I think when you're younger, prioritization sounds logical, but it's really hard to do.
But I would say just be ruthless about prioritization of what you're going to build, what you're going to focus on.
It's a reality. Unfortunately, we cannot be great at many things at a time.
Over time, maybe... But at a single point in time, you cannot be great at many things.
And what I think you're starting, take the side of actually being good on a few things, developing fewer product features or product solutions, focus on fewer problems and say no to things.
Say what you want to say. Don't overthink it.
And don't worry about being too perfect.
No one's perfect. and it was definitely something i've learned as i've moved up is that everyone's learning on the job And if you're not learning on the job, you're in something where it's not a gross opportunity.
And so if you're not learning on the job, you should find something else where you are learning.
And I think having just that mindset of no, if you don't have it all figured out now, it's fine.
Nobody has it all figured out. I would say it's not just product manager, but as a professional, if you are not changing the way you're working right now, You're going to be distracted.
Use AI to gain productivity, Then you reinvest this productivity gain into thinking about what the future holds for you, for your product, for your customer.
I think you are already on a good track.
Creating great products isn't just about product managers and their day-to-day interactions with developers.
It's about how an organization supports products as a whole. the systems, the processes and cultures in place that help companies deliver value to their customers. with the help of some boundary-pushing guests and inspiration from your most pressing product questions.
We'll dive into this system from every angle and help you think like a great product leader.
This is the Product Thinking Podcast. Here's your host, Melissa Perry.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Product Thinking Podcast.
Today marks the end of our special summer compilation series.
Over the past few weeks, we've explored how AI is transforming product leadership and how product operations is scaling strategy across teams.
Now, we're turning the spotlight to something that touches every one of us, career growth.
Whether you're just stepping into product for the first time or navigating your path to the C-suite, the question of what's next is always present.
In this episode, we're revisiting some of the most impactful career advice shared on the show, conversations that help define what it really means to grow as a product leader.
You'll hear about the messy, nonlinear paths people have taken, the inflection points that shape their thinking, and the hard lessons that led to lasting impact.
These are real stories about developing strategic judgment, earning trust, and stepping into leadership in ways that matter.
Let's dive in. First up, Monica Lewis, VP of Product at LinkedIn.
Monica reminds us that growth isn't always about climbing faster.
It's about going deeper. She shares how shifting from chasing scope to making impact changed her approach to leadership.
Monica, if you had to go back and give some advice to your younger self, what would it be?
My younger self was very interested in what's next?
What's the next thing? And I think I had a misperception that more things, more things on the list of stuff that I own. is the way that I'm going to grow.
I remember at one point, one of my peers left LinkedIn and I was Who's going to own that product area?
Oh, I'm going to make a pitch to... manager that I should own that product area because surely two things is better than one.
And he just, he's very direct. He's a straight shooter.
He's a moniker. Empire building is not your way to grow.
You have a huge scope for impact. learn and grow where you are and make that impact.
And I'm so glad he gave me that advice. So I think my advice to my past self is It's not to settle for the hand that you've dealt, but just like being curious, being hungry to learn and to make impact. within what you have is going to be such a rich experience and set you up for future growth. versus trying to play some more tactical game of like, how do I be seen as more senior?
So that's what learning that sooner might have helpful for me.
That's my advice to my past self. That is great advice for all of our listeners out there.
Next, Kristin Dorsett, Chief Operating Officer at Viator.
Her advice? Don't sweat the small stuff.
Learn out loud, take risks, and trust that no one has it all figured out.
So Kristen, I got one more question for you.
When you look back on your career, what do you...
If you could go back and tell your younger self some piece of advice... what would you do?
What would you tell them? I think it's the, so simple, but don't sweat the small stuff.
And that whenever some of the stuff that I used to just have a lot of anxiety about or go over and over my head.
Did I say the wrong thing in this meeting?
Just realize no one's thinking about the thing you said.
Like everyone has moved on immediately except for you.
And so I think I definitely would want to tell my younger self, just say what you want to say.
Don't overthink it. And don't worry about being too perfect.
No one's perfect. And it was definitely something I've learned as I've moved up is that everyone's learning on the job.
And if you're not learning on the job, you're in something where it's not a gross opportunity.
And so if you're not learning on the job, you should find something else where you are learning.
And I think having just that mindset of no, if you don't have it all figured out now, it's fine.
Nobody has it all figured out. And that if you think they do, they're just better at masking than you are.
I think that's great advice, especially for people younger in their career too, where every little problem sounds like it's going to be the end of your career.
Yeah. No, I used to. Yeah. There's the things I would stress over now that again, like it's in perspective, but it's just like, it wasn't that big of a deal.
It's like I would send an email and someone would get cranky.
And I said, yeah, it wasn't the best thing.
But they're over it. I should be over it faster too.
