This Week #1: Must reads on growth, what PMs should focus on when joining a new team, and the value of an MBA
Sep 2019
Don't let yourself get overwhelmed by frameworks and best practices. The folks you're reading have learned a few things by going through the same process you're about to go through. You'll learn most by doing—take a few ideas at a time, discuss them with your team, and try them out in the real world.
Related
Ideas from across Lenny's archive that connect to this one
Jackie Bavaro on getting better at product strategy, what exactly is strategy, PM pitfalls to avoid, advancing your career, getting into management, and much more
Jun 2022New PMs should focus their first six months on customer research, product learning, and executing existing strategy. Only after six months should you draft your own strategy—and even then, start with a half-day of focused writing to get ideas out, then iterate with your product triad.
Jackie Bavaro on getting better at product strategy, what exactly is strategy, PM pitfalls to avoid, advancing your career, getting into management, and much more
Jun 2022Expertise in strategy, data analysis, and product decisions comes from seeing enough examples to instantly recognize patterns. Staying at a company long enough to run multiple experiments, iterate on decisions, and observe results over time builds intuition that no amount of reading can replicate.
Julie Zhuo on accelerating your career, impostor syndrome, writing, building product sense, using intuition vs. data, hiring designers, and moving into management
Jun 2022As a manager, Julie developed her ability to critique design but stopped practicing design herself, so her ability to actually make things atrophied. Leadership and IC skills require different practice; you can't assume one sustains the other. Returning to hands-on work revealed gaps she didn't know she had.
Julie Zhuo on accelerating your career, impostor syndrome, writing, building product sense, using intuition vs. data, hiring designers, and moving into management
Jun 2022You can know the theory of good management and still struggle to apply it consistently because it's counterintuitive and context-dependent. Being an expert means knowing the theory but also being honest about how hard it is to execute, and continuing to learn how to tailor it to each unique person or situation.
Where Great Product Roadmap Ideas Come From
Jun 2019Hackathon demos reveal genuine product instincts better than planning meetings. When teams have freedom to build without roadmap constraints, their choices expose what they actually believe customers need—unfiltered by politics or process.
Import your highlights, and we'll find the connections you've been missing.