 Hi there. If you're like most PMs, you're probably presented to the leadership team for either pitching a new product idea or giving updates on the product that you're handling. And I'm not sure how it went for you, but I have seen that in many cases, some PMs do really, really well. And it's natural in them. Whereas others kind of struggle to figure out how to communicate with the leadership team. Hey, everyone, my name is Sallabal Bhattachary. And I thought I'll take that topic to discuss today. A little bit about myself first. I have spent around the last two decades mostly on the product management side, working for companies like Uber and Amazon. I have held a leadership role currently as the director of product management for mobility products at Uber. I have previously worked at Amazon AI team for around approximately four years. And there have launched multiple zero to one products. In that process, I have also secured funding from executive team for some of the new projects to enter into new verticals. I have pitched multiple updates of the product as we are executing it with my team. I have mentored my team to be more effective in their communication, especially when they are entering into a high-stake meeting where decisions will be taken on whether to approve or change direction, or even at times suggest that we stop the product because it's just not working. So I have also taken up mentorship initiative, product school being one of them. I volunteer and talk to the entrepreneurs through TechStar startup accelerators and through a Stanford seat transformation network as well. So with that, let's jump in. Today, I thought I'll cover three different areas. The first one is the importance of effective communication. Why is it important that this topic is taken seriously by most VMs and what happens if we don't? I will also provide a few pointers around how to prepare for these high-stake meetings. And finally, I will glean from my experience on specific experience that I had at AWS and Uber as well. So let's get started with the first one. On the importance of effective communication, the way I'd like to think about or break it apart because it's a huge topic and there are many areas to look at. But I have summarized into four different pillars. The first pillar is around alignment and decision-making. So an effective communication leadership team is important because it ensures that the PM is aligned with the ARC goals. Because if you think from a senior leader perspective, they're always thinking that, hey, is the team executing towards the OKR and goals that the business came about? Do they understand them, first of all? Secondly, are they vibing that in their roadmap, in their strategy, and is it coming through in the proposal that they're bringing in? So having that understanding that what senior leadership is thinking, what they're prioritizing and what they're going to look at is extremely important before you go and pitch anything to the leadership team. And it also helps leadership team understand that where they need to come in and help. So it's basically an alignment that happens on each of these meetings when the PM goes and talks in front of the leadership. They normally will ask series of questions just to figure out if they're getting the right kind of data points in order to be aligned. Finally, the leadership team is always thinking around different ways in which the broader business objectives can be achieved. And they are constantly taking decisions in order to make sure that everything is aligned to the business objectives. So the decision making along with alignment is the first step as part of the leadership communication. The second one is to get buy-in because if you're a PM and you're going and presenting to a leadership team, in most cases, you're either securing some kind of resource allocation. It can be more people, more resources or even have alignment with the way you're thinking of pitching your particular product proposal. So a clear and persuasive way of communicating your pitch to the leadership team is important to build relationship with them and secure their buy-in. And the benefit that you'll get is that if the leadership team is completely aligned with the direction, then whenever you come in successively and give updates during the exhibition phase, then there will be less questions around strategy. There will be less questions around why are you doing this? There will be more around, OK, I understand what you're doing, but now tell me how you're doing it. So they are all interested in knowing that things are progressing as you are outlined initially. Whereas the opposite is true, and I have seen that firsthand, where PMs are not able to completely align initially and the execution starts. And in that case, let's say a new leader comes in and when the new leader is stamping up, they're asking questions around strategy. And if that is not clear, then the execution updates don't go back. So it's very important to get buy-in. And keep in mind that the buy-in may have to be done multiple times because of leadership change or if there are a number of things that the leadership team is handling. So if they had moved into some other kind of priorities and they want to get them back to focus and remind them on what the strategy has been. So in many cases, what I have done is I have given an update right at the beginning saying, as a reminder, here is the strategy, why we are doing it. And then go into the update part. The third one is around strategic direction and adaptability. It is important that there is a regular communication from the PMs to the leadership team about any changes that happens because of new learnings that comes from market shifts or more better understanding of new use cases that might have come up from the customer side, which was not true when the project started because everything is dynamic. So having a regular cadence, it can be monthly, it can be bi-weekly, but a cadence in which there is a touch point of leadership in order to provide an update on any kind of changes and keep them informed is very critical. Then there is an opportunity to gather valuable insights as well because of the fact that this is a forum. It's more like a dialogue where the questions can be asked on both sides on strategies, adjustments, on road maps, and aligning any kind of priorities and also get an update from the leadership team in terms of if there are any shifts in strategies or priorities on their side at a higher level, which impacts more than the projects of the team that the PM is part of. So that's why having this theoretical is critical. And then finally, the last one is kind of obvious because you're doing this, especially if it's a new project, then the funding and resource allocation becomes very important. And having this forum and presentation of the leadership team allows the PM to also influence resource allocation. Just remember, leadership team has a much bigger scope as well as much bigger resource pool and budget. And they're likely handling multiple projects across the company. So they're constantly thinking about how to allocate resources, which one is more important and why. And