A framework for PM skill development | Vikrama Dhiman (Gojek)

You are the only discipline, which is the co-collaborator for all of these disciplines and tying all these things out. So it's not about you standing alone, it's you always collaborating and pairing with someone else. But you are the only one who's pairing with everyone else.

Raise difficult issues without being difficult to work with. Bring out important topics without drawing importance to yourself. And you are in charge of getting the decisions made and not making all the decisions yourself.

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 speaker is referring to a 1-5 rating scale for evaluating product management skills across different competency areas like data, communication, and strategy.

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.

Figure out what is the story that you are telling yourself because those stories are defining you at a basic level, which is then very hard to correct through frameworks and structures.

You can't improve on every single area. That's what overwhelms you. You need to pick which is the area which is the maximum leverage for you and improve on that particular aspect and then move on to the next area.

The quote contains a typo - "access" should be "axis" - referring to a visual chart plotting what you can control versus what you cannot control in your career.

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. As you start becoming mid-senior, I see the conversation shifts from what can I do to why is the organization not doing this for me?

When you are younger, when you're starting off, rate of change is crazy. You are growing almost every six months. 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.'

In this context, "outputs" refers to concrete deliverables like shipping features, running experiments, and completing tactical work that directly contributes to team productivity.

Focus on outputs at the start of your careers and don't forget outputs even when you grow in your career.

You still need to put in the effort and our number of hours is effort. You have to spend the time, effort, and energy into growing. I think a lot of that is getting lost in the debates between complete workaholism and just being not very serious about your growth at all.

I created a career growth framework for product managers, which comprises of three things. What you produce, what you bring to the table, and what's your operating model.

Vikrama is discussing skill development advice for product managers, referring to three core PM skill areas: data, tech, and design/research.

My recommendation is that you pick between data and tech one, and definitely one on design and research and strategy. 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.

The mistake that I see a lot of product managers make is they start operating in either output or outcomes. And when you are transitioning to outcomes, it's very important that you continue to still hone your craft on outputs.

When you are younger, when you're starting off, rate of change is crazy. You are growing almost every six months. 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.'

Context note: In product management career development conversations, "axis" refers to a conceptual chart mapping what you can control versus what you cannot 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. As you start becoming mid-senior, I see the conversation shifts from what can I do to why is the organization not doing this for me?

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.