Product Management

1. Invisible Asymptotes In normal PM work , growth of the product stops at a certain point. You hit the ceiling and wonder what brings the next wave of growth. The ceiling might be due to org’s business model, distribution, people etc Being aware of what is causing the limit reduces stress as a PM. Google ” Invisible Asymptotes” by Eugene Wei for an excellent article on this topic.

2. Distribution Matters

You might build a great product, but if you cant figure out distribution your success will be very limited. Having an in-depth overview of your channels and the limits of their scalability will save you a ton of heartburn.

1. Amplify Signals- Dont keep looking for new ones all the time

Unless you are working on 0-1 product, for most of the products there are tons of signals when you analyse data for aggregate user behavior. Utilise the data from the existing users as a starting point and use the user research to create a clear narrative. If you flip the process, you will waste a lot of time finding the impactful problems to solve.

1. Hiring for high-agency

Borrowed this from Shreya Doshi. Every organisation has value creators, value enhancers, value appropriators and value destroyers. High agency is a very high signal for value creation. Cherish and nourish high agency PMs.

1. Out think your stakeholders

If you are constantly running into roadmap alignment issues, maybe you are not out thinking your stakeholders. While its impossible to out think everyone in an organisation, its helpful to think about the industry/sector and how your product fits in and what will be the ultimate limits of the product. That way it would be easier to navigate the stakeholders at work.