if you equip the leadership team with enough data points, with a well thought out, Chris, data driven presentation, then it becomes easier for you to influence the resource allocation, budget allocations towards the project that you care about. And you see a lot of potentials. And that helps both the team as well as you as the PM to grow in your career. So I cannot emphasize the importance of these kind of communications. So let's jump into how to prepare for a meeting like that. So again, this is a pretty detailed and meaty topic. So I have tried to distill some of the key things, but I'm just touching the surface of it. It's a much deeper discussion. But again, if you think about preparing for the meeting, the first one is obviously understanding your audience. So do your research in terms of understanding who are the leaders who are going to be attending the meeting? What kind of ideas each of these leaders are handling? What are their focus? What do they care about in terms of priorities? And always remember, if you're talking about anything in terms of new products or updates, ask the question so what? This is important because when you think from a senior leader perspective, they are always thinking of the impact that the project or initiative will have along with the opportunity cost. So if they're doing this project, they're not doing something else. So the so what needs to be aligned with the business objectives that the company wants to drive at and then this particular team needs to drive at. So make sure that the updates are kind of aligned to answer the so what question? Why do they care? Again, there may be a number of inputs that you might have from a project on a day to day basis, but you might want to distill it out and only provide the updates that matter in terms of either aligning or securing some kind of investment if that's the focus, right? And then again, take a step back and think through what kind of questions that they might ask. This is very important because I have seen many PMs, they do well when they're presenting a pitch that they've prepared, they've practiced, but as soon as the questions start coming in, they're all over the place. It feels like they're not able to understand the question, behind the question, like why is this question being asked and cannot go and think on their feet to come back with a cohesive response. They start going into too much of details and as a result, they lose the audience because remember the executives are trying to have a structured thought process and they're trying to connect the dots. The better you do that in terms of taking that question and connecting the dot for them and showing them how your response is addressing that question, even though you have to go and bring some other data points, it'll go a long way. I will give you some examples later on. So that's the first part. The second part is around crafting a compelling pitch. What does that mean? The key thing in terms of crafting a pitch for executive audience is keeping in mind that less is more. They're kind of trusting you and the team to go and execute and take care of the how part of it. They're less interested in knowing how you are solving X, Y, and Z and all of the details related to that. They're more interested to know, are you first of all considering all the different aspects that come in? As a PM, are you thinking of legal? Are you thinking of compliance? Are you thinking of impacting another team or another product? Have you done a 360 degree evaluation including computation and all of that comes in? So that's what they're more interested in. And they're also interested in ensuring that you are doing a good job in terms of telling a story to them. So storytelling is very important because it helps the executives connect dots easily and not have to go through a tremendous amount of cognitive burden to connect dots. So those presentations where the PMs proactively take a structured approach of telling a story. And in that story where there are visuals, there are data as well as there are updates that are coming together in the slide or if it is a word document then you need to tell the story in a structured way with the narratives. So the narratives flow from one sentence to another sentence then becomes a much easier update. And I'll give you some example of Amazon later on where the storytelling is so important. And this is something that most PMs struggle and they come from outside. Takes a while to get to that level. And then finally practice. Again, if you are preparing for a high-stake meetings it is expected that you know each and every kind of detail associated with the project because you cannot anticipate what kind of questions the leadership team might ask you. There may be someone who may be interested, deeply interested on the finance side of it or the number side of it. So they can ask you all kinds of numbers from your weekly metrics and all the cares that you're tracking. They might ask you questions around strategy. They might ask you questions around technical, you know, depth. Again, I cannot emphasize more but understanding and anticipating all the questions that might come from every angle and preparing for that. And then also preparing the presentation that you're gonna give so that this flow is consistent, is very important. If it is a high-stake meeting outside, record it. And go through the presentation time yourself and then pause for questions and dissipate the questions that might come up. Factor that time in and go and do it at least two to three times at the minimum. I'm telling you, your meeting will go much, much better if you do that and I've seen that first time. Finally, some news and don'ts. As I mentioned, understanding the reasoning behind the question is important before you respond to the question. So many times I've seen entry-level PMs or even meet to senior PMs do a mistake of literally answering the question that is being asked because in many cases, the senior leaders are asking a question but they have something else in mind. And understanding why this leader is asking that question and what they're really trying to get to very quickly is important so that you can connect the dots for them when you respond back. This is a skill that you can practice and it takes a little bit of a while and also needs a little bit of effort because you do need to take time back to understand your audience. You do need to understand the audience, their role and the angle that they are coming in from. Second, secondly, don't read from slides. Make sure that you are prepared to have a conversation. You don't have to have a script, like you don't want to be robotic in your response. You don't just literally look at your speaker notes and talk about it. You want to bake it in a conversational style and just think that you're having a conversation with other people. It goes much better when you do that rather than just reading and coming up as mechanical. And in that way, if you just read, then you're not pausing, you're not making eye contact and you just lose your synodation and you're not seen as a prepared person. So avoid reading from slides, pause for feedback and then maintain