WIL#1 - Being strategic, AI, Technical Learning, How to Influence Others, and Focus on the problem
WIL or "What I Learned" is a series of my most recent learning recap in my Product Management journey.
Hi there, it's Carol here ☁️. My new job doesn't have much to do lately besides endless self-training on Procurement domain and internal system. Therefore, I came up with the idea of highlighting various knowledge that I collected (from the internet gold) through out these weeks.
Hope that this series can become a nice recap for my readers to get some interesting insights.
In this post
I cover 6 main insights that I gathered in the past 2 weeks (through the lens of a Junior Product Manager):
How to become more strategic as a Product Manager
How AI is changing Product world
How to Thrive as a Product Manager in a "Founder-Mode" Startup
My approach to equip technical knowledge
How to influence others to listen to what you say
"Focus on the problem to solve for the company"
|| 2065 words. 15 minutes reading.
1/ How to become more strategic as a Product Manager
Anneka Gupta - the Chief Product Officer at Rubrik, a leading B2B cybersecurity company - was a special guest on Lenny's podcast, where she shared about the feedback she used to receive as not being strategic enough. After diving into what "strategic" means, she concluded 2 actionable takeaways for product managers to be seen as strategic within their organization:
Master the Art of Storytelling Around the Product or Company "Why"
Being perceived as strategic often starts with effectively communicating the "why" behind your product or company. To build this skill, practice summarization during the meetings or after reviewing key reports. Being able to provide clear and concise recaps of findings can help translate complex ideas into actionable takeaway.
These summaries and a clear "why" story can drive clarity and focus for your team, which impacts on their perception and naturally elevates you as being a strategic element in the team.
My action on this takeaway: creating a WIL series to recap my past learning :D
Champion High-Impact Ideas
Anneka stated that leadership goes beyond just offering ideas, it's about steering teams toward impactful outcomes. To do this:
Understand past successes and failures: Analyze what has worked (or hasn’t) in previous initiatives to refine your strategic thinking.
Inspire and guide your team: Encourage team members to present their strategies regularly, offering constructive feedback that sharpens their approach. This will help them view you as a contributor who supports them to do their work better, not a disrupter who comes in at last minute to change everything.
Think bigger: Prioritize ideas with transformative potential for the company rather than focusing solely on incremental improvements for your team.
2/ How AI is changing Product World
During the summit of Lenny & Friends, Claire Vo who is a Chief Product Officer at LaunchDarkly hared one of the most interesting wake-up call for product manager: AI is coming for your seat.
My takeaways from her speech are:
Embrace the AI-Powered "Triple Threat"
The new trend is here, AI is breaking down traditional triad role (Product, Engineering, Design) and creating individuals who can do all three empowered by AI tools & agents. This shift encourages product managers to:
Leverage AI tools to do whatever the project needs to move forward.
Embrace the mindset of a generalist and ready to roll up your sleeves to do more than just 1 role.
Recognize that individuals armed with AI can move faster than even small teams.
Automate Tedious Tasks to Increase Productivity
Claire noticed that there are some tasks which are incredibly time taking like building a product strategy, yet the final result can be replicate with shorter implementation time with the use of AI. Below are things PM should integrate AI into their activities:
Drafting documents, meeting agendas, and updates.
Tracking goals (e.g., OKRs) and monitoring competitors.
Consolidating feedback and preparing materials like slides or interview questions.
The goal isn’t to achieve perfection through AI but to gain speed—aim for 75% completion through automation and refine the remaining 25% yourself.
Actionable items for Product Managers/ Product Leaders:
To stay ahead of this trend, PMs/ PLs need to:
Continuously acquire new skills to maximize the potential of AI tools.
Lead teams that blend traditional expertise with AI-powered efficiency.
Adapt to changing investment priorities as organizations allocate resources toward AI agents alongside headcount.
3/ How to Thrive as a Product Manager in a "Founder-Mode" Startup
Founder Mode, a term made famous by Brian Chesky of Airbnb and further recapped by Paul Graham, is a hands-on leadership style that’s very different from the usual "Manager Mode." While managers hire great people and let them do their jobs, founders often get deeply involved in decisions and details.
Founder-mode is more complex:
Founders need to figure out when to delegate things, and when to jump into the details. The amount of autonomy will probably vary from company to company, as managers earn more trust.
There is little knowledge of Founder mode compares to manager mode. And the result of following Founder mode is not 100% assured as well.
The downside of the founder mode is that it is easy for founders to misuse it. They now have the excuse to not delegate things they should delegate. Or managers who aren't founders will try to act like founders as well. Everyone can follow Steve Jobs' way of working but not everyone can create Apple.