Thank you so much for that advice. Now, Deirdre Kerr, VP of Product at Robinhood.
Deirdre shares a mantra that changed her mindset.
Aim for a 30 to 50% chance of failure. She walks us through how that reframe helped her lean into bigger challenges and grow faster.
What advice would you give to your younger self?
Yeah. So I try to tell myself this and sometimes I listen, sometimes I don't, but it's like a way that I push myself and I definitely wish I told myself this earlier, but I have this mantra that I have tried to keep telling myself and sometimes it's still hard.
And I definitely wish I had told myself that earlier on in my career, which is everything you do should have a 30 to 50% chance of failure.
And I think it's super scary, right? Even just saying it makes you want to throw up a little bit. because I'm like, wait, that's terrifying.
I don't fail. I'm like the A student who always does well and gets good performance reviews and stuff.
But I think for me, especially there've been a lot of moments where whether it's like early imposter syndrome or just like fear of failure, It just makes me super, super nervous to take a little bit of a leap, right?
Whether that's a brand new project or challenge like the redesign where I knew nothing about design, right?
Or a new role, like joining the SCIM as an early stage startup from like an established company. where I need something like that to really push myself to take that leap.
And every time I've done it, it's been great because I've learned something new.
It's been like a huge step change for my career and my growth and my learning.
But I think a lot of people who operate in this kind of feeling of I don't want to fail.
I want to keep being successful in my career tend to not push themselves as hard as they should.
And I think having something that helps you keep challenging yourself is really important.
I think that's great advice for people out there.
Then we hear from Lucy Busan, CPO at ContentSquare.
Lucy talks about using AI not just for productivity, but to reclaim time for strategy.
When you're looking at bridging that gap to, and your advice for like product managers out there for thinking long-term and thinking about where we're going versus balancing where they are today.
What would be your advice to make sure that they're not being left behind?
Like what should they start doing today to make sure they're set up? in the future?
It's a very good question and it's a hard question.
But I would say two things. As a, it's not just product manager, but as a professional, if you are not changing the way you're working right now, You're going to be disrupted the same way that brands are going to be disrupted.
If you have a good usage of all the AI tools that are out there, you can gain up to 100% productivity every day.
So I would say my first advice is think about all the repetitive tasks you're doing, Think about the thing you don't like to do.
For me, for instance, I'm not really good at writing documents.
It can take me like hours to write a good document.
So now I'm just thinking about my bullet point giving the bullet point to the AI and I'm interacting with the AI to create the document, And what used to take me four hours takes me now like half an hour.
And you think that it's a stupid example, but I think everybody has this kind of example, you know, of things that you don't like to do or you're not really... good at doing it or you are slow at doing it.
The reason why I'm talking about that is because that's for me, that's the first step.
Because if you're able to find productivity and if you're able to save, I don't know. for eight hours in your week.
That's two for eight hours that you can spend with your customer. and that you can spend thinking about what is the future of your experience. and how you can transform your experience.
Because as a product manager, the issue every product manager has is time.
Because you are accountable for so many things when you're a product manager that your day is already 10 full hours.
And so it's really, really hard to not get stuck in the day-to-day and to think about your vision and your strategy and how you can do disrupt yourself.
So if you use AI to gain productivity, then you reinvest this productivity gain into thinking about what the future holds for you, for your product, for your customer, I think you are already on a good track.
That's great. And I like the way you phrase it, too, because I think there's been such a big push of AI productivity that...
People are backlashing against it, but that core message of if you do use AI to take away the low-hanging fruit And the work that takes you a long time but is not the most valuable, now we free ourselves up to do the valuable work.
I used to do an hour to a week of research.
Now I can do the same research in 10 minutes.
Let's do the opposite, you know? Let's make the research now three hours.
But like in three hours, you're going to do the work you... that would have required weeks of work.
So again, let's use this time we are saving to understand our market better, understand our customer better.
To your point, Daria, to talk to more human beings also, you know, talk to your sales team to understand how they sell.
Talk to your customer success team. If you have one to understand what are the customer pain points and et cetera.
So yeah. Really, like all the times that you are freeing up, use it to make sure you understand your market and your customer.
Because that's... Number one job as a product manager.
Focus on the human interaction part. Yes, yes, exactly.
I love it. I think that's great advice for people out there.
Next is David Mazuski, VP of Product at Wealthfront.
David encourages aspiring leaders to lean into what's already working.
Dave, last question for you. What's your biggest piece of advice for aspiring leaders out there, aspiring product leaders?
I think there's a handful of things. I think number one, you'll, this is something that I think we learned from a previous BPO product, Andy Johns, but leaning into what is working. is much more likely to create outside success than fixing things which are broken.
And a lot of times, some things that are working might be a surprise, and that's where there's a lot of value.
