Hey, Nick here! In this newsletter, I curate insights and timeless principles on how to build great products. You’ll improve your product skills with every issue.

Here’s an interview for you today…

How to Execute with Excellence with Yelp GPM, JustAnotherPM

We had the opportunity to chat with Sid (@JustAnotherPM) who is currently a Group Product Manager at Yelp and formerly worked at Zomato and Snapdeal. He is a seasoned product manager and helps PMs accelerate their careers by sharing lessons through his newsletter, JustAnotherPM.

He breaks down his lessons into three stages of being a PM:

1. Aspiring PM

2. New PM

3. Experienced PM

Q: At each stage of being a PM, what were some important lessons learned to help you in your next step?

Aspiring PM

When trying to do something new, everyone starts at square one. We have limited knowledge and time needs to be spent learning. He was able to use alumni who were already in product management as well as self-study from blogs, books, interviews, etc. The appetite and ability to learn are needed no matter where you are in your product management journey. 

New PM

Now that he broke into product management, he was able to get practical experience. Everything learned in school was theoretical, but now he had actual issues to solve with real data. He was able to experiment to see what worked and what didn’t. This is also the time for mastering the craft of execution. 

Every PM needs to be able to make sure work is getting done, but that isn’t enough. We need to have an understanding of why you are doing the work. What’s the higher-level purpose of completing these tasks? This will help build the foundation for effectively prioritizing work, even though a new PM isn’t responsible for that just yet.

Experienced PM

The lessons of being an experienced PM are very similar to being a new PM, but with added responsibility. Execution becomes the baseline and now it’s time to execute with excellence. There is a greater importance on the ability to prioritize. An experienced PM should be able to connect the dots of the longer-term vision and how what is being worked on today will have results 12-18 months in the future.

With experience comes responsibility through being a leader of a team. The best managers he has worked with gave their teams the freedom and space to grow. It’s hard to see people struggle, but it’s important to let their teams work through the issues so they gain the experience.

Q: What can a PM do to execute with excellence?

Use experience for better estimation

Once you have shipped countless features and iterations of a product, a PM gets better at estimating how long something takes. 

Is this feature going to require legal approval? Are there dependencies on other teams that typically run behind schedule? Can the team leverage work that has been recently completed? 

Experience with different issues will help you better get your initial estimate closer to the actual delivery timeline, but issues will arise that need to be solved and communicated.

Keeping everyone on track and notified

A key aspect of a PM’s job is to communicate and manage expectations. As a PM, it is your job to make sure the work is getting done and you are responsible to help alleviate roadblocks. The more frequent your communication is with your team members, the quicker you can identify and solve issues.

Hold a retrospective on successes and failures

Dedicated retrospectives will help a PM get more out of their experiences. It will require a PM to actually think about what happened rather than looking at the next item on their to-do list. Retrospectives give opportunities for other team members to share their experiences the PM might have not realized were an issue or success.

Q: As an experienced PM, what skills are you actively developing?

Team empowerment

As a group product manager, he is responsible for several products and teams. He wants to make sure his team feels empowered just like how previous managers did for him. He wants his team to lean on him and come with questions, but reiterates that at some point they will be the ones leading the team and the ones responsible for results. 

Strengthening relationships 

As a PM shifts into more of a manager rather than executor, the biggest impact a manager can have on their team is to alleviate roadblocks. He is conscious and active about talking with other leaders in the organization to understand the work they are doing and brings it back to how it can help his team. Having strong relationships also allows for favors to be called in every once in a while when his team needs it. 

Building a long term strategy

As a PM moves up in ranks, the job gets more oriented toward the future. How is your industry changing in the coming years and what are you doing to make sure you remain relevant? Problems / issues aren’t clear and can’t be solved in a day. With experience, a PM is better able to clearly see what’s coming in the future and will be better prepared to tackle it.

Check out the full interview with Sid’s Twitter and Newsletter! 

End Note

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Have a great day,

Nick