Lessons from Shreyas Doshi, Product Leader at Stripe, Google, Twitter
Bite-sized lessons from a product leader.
Shreyas Doshi has built products at Stripe, Google, Twitter, and more. He’s currently a product advisor.
He shared his thoughts on how product management is evolving, product leadership, and more at On Deck.
Here’s what I learned:
On the Changing Nature of Product Management
Product management, as a field, is maturing. It’s getting more disciplined. It’s getting more standardized. There are a lot more best practices and content today than there ever was. With all this access to product information, credentials will matter less.
The importance of working and building products in a large, growing market is understated. It’s hard to even wrap your head around the upside.
On General Management
Senior roles in product management will look a lot like those of a general manager.
To become a good general manager:
- Get better at being a PM.
- Add non-product skills: people management, design leadership. Focus on areas where you have a natural advantage.
- Remove liabilities. By definition, these are generalist jobs. Fill in gaps that hinder you.
On Growing as a Product Manager
Should PMs specialize? Creating labels for yourself might help create social proof depending on your goals. But they also might cause you to ignore other opportunities. Don’t internalize the labels you create.
Your success as a product manager will depend a lot on your product sense. Analytical sense and execution sense are critical, but product sense takes the front seat. It’s a differentiator as you grow.
What’s product sense?
Product sense is the ability to understand what makes a product great. It’s made up of:
- Cognitive empathy
- Domain knowledge
- Creativity
Leverage your strength among the three to build exceptional product sense.
On Product Leadership
What’s the job of a product leader?
Give people the context, skills, and knowledge to help them make more decisions themselves. The job of a product leader is to create self-managing teams.
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