One of my surprises working on the iPhone was the day after we made the announcement, we had more requests for the capability to build applications on the phone, than pretty much any other request Apple had ever gotten for anything in the entire history of the company. in just a day.
So that was a sign that people were really desperate to create apps.
And then of course, Apple. I created that capability the next year, and the rest is history.
But I think that was an example where there is a big surprise the amount of effort that people did to hack the phone so that they could actually build it for themselves was huge.
And I think when you're looking for things like that, It may not be quite crazy, maybe a little bit more subtle, but as you're looking at creating those moments, I think building in some flexibility.
So even if you're product is very tailored to a specific use case, a lot of times leave the door open for people like you don't have to optimize it for people who might use it for something else but leave the door open because you might be surprised at the strange things that people do in using your product.
And so I think by creating those opportunities, you create some more learning opportunities that you can ultimately build off of.
I think that's great advice for people out there who are listening to this.
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Now, Amber and Marco, Chief Product Officers for different business lines at Vanguard.
Amber reminds us to obsess over the problem, not the solution.
Marco follows up with powerful advice on getting close to users being a power user of your own product and ruthlessly prioritizing.
Amber and Marco, when you reflect back on your journey in this career, starting out in this industry, What would be your advice for your younger selves?
Oh, that's such a great question. Very good one.
I think I would tell my younger self, you don't need to have all the answers.
Instead, it's important to obsess about the problem that you're trying to solve, like fall in love. with the problem and then be willing to experiment, fail and learn into the answers.
And I think as part of that, if I reflect on where we started in this conversation and my background, like You have to be really passionate about the problem to have that mindset.
I'm not lying when I say I wake up every morning and think about how do we improve retirement outcomes for investors?
Because it's such a core part of my value system.
So I guess tied to that is that age-olds do something you love and you don't have to work a day in your life.
Cause to me that, that obsession with problems, not solutions is really I think the unlock to true innovation.
All right, I agree. Maybe in my case, I was reflecting a little bit, like I would first tell my young self, get to know your users, get to know your customers.
I think back to the discussion we just had, maybe make some assumptions.
And when I say assumptions, understand your users is go deep into the different segments of your user base and understand And a little hint, the answer is not in PowerPoint.
The answer is actually talking to them. The answer is actually listening to them directly, really going deep and expending time with users.
I think it's critical. And I think early in the record, like, yeah, I got it.
I got this. Now, it's a couple of reports here and there.
I read this from research. Good to go. Now, go there and do it yourself.
I think the second one is when you become a product owner, Nobody should know more about your product than yourself.
And I think it's go deep. into the understanding of your product.
You may not know all the aspects of the technology, but You need to be in a position that you're the best and most informed person about that product.
And ideally, you are a heavy user of that product.
Actually, the best product owners that I have seen are the folks that use the product.
And I think those that actually sometimes are not that great, it's just you have a good understanding of it, but You never placed a trade or you never played with our portfolio construction tool?
How do you know? And I think a lot of people like try to get by without it and it doesn't work.
I think I tell... all the time for folks in UX.
Go talk to your clients, but you have to use the product too, because then you understand how it works.
So be an user. And then I think the last thing is I think when you're younger, prioritization sounds logical, but it's really hard to do.
But I would say just be ruthless about prioritization of what you're going to build, what you're going to focus on.
It's a reality. Unfortunately, we cannot be great at many things at a time.
Over time, maybe. But at a single point in time, you cannot be great at many things.
And what I think you're starting, take the side of actually being good on a few things, developing fewer product features or product solutions, focus on fewer problems, and say no to things.
And I think my younger version here was like, yeah, I can do that.
And I can do that too. And I can do that too.
It turns out that you can't. So that would be the ruthless prioritization I think would be my advice to myself.
Then we hear from Elon Reshef, co-founder and CPO at Gong.
Elon shares lessons from early missteps and what he learned about market fit, strategy, and scaling the right way.
Alon, one question for you. When you look back on your product management career, your product leadership career, what would you tell your younger self?
Oh, there's so many things. Like, look, my previous company was a debacle.
Not debacle, but we sold it eventually, but We didn't even give the investors their money back.
So I think we made every mistake in the book.
Um, all the way from not focusing on the right customers to really kind of not listening to the Jeffrey Moore crossing the chasm, which is focused in Like I mentioned in Gong, we focused on this very small segment and went up.
I think my previous company, we had. Estee Lauder, Cisco and American Express is first customers.
It's like, there's no way for you to scale that thing.
So it's a strategic element of understanding how to do strategy more than anything else.
I think the other thing is we talked about market size, I think probably Thinking about what the market size is like super important because we all like ideas.
Oh, I want to build something that does something.
How many companies? others need that or how many people need that.
So more like if you kind of shoot in the right direction initially, So maybe the thing I would tell myself is do those kind of things.
