5 lessons – a synthesis of the Product Management series so far

I’ve been writing a newsletter on product management since Oct 2018. With 32 editions, I think we’re about the ~75% of the way there on this journey about IC/individual contributor product management. I have a few remaining topics* I’m hoping to cover in the next months – e.g., Career Conversations, Data, Leadership, Types of PM roles, Writing, IC and Management paths, Onboarding, Interviews. But we are definitely closer to the end than the beginning. After that, we’ll likely switch to managing PMs (a tentative plan :-)).

So it was nice to get an opportunity last week to share a synthesis of this newsletter to a group of graduate school students. The presentation was titled “5 lessons I’ve learnt from my time as a Product Manager at LinkedIn.” As with any synthesis, it is missing a lot of the detail that (hopefully) makes these articles useful – but it does instead help to tell the story at the highest level. 

I hope you find it useful. (click here for the slides)

As I shared in the presentation, putting this together filled me with a lot of gratitude – for the folks who’d given me a shot at learning and growing as a product manager and to those who had consciously and subconsciously taught me these lessons over the years.

And finally, thank you to all of you for giving me the opportunity to share these notes with you and for all your encouragement and feedback.

With gratitude

Rohan

*PS: If there’s a topic that’s top of mind for you that you don’t see, please just share in the comments/send me a note on rohan at rohanrajiv.com. Below is what we’ve covered so far. We’ll back to regular programming next edition.

• Overall: The IC PM Role, The 4 key skills, Remote + Pandemic PM, 5 Decision Making frameworks/heuristics, Problem finding/solving with executives, Managing psychology
• Skill #1 – Problem finding: Most important skill, Problem statement and hypothesis, Building Strategy, Validating problem statements and hypotheses, Exploration OKRs
• Skill #2 – Selling: Sales and Marketing, Writing for executive audiences, Product executive relationships, Learning to sell
• Skill #3 – Problem Solving: Roadmap, Product specs, Solving for Usability, Solving for Feasibility, PM<>Eng collaboration, Ramps and launch checklist, Design visions
• Skill #4 – Building effective teams: Knowing thyself, Your manager, Product team culture, 5 habits – high velocity product teams, Effective 1:1s, Kick Offs, Effective team meetings
• Managing your career: Getting in – I, Getting in – II, Choosing your next role