What Buddhism Taught Me About Product Management
Jun 2019The ego is an observer, not the CEO
Your sense of control and unchanging identity is a useful construct, but not reality. You're the observer of your life, not its CEO. This realization is powerful for keeping ego in check, especially when credit and visibility are on the line.
What Buddhism Taught Me About Product Management
Jun 2019Level 5 leaders prioritize cause over ego
The most effective leaders—what Jim Collins calls Level 5 Leaders—have ambition first and foremost for the organization and its purpose, not themselves. When you deflect credit and give opportunities to team members, the team's efficacy actually strengthens.
What Buddhism Taught Me About Product Management
Jun 2019Anticipate change rather than resist it
In hyper-growth environments, change is constant and inevitable. Rather than fighting change or clinging to what works, learn to welcome it and use it to your advantage. Appreciate good times while they last, but don't build your strategy on permanence.
What Buddhism Taught Me About Product Management
Jun 2019Suffering usually relates to wanting things different
Most unhappiness in product work comes from resisting reality as it is. The gap between how you want things to be and how they actually are is where suffering lives. Closing that gap requires accepting reality first, then acting.
What Buddhism Taught Me About Product Management
Jun 2019Attachment to ideas kills better ideas
Your job as a PM is to accelerate good ideas and kill bad ones—not to keep your own ideas alive at all costs. The longer you cling to a bad idea because you're attached to it, the worse it becomes for you and the business. Impermanence applies to strategies too.
What Buddhism Taught Me About Product Management
Jun 2019Find fulfillment in solving, not preventing problems
The illusion that you can reach a state where all problems are solved is the root of team suffering. Instead, accept that fires will always burn and people will always get upset. Find your fulfillment in the act of solving problems, not in the fantasy of a problem-free state.
How to get into product management
Jun 2019Self-awareness precedes career transition
Before becoming a PM, honestly assess what fulfills you. The role is thankless, nerve-racking, and all-consuming—but when it works, you feel born to do it. Misalignment here leads to burnout, not success.
How to get into product management
Jun 2019PMs are the hedge against indecision
Teams look to the PM to help reach decisions. The PM's job isn't to make every decision, but to ensure a decision gets made—whether by themselves, their team, or stakeholders. Indecision is the real enemy.
How to get into product management
Jun 2019Product intuition is trained observation plus data
Product intuition is not innate taste—it's the observation of human behavior, trained by data, and applied to software. Like any skill, it develops through deliberate practice and building products yourself.
How to get into product management
Jun 2019Execution skill alone has surprising value
A PM who is good at nothing else but execution is valuable to a team, while a team with a PM that can't execute is better off without that PM. Shipping beats strategy when forced to choose.
How to get into product management
Jun 2019The 'I got this' aura compounds career growth
One of the most underrated traits for PMs is the ability to project confidence through preparation and follow-through. When you consistently say what you'll do and then do it exceptionally well, quality and pace improve dramatically around you.
How to get into product management
Jun 2019Strategy is a set of actions, not a vision
A good strategy is a set of actions that is credible, coherent, and focused on overcoming the biggest hurdles in achieving an objective. Strategy without execution is just planning; execution without strategy is just activity.
How to get into product management
Jun 2019Communication is the actual job
Engineers code, designers design, but product managers communicate. Everything a PM does flows through writing, speaking, and meetings. You can never be too good at communication, and it's very difficult to over-communicate.
How to get into product management
Jun 2019PMs have responsibility without authority
Product managers hold disproportionate influence over key decisions yet lack direct authority over their teams. Success requires building trust, making decisive calls, and helping everyone do their best work—not through command, but through influence and credibility.
A Three-Step Framework For Solving Problems 👌
Jun 2019Problems are never solved, only exchanged
When you solve your health problem by buying a gym membership, you create new problems like waking up early and sweating through your clothes. Problems never stop; they merely get exchanged and upgraded. This reframes problem-solving as an ongoing practice rather than a destination.
A Three-Step Framework For Solving Problems 👌
Jun 2019Success criteria must be concrete and ambitious
Define success as a specific metric with a defined goal you can easily measure—ideally a concrete number like '10% increase in X' or '50% decrease in Y.' Pick a goal that's believable but ambitious enough that hitting it would genuinely excite your team and leaders.
A Three-Step Framework For Solving Problems 👌
Jun 2019Evidence quality beats evidence quantity
Three to five strong data points backing your problem statement are far better than a dozen tangentially related ones. Too much evidence often signals weakness—you're filling gaps with minor, unrelated data points. Play devil's advocate with yourself to identify what's actually missing from your case.
A Three-Step Framework For Solving Problems 👌
Jun 2019You can build beautiful products that solve nothing
A polished, well-designed product that doesn't solve the problem you set out to solve is a failure, regardless of its aesthetic or technical merit. The work of staying true to the problem is harder than the work of building the solution.
A Three-Step Framework For Solving Problems 👌
Jun 2019Scope creep is solved by returning to the problem
Nothing helps reduce scope creep more than repeatedly coming back to the problem statement and success metrics. As projects grow in complexity, teams naturally drift from the original intent. The antidote is a simple habit: review the problem statement in every design review, every stakeholder update, and before finalizing any work.
A Three-Step Framework For Solving Problems 👌
Jun 2019A strong problem statement is agnostic of solution
Resist the urge to jump to a solution early. A strong problem statement references an unfulfilled need, includes both what and why, is focused enough for one team to own, and can be expressed in a single sentence. The more you need to explain it, the less clear the problem actually is.
A Three-Step Framework For Solving Problems 👌
Jun 2019Confusing solution with problem kills projects
Nothing is more certain to cause a project to fail than a misunderstanding of the problem you are solving. The Airbnb social travel team built a beautiful product solving the wrong problem—they thought travelers wanted to hang out together, when the real problem was travelers wanted to find high-quality non-touristy things to do.
A Three-Step Framework For Solving Problems 👌
Jun 2019Problem statements are silver burritos
Everyone on your team has a unique version of the problem in their heads. The larger and more complex the project, the more likely they are different. Your job is to eradicate this misalignment early by making the implicit explicit—opening up the wrapper so everyone agrees on what's inside.
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