Listen to other people and actually follow this and then At least if you're in the right market, that's good enough.
It's growing, then you can kind of find your spot, even if you're not a huge success.
If you go after a small market or a non-existing market or something that isn't like a real ICP thing, There's too much likelihood to succeed.
There's exceptions to everything, but you don't want to be the 1% of this difference.
I think that's great advice for people out there who are getting started or even product managers working at companies.
Pay attention to your customers, really look at the market there.
Great advice. Next is Oliver Seale, VP of Design at Belkin International.
Oliver reflects on the power of intentional learning.
He urges younger professionals to develop curiosity early, find a mentor, and take advantage of the infinite resources at their fingertips.
Oliver, my last question for you is a little bit reflecting on your career.
When you look back, what advice would you give your younger self?
My younger self. Ah, that's such a deep question.
It's funny, when I was young, I just, I think it was great that I was naive about the future of my career.
Like I just went for it. I don't know if I needed more advice about that.
I think that was I was very lucky that way and have been and very thankful for that.
But I probably would have paid more attention in high school because I love science. today.
I love physics and things like that. I didn't pay attention in high school.
So I didn't benefit from some of that. I think if I had been a better high school student and less of a skateboarding musician. maybe I would have learned something else.
But I think it's just keep an open mind.
Keep an open mind. and learn as much as you can consciously.
And I think that's something that not everybody, I certainly didn't develop that until I was an adult.
So I meet people, I just, I don't want to go on too far of a tangent, but one of the things we do at Belkin is we have a very close relationship with schools.
So we actually have a campus literally inside of our building for high school students that are spending part of their week here.
And just before I came to speak to you, I had a meeting with my mentee.
And just to see a 16-year-old who's already so much mentally advanced compared to what I was when I was 16 was super inspiring.
So consciousness in learning sounds very academic and there's probably much better ways to say it. is amazing and there's just such an unbelievable wealth of insights and information to be had today.
We talked about the fact that any book she wants to read, she can just read it like two minutes from now.
That's amazing. And most people aren't really that conscious about it.
The sooner you develop a consciousness, find somebody who can mentor you that way, That would be amazing.
Find a mentor. That's what I would tell my younger self.
And finally, Ben Heffley, the CEO of the Lean Startup Company.
Ben closes us out with a concept he calls the convinced do loop.
If you were a leader and you're saying, hey, I want to invest in this, what's your biggest piece of advice?
My biggest piece of advice would be to prove it to yourself. don't go all in in the beginning.
And it sounds weird, but we'll have customers, they'll come in and say, hey, we want you to design from the beginning.
We've never done this before. we want you to design this new framework and then we're going to go implement it.
And in a lot of cases, we'll say, no, we shouldn't do that.
I know where you want to go, but let's just get some proof points. because there's a key concept.
It's probably the world's like most unimpressive concept.
I call it the convinced do loop. And what I find is you want to do just enough convincing for this way of working to be able to do it.
And then you want the doing to do most of the convincing.
The approach you don't want to take is I have to convince everyone All the stakeholders, the entire, all the VPs, the C-suite, R&D, everybody that this is the best thing since sliced bread and and I have to get all the buy-in.
You're trying to convince the entire adoption curve. in order to just get the right to do the first little thing.
And that just doesn't work. I'll often, and sometimes people are, people will look at me and say, aren't you in charge of sales for the company?
I'm like, yeah, I am, but I wouldn't recommend you spend that much money with us.
We're an impact-driven company and I just know that it'll implode under its own weight if it's just so big in the beginning. that will never actually get the right to do anything because there's too much convincing.
So balancing convince-do is probably my... unimpressive framework for judging how to balance that.
It's the same advice I give product managers who ask me like, hey, I want to work this way.
I want to do this stuff. And I'm like, what can you do?
Don't go try to convince your whole organization that you should work this way.
Just take ownership of what you have. Convince your direct people. that you should go do it and just act, right?
Like act and then demonstrate, act and then demonstrate.
And that's how I see people make a lot of good progress.
Yeah. I've never seen anything. We've all heard strategy.
It's culture for breakfast. And That's correct, but it's also incorrect in the way that people use it in a lot of cases.
But we've never seen culture change without proof points.
So that's the convinced do loop, right? I've now seen this work.
I get it. I'm the next person on the little internal adoption curve.
And so now I'm going to give it a shot. And it seems like it, quote unquote, takes longer.
But it doesn't take longer because the other way just doesn't work at all.
And so it's the only way we recommend people get into it.
Thank you so much for listening to the Product Thinking Podcast.
We'll be back next week. And in the meantime, if you have any questions for me, go to dearmelissa.com and let me know what they are.
Make sure you like and subscribe so that you never miss another episode of the podcast.
We'll see you next time.
