How to build trust and grow as a product leader | Fareed Mosavat (Reforge, Slack, Instacart, Zynga, Pixar)

Oct 23, 2022 1h 5m 21 insights Episode Page ↗
Guest Fareed Mosavat, Chief Development Officer at Reforge and former product leader at Slack and Pixar, discusses the journey of becoming a great PM. He shares insights on accelerating learning through real work, crossing the IC-to-manager canyon, and creating opportunities for impact and sponsorship.
Actionable Insights

1. Master Execution & Delivery

To truly improve as a Product Manager, focus on working on real products at real companies with real customers and data, as this hands-on experience and repetition is where real acceleration happens. Start by focusing on execution, delivering solutions to real customer problems, and learning from the outcomes, especially early in your PM career.

2. Generalize Learnings from Execution

After executing, generalize your learnings by identifying patterns and hypotheses from your work that can apply to other products or problems, building mental models for future challenges.

3. Communicate Learnings to Scale

Actively communicate your work, generalizations, and learnings to others, as this is crucial for scaling your opportunities and advancing your career.

4. Cultivate Broad Organizational Curiosity

Develop deep curiosity about how your work connects to the entire company, understanding priorities two ‘stack levels’ up (e.g., your boss’s boss) and down (e.g., technical details), as well as left and right (e.g., other teams).

5. Build Company Mental Model

Develop a comprehensive mental model of how the company operates, its key drivers, and priorities, then identify how your work creates leverage within that system to build trust.

6. Seek Sponsorship, Not Just Mentorship

Focus on building relationships with people who deeply trust you and will advocate for you, providing opportunities to solve bigger problems, rather than just seeking day-to-day managerial guidance.

7. Drive Organizational Impact & Trust

To attract sponsors, consistently deliver impact not only for customers but also for the organization, changing how people think about problems and bringing valuable learnings to the table.

8. Work on Top Company Priorities

Select roles and projects that are among the top priorities of the company, as this increases visibility, makes it easier to find sponsors, and amplifies your leverage.

9. Tailor Communication to Leadership

Understand your leaders’ priorities and tailor your communication to highlight only the most important aspects of your work that matter to them, knowing when to seek their input and when to operate autonomously.

10. Prioritize End-User Experience

When building products, focus on the end experience, emotion, and story delivered to the audience rather than strictly adhering to what’s ‘real’ or technical perfection.

11. Guide Career by Problem & Learning

When making career decisions, prioritize interesting problems where you can add value and learn new things, rather than focusing solely on titles or traditional career paths.

12. Shift from Doer to Editor

As you transition to management, change your mindset from doing the work yourself to editing, reviewing, and enhancing the work of others, focusing on making their contributions better.

13. Trust Your Team’s Capabilities

Overcome the instinct to do everything yourself; instead, learn to trust your team members with tasks and responsibilities, empowering them to grow and contribute.

14. Optimize for ROI, Think Lazily

Adopt a mindset of efficiency by asking what’s the minimum amount of work you can do to achieve the best possible outcome, rather than maximizing your personal effort on every task.

15. Marshal Necessary Resources

As a leader, proactively identify and advocate for the resources (e.g., additional team members, cross-functional support) needed to achieve maximum impact on a problem, rather than just working with what’s given.

16. Own Business Outcomes & Solutions

As a leader, take full ownership of business outcomes, defining solutions, determining necessary resources, and coordinating with the broader organization to achieve impact.

17. Understand Four Product Work Types

Familiarize yourself with the four types of product work (feature, growth, product market fit expansion, and scaling) to better categorize, evaluate, and lead diverse product initiatives.

18. Lead Diverse Product Work Portfolio

Progress from specializing in one type of product work to leading a portfolio across all four types, ensuring balanced focus and understanding of each to avoid over-emphasizing your area of expertise.

19. Generalize Expertise for Advisory

If aiming for an advisory or fractional role, focus on generalizing your expertise and clearly articulating its value to diverse companies and problems, beyond just excelling at your current job.

20. Cultivate Unique Expertise Niche

Develop a unique intersection of expertise by gaining breadth across different product work types and organizations, allowing you to be recognized as a top-tier expert in a specific, valuable niche.

21. Work at Reputable Companies

Seek opportunities at well-known and successful companies, as their reputation can significantly enhance your credibility and marketability for future advisory or fractional roles.