “what will make you go faster?”, etc the PM steadfastly responds “We need [N] more engineers”. The Eng Mgr nods approvingly. A story thread, with some hard truths to swallow:

A hilarious fact of corporate life is that your odds of getting promoted will be higher if you strategically escalate multiple times to your senior management while delivering your team’s goals than if you manage to deliver the very same goals without ever escalating.

This explains many workplaces

Why do smart product people & teams often build products with mediocre or no impact? A cautionary thread of biases and fallacies we encounter when building products👇🏾 1/10

“You are great at execution, the team loves you, but you need to be more strategic” Hearing this feedback from your direct manager or your skip manager can be very confusing. And for highly capable product people who consistently get things done, this theme of “you need to be more strategic” is extremely common. It is perhaps the most common feedback given to otherwise-competent PMs at some point in their career. -- It starts showing up after you’ve rapidly ascended your company’s career ladder up to Sr. PM or Group PM. And once it starts showing up, it just will not go away. That is, until you fix it. -- But here’s the trouble: it is incredibly confusing to know how to act on this feedback. As a further complication, while many managers / skip levels are happy to deliver this feedback, most of them either do not have the expertise or the time to create more clarity on how the employee should act on this feedback. -- So let’s solve that. First, if you receive the “you need to be more strategic” feedback, it doesn’t automatically mean that you should be looking to take a product strategy course or read a product strategy book. Product strategy and being strategic are not always the same thing. In practice, not all “you need to be more strategic” feedback is the same. -- There are 3 distinct categories of this feedback: 1) More Product Thinking: You need to do more Product Thinking and less Project Thinking (see the image below if you’re curious about the differences between Product Thinking and Project Thinking) 2) New Opportunity Creation: You need to spend more time on creating new opportunities and the next big new business for your org & company (instead of being mainly focused on executing on and optimizing the current cash cow) 3) Actual Product Strategy: You need to clarify the vision and product strategy for your product (and make sure that the right people at the right levels in the right functions understand this vision & strategy, and are aligned to execute on it across the company) -- #1 is usually the case for Sr. PMs / GPMs when they want to get to Director level. #2 is usually the case for Director level folks who need to demonstrate impact above and beyond what would organically happen anyway. #3 is usually the case for GPM / Director / VP level folks who are very good Operators, but haven’t yet found the time or built the skills to clarify a real product vision and strategy and get the broader org aligned towards it. -- So if in the next perf review season you get the “you need to be more strategic” feedback, I suggest you use this framework to get more clarity from your manager on what you actually need to do to respond to their feedback.

Corporate life is just repeating this loop until you retire:

What are some examples of tech companies that are doing >$50 million in revenue, with double digit YoY growth, and don't have a hiring freeze? Public / private doesn't matter, location doesn't matter.

Consider this: if “talk to customers” is the biggest secret to product success, then why aren’t more products successful? Why are so many founders unsuccessful? What explains PMs who’ve been talking to customers 5 times a week for years, without ever making products that win?

Let’s talk about High Agency: an attitude I’ve seen in every successful product manager & leader I’ve known. Some ppl are born/raised with High Agency. It can also be developed later in life. High agency is a prerequisite for making a profound impact in one's life & work 1/20

How are you planning, if at all, for the time when AI takes over most jobs? (note: arguments that it isn’t going to happen aren’t as interesting or useful as one might assume, so feel free to skip those)

Thinking of switching to a regular wrist watch (been an Apple Watch user for years). What’s your favorite / the best non-smart watch with a digital display? Don’t have a specific budget but ideally under $500.

A B2B Product Management Story: on discovering problems that customers actually care about Very visual story thread👇🏾

Failure is the absolute worst way to learn something and sadly so many people spend their entire lives under the illusion that failure is the best way to learn anything.

Who’s hiring product managers? (any level, any location) Reply here.

A thread of my most popular threads:

There are Good Product Managers and there are Great Product Managers. There are also Okay Product Managers and Bad Product Managers, but we will focus on the Good and the Great here. Good Product Managers, Great Product Managers, a thread:

Advanced time management principles: (for senior product managers & leaders)

Who’s hiring product managers? (any level, any location) Reply here.

A thread of product management frameworks: (this might be useful if you are a product manager, product leader, or founder)

Just a few notes to myself (a driven & ambitious person): 1) Kings are overrated and usually unhappy. It is much better to be kingmaker. 2) Eventually, everyone realizes that they don’t want to be Elon Musk or Steve Jobs. How quickly do you want to get there? 3) Legacy is

Since time immemorial, when a CEO asks a PM at Product Review, “what do you need to 10X users/revenue?”, “what will make you go faster?”, etc the PM steadfastly responds “We need [N] more engineers”. The Eng Mgr nods approvingly. A story thread, with some hard truths to swallow:

Some people who succeed wildly in school don’t achieve their apparent potential in the business world. Some others who do okay (or worse) in school manage to build an extremely successful life. Why is that? What we learn in school & must unlearn in business & in life: (1/10)