From my conclusion, here’s how product managers can navigate this unique environment:
Aware that authority will come later when PM earn more trust, so respect founders' boundaries.
In founder mode, it is hard for a PM to have full authority until he/she can gain the complete trust of the founder. This is the fact we must accept before working in a startup.
Gaining a founder’s trust takes time. Instead of directly challenging their decisions, connect your ideas to the company’s goals and suggest alternatives. Let the founder make the call. This approach keeps things collaborative while showing that you’re aligned with the big picture.
Make Sure It’s the Right Fit
Be wise and have our own criteria when choosing a founder to work with. Based on their story and vision, we need to see if the core values from both sides match.
Be ready to step away if the core values do not match anymore.
4/ My approach to equip technical knowledge
As a Junior PM with business background (I studied Digital Marketing in University), I was always told that it would make my life much easier if I have a bit of coding knowledge. I tried to learn Python for the past 3 years, but usually dropped in the middle of the process due to lacking the urge to pull myself towards coding.
I wished my Python learning journey could be more fun (and easy), since my goal is not trying to do hands-on coding, but having knowledge towards the theory, concept, and have a proper technical mindset to work with my Engineering team.
After a few years of postponing, I discovered Brilliant app from my favorite productivity guru Ali Abdaal. Having used it for around 1 month now, I can say I'm quite happy with the gamification concept of studying code from Brilliant, it's like Duolingo of coding, with simple drag and minimal code typing functionality, it suites my purpose of not going through that painstaking path of learning how to code.
Below is the demo (not sponsored FYI as I'm not that level as well :)) ):
5/ How to influence others to listen to what you say
My reading topics are diverse as I'm still in junior level (or hyper-curious level). One of the topics that I like to read the most is how to present my best self in front of others in corporate and have people listened to what I say. I believe that in order to succeed in a team as a PM, having other's respect is a huge advantage.
A Practical Guide to Executive Presence of Stay SaaSy really hits the spot. Some of the advise I found here triggers my reflection moments:
Don’t freak out
When I was a leader in my university club, hell ya I freaked out a lot during stress. Things really didn't turn out well. My peers moved from the stage of respect to confusion and started to disconnect from my requests. The same things happened during my time working as a PM as well.
"It’s worth diagnosing your own personal patterns so that you can catch yourself before losing control". My personal pattern starts by raising my voice and feeling furious (jeeze!).
After practicing to reduce this tendency, even though I'm not 100% free from being freaked out, I now can choose to only do it in a safe zone where I'm with people who is generous enough to forgive me (usually with more senior people who are willing to listen and give me advise).
Don’t ramble
This one is easy =))) I tend to talk to much, even talk in a long sentence to cover what I don't know (especially true during Grooming meeting).
The solution is clear and sound as well, but needs a lot of practice. I've been trying to follow the Barbara Minto Pyramid Principle to see if things change.
Carefully assess their confidence
The opposite of this is to assure unvalidated facts or information quickly with 100% confidence since I'm always right (and I feel the need to be so as well as a PM). Sometimes I got lucky, sometimes I saw people regretted that they gave their trust to me too quickly.
So I've been telling myself to practice saying "I don't know". It's hard since sometimes I just really want to be right. And the upgrade from this is "I don't know, but I suggest you can talk to X, Y, Z to ask for this".
6/ "Focus on the problem to solve for the company"
Thomas is one of my favorite blog writers in Product Management and the one who encouraged me to start writing blog. He just published the article about "When you feel like you're not growing as a Product Manager", which I believe is the most relevant advise for me so far.
"If you're a junior PM, chances are you'd be in the weeds getting projects delivered on time and keeping the lights on. Being incredibly hands-on unfortunately means that you may lose sight of the bigger picture. Many juniors/executives I've spoken with cannot answer the question "What are the problems that your company is facing?". Even if they're able to identify the problem, they often can't follow up when being asked "What have you done to tackle these problems?" " - Thomas To
My main takeaway are:
The initial thought is not which skillset to use, it should be which problem to solve.
In order to level up, having a proper skillset to write document or do discovery is not guaranteed success as the question is how we can be relevant to the company and users.
Creating valuable product is the end goal, and in order to be valuable, knowing the right problem to tackle is the first step.
Accept the constraints of the current situation and work around to find meaningful problem to solve.
The working environment is not always as perfect as in the books. As a Junior PM, we might not have earned enough trust of executive to be empowered, so try to think that as a part of the math equation and solve it another way around.
The advise that Thomas gave is "you can simply be more proactive in communication, taking some workload off them and giving them space to think about more strategic problems. Having gained trust, you'd also likely be in a good position to help them solve these strategic problems." And this is what I'm following in my new company. I will conclude my journey of following this advise in some future post.