Vikrama Dhiman: preference

Transcript context

…I think part of it is on a lot of us in product leadership space. We've not done a very good job in defining rubrics, growth frameworks and so on. But even in places where growth frameworks exist, like three W's, what I've seen is that clean mindset shifts and changes can enable faster growth, but those mindset and changes also can hinder your growth, right? So the first thing is whether you are focusing on things you control or whether you're focusing on things that are beyond your control. Second, what's your relationship with change? And third is how you see yourself. The third is very, very powerful and we'll talk about that as well. The first is what you control. If you drew an access of what you control and what you cannot control, as you're starting your career, most of the work that you're doing is in what you control, right? You are very obsessed with feedback, you're very obsessed with, "Okay, can I do this?" "Can I do this?" "Okay, I'll probably not do this. I'll probably do this", and so on. You're not worrying about the overall corporate strategy, you're not looking at what the competitors are doing, what is their market cap and all those things. You're focused a lot on your craft, you're focused on a lot on your output and you're focused on how you are growing. As you start becoming mid-senior, I see the conversation shifts from what can I do, how am I learning, how am I growing, to why is the organization not doing this for me? Why can that stakeholder not change this thing about themselves? Why do I not get to work on projects like this? Things which start going outside your control. And it is very, very important that you keep your focus no matter what stage of career you get into what you can control. And again, it's easy to say that everything in universe should be in your control. It doesn't happen like that, but a large number of things that impact your career are within your control. And go back to the three W's that we spoke about, what you work on, what you produce or what do you bring to the table, and what's your operating model? And there is tons to do on data, tons to do on technology, tons to do on communication, collaboration, design and research, strategy and community. And you can spend years and years and years crafting those things. Focus on those things, growth will happen at every single stage. The second aspect of it is your relationship with change. Again, when you are younger, when you're starting off, rate of change is crazy. You are growing almost every six months. You are picking up skills and experimentation, you're picking up skills in how to analyze. You're picking up skills in how to work with different kind of stakeholders. And since the rate of change of your skills is high, your rate of growth is also high. Again, as you start becoming mid-senior, I start seeing conversations on, "Okay, maybe I should not do that. Maybe I should not take on this product. I don't know what it means for my career. so high. Again, as you start becoming mid-senior, I start seeing conversations on, "Okay, maybe I should not do that. Maybe I should not take on this product. I don't know what it means for my career. I don't know what it means for my growth" and so on. So your rate of change slows down. So it's very important that as you get to mid-senior level, you are constantly checking on what you can do to keep increasing your rate of change. And one of the simplest things that you can do is if you think you are four on data, figure out who. And you may be four on data out of five in data. Within your organization, start benchmarking yourself with the best in the industry. You'll automatically see that your scale drops and as your scale drops, you start seeing what you need to improve and do. If you start seeing that on communication and collaboration, you're reaching four out of five within the PMR, start mapping yourself to other stakeholders in other functions. Again, your score will fall in your eyes and you will start figuring out what are the things that you can do as well. So keep your focus on rate of change and rate of growth will automatically take care of itself. Sometimes it also involves changing your team or even changing your company, but those should be the last results. There are significant things that you can do within that as well. One of the final things that I see which limits you, especially as you start growing in your career and you reach mid-senior levels is how you see yourself. I see a lot of product... And I've been guilty of that. When I see that a lot of product managers, that's included me at some stage, doing these things, people will come back and say, "Oh, I am a very high agency PM" or, "I'm a very collaborative PM." Earlier on, I used to think that okay, I need to give this kind of work to these product managers. I need to fit them with these kind of team, these kind of work areas, these kind of opportunities. But then I started understanding these things are not just signaling, they are also anti-signaling. They are like, "Oh, I'm high agency. So it's sometimes okay if I'm little brash, if I cut corners somewhere, if I sometimes come across as a little rude to some people" and so on, right? Similarly, if I'm seen as a hyper-collaborative person, so it's okay if sometimes I'm not very decisive, if I'm not moving fast and so on because I'm this kind of a PM. So it's very important that you check for what are the stories that you're telling yourself because those stories are defining you at a basic level, which is then very hard to correct through frameworks and structures. So figure out what is the story that you are telling yourself. If you are not able to figure that out, talk to the people you trust so that they can tell you that as well, and then correct those stories. And the moment you are able to correct those stories, you may be back on the growth path again. Wow, there's so much meat and wisdom in what you just shared. I want to go in so many different directions. Maybe just to follow on this last thread, did you go through something like that yourself where you have this sense of yourself that hindered you? Okay, awesome. You're nodding your head, if you're not on YouTube. Can you share that?…

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