The Lens - Edition 3 - PM Leadership, Personal Vision, Stories
Welcome to The Lens - Edition 3, my newsletter on Product Management and related topics. I include some of the content I came across that you may find useful if you are interested in Product Management and Leadership. If you like what you read, please forward it to someone you think may get value. Thank you.
Product Management Leadership:
I rely on many signals and feedback while making decisions. In fact, that is one of my pure joys to be able to take different perspectives into consideration before making a call. I’ve always enjoyed it, but at times, it is a little bit disheartening only because the decision is as good as the inputs, and I am as good as the information and context provided to me. Often it is stressful. But this quote from Deb Liu (link) affirms my conviction
Product managers are not there to make decisions. They are there to make sure great decisions are made. You don’t have to be the person to know or understand everything, but you do have to be the person who is able to lead teams to good outcomes.
Personal Vision
During our MBA, I enjoyed the ‘values exercise’. It sounded slightly corny and flimsy. I don’t recollect exactly, but it was centered around helping people to be happy. In my work and other ways, I have found ways to relate to that vision or work towards it. During stressful times and distress, I have gone back to that goal of mine. I admit it isn’t always in the foreground. All to say, I was incredibly inspired by Jeff Weiner who defined his personal vision at a young age, when he was 15 years old. His major career decisions were all a result of that clarity. I came across that information through his course (link) on leadership which I can’t recommend highly enough. Whether you are a new manager or an executive, I bet you will learn or pick up a thing or two from his framework and tools. I will refer to his decision making, meeting tools, etc as we go along in future editions.
Stories
Twitter launched Fleets - its version of stories that first launched on Snapchat, and has since then made it to all major social networks like Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and now Twitter. There were a lot of fun tweets and memes around Twitter’s launch of Fleets. Be it as it may, I think it is a great name and may be useful on Twitter.
To help people feel more comfortable, we've been working on a lower pressure way for people to talk about what’s happening.
It is interesting on the evolution of the internet along with an increase in the volume of information and user-generated content - from static websites to ‘blog’ which emphasized on recency, and now stories which emphasize both recency and urgency. While it was true that anything you post on the internet will remain forever, now the internet is moving towards more ephemeral. There is a draw both for creators (low pressure) as well as for the consumers (fear of missing out) in such products/features. From disappearing messages to disappearing status, which is how ‘status’ must have been in the first place, to only last for a short time, it is a progression that might leave more thoughtful content to stay for longer.
I leave you with these thoughts. Let me know if you have any feedback. And do
with whoever is in the early stages of their PM career or is interested in getting into Product Management.