Evidence receipt / recommendation
Published · transcript-backedVikrama Dhiman: recommendation
12 May 2024 Lenny's Podcast A framework for PM skill development | Vikrama Dhiman (Gojek)
“If you're coming from a data or tech background, then you pick design and research, and that gives you the maximum leverage because that's a skill that you will necessarily not have developed over the years.”
Source trail
Everything needed to verify it.
- Speaker
- Vikrama Dhiman
- Attribution
- Verified speaker
- Claim type
- recommendation
- Recorded
- 12 May 2024
- Publisher
- Lenny's Podcast
Transcript context
…So to summarize the advice there is one, be actually very open to feedback you're getting. It's easy to say that, it's hard to actually listen to people criticizing you and act on it. So I think that's an important takeaway here is just actually, feedback is a gift and actually understand that and try to act on it. I have a great interview with Jules Walter who's a PM at Google now, and he has this awesome quote about how whenever people give him hard feedback, it's like internally he's just melting, but that's externally he's like, "Thank you so much for that feedback, I really appreciate it. It's very valuable." And so that's a good way to get people to keep giving feedback. Okay. And then the other piece of advice you just shared there is pick a focus area. Like say you're getting all this feedback, your strategy isn't amazing, your PRDs aren't great, just find one thing to focus on. And I don't know, do you try to do somewhat quarter? Somewhat year? Do you have a heuristic of how long to spend on one thing? So different skills take different time and how you are progressing also depends a lot as well. For skills which are softer in nature like communication and collaboration and community, those are skills that you will work on all your life. You'll never achieve anywhere near two or five on five on those ever. There'll always be something that you will miss, there will always be a new context, there'll always be a new set of stakeholders, new company cultures that you have to adapt to. For others, you have to see that what gives you the maximum leverage in your career. When you're starting off, my recommendation is that you pick between data and tech one, and definitely one on design and research and strategy. So usually, that's the combo that I recommend. My advice is if you're coming from design and research background, then you pick data or tech. If you're coming from a data or tech background, then you pick design and research, and that gives you the maximum leverage because that's a skill that you will necessarily not have developed over the years. Once you've demonstrated on two of these three, between data, tech and design and research, then you start focusing on strategy. We've had great success at Gojek in transitioning a lot of product managers, especially in Indonesia, using this framework. And it's produced a lot of good product managers for us. Well, let's actually follow that thread. That's really interesting. And so the approach is you have this access of skillsets and you pick, for this person moving from say customer service to product, here's the two things you need to focus on. Can you talk more about that?…
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