the conversational style as I mentioned. So you go a long way if you follow this. All right. Obviously there's much more and we have limited time. So I'm going to go and talk about two specific examples from my career. The first one is at Uber, where we were discussing about a new experimental growth path. So just to give you some context, Uber does experiment all the time or does an experiment mean experiment is basically releasing a product without knowing whether it's going to work or not. So it's like, say for example, Uber Eats was an experiment which started a few years back and then during pandemic, it really picked up and now it is contributing significant amount of revenue in addition to the mobility products. Uber does it all the time. Recently you might have seen there were some growth pairs that we had taken on the travel side. So in this particular example, we were basically thinking about how do we bring in a net new product like like booking flights on Uber platform? And what does it mean if we allow people to book flights from the Uber, which is by the way very different from rideshare and business, right? It's a net new vertical. The company does not have previous experience of the flight part, right? How to book all the dynamics involved with the airline companies and so on. So it was a proposal basically to outline why it matters in terms of going into a net new segment. What does it take? Should we do a build versus buy, right? What is the time to market mean? Who are the competition in that particular space? What is the durable advantage or competitive advantage Uber has to make it successful on launching flight? And then finally, which market to go after first, second, third? So this was a high stake, high visibility and high investment discussion. So the approach was basically first to outline and explain what does flight business mean? What is the potential business opportunity around it? Who are the key players right now? Just to make sure everyone is level set on that and then get into how can we come up with an MVP or a minimum viable product so that we can try it out? And then we have opportunity to get insights from the trial and decide if we want to go after a global launch or we limit it to certain markets. So the third process was first to have a set of slides which talks about existing market. Then we talked about MVP. In that MVP, whether we should partner with some companies for a faster time to launch, those were the slides that came in. And there were a lot of discussions that happened and finally we decided to go in the partnership route for a faster time to market. So we can get away from developing all the technologies that are required in order to provide a robust booking experience. Instead, we stayed true to our design principles. As you know, Uber is big on designs and the ease of use is very important from over standpoint. So we focused on partnering with the company and then leveraging their tech but putting a refined and polished phase to it so that it feels like an Uber product. And that was the MVP that we launched and then we selected UK as the market where we would launch it for many reasons that I'm not gonna get in right now but that's the first market we identified and then have some clearly defined metrics by which we can measure success. It's like how many active users we acquired in the first three months of launch or six months of launch. What is the satisfaction in terms of booking from the customers and then is the UI working for them? All the other flows are right where there's the drop-off happening in the funnel and so on. So all of those were put together as well. And then we showed how we can get into a net positive in terms of revenue over a period of time. And that was the tech. That was speech. There were a lot of questions back and forth especially around the design, around the confidence of partner selection, around the market segment that we selected and finally around the fact that we are thinking through in terms of having a well-defined MVP that we can launch and be able to get enough data point. And then it was an execution update and the execution update happened every, initially it was every two weeks and then we moved to a monthly cadence where each and every milestone that were identified we were giving an update and then there were demos as well. So that's the first example. The second example is on AWS which is again a very different culture than Uber in the sense that AWS believes in writing culture. So there's no tech. Here everything starts with a document. So the context here is where we are looking at entering a new market and leverage the investment on machine learning and deep learning. And how do we take that investment on machine learning and deep learning and apply it to a specific market segment and grow a managed service to generate billions of dollars over a period of five years. So the first task was to create a PRF. PRF stands for Press Release and Frequently Asked Questions. It's a six-pager document, six main page and then there are appendix. So the document can be in obviously 10, 20, 30 pages but the first six pages are what everyone reads which has a press release as if you're releasing the product and then it has a series of questions which details out every aspect of the product from opportunity sizing to resource requirement to competitive as a spend and so on and so forth. So what I did was I authored the PRFQ for a service called Amazon HealthLake. And the idea was to take our deep learning and machine learning like national language processing computer vision and apply it to a managed service by which we can take healthcare data and apply machine learning to reduce time and cost. So the way it started was to draft the PRFQ first and the press release has certain section there's a method to the madness again starts with understanding the customers, the personals, what problems they're facing, stack and the problem that we are going to solve for and then how do we, what is the durable advantage or competitive advantage AWS has to succeed in that particular area and then show that there's enough opportunity to ramp up and who are the initial customers to work with. So in order to prepare that there's a lot of detail work that I had to do, healthcare industry was new to me so I had to understand the peers. Peers are the companies who actually pay the and settle the claims like Anthem being a good example of that. And then you have providers where the hospitals provide care. So they are the ones who generate the claims which the peers settle. And then you have a number of other companies associated with it. So understanding the whole healthcare industry and then coming up with the use cases and distilling the use cases that will be good for machine learning. Just again, machine learning and deep learning there's a lot of data. Healthcare does have a lot of data but how do we ensure that we can get the data in a way in which we can train this machine learning models and make it meaningful was the first step. So that's what I did. I started the PRFQ with the personas from peers and providers and the problem statement that we were going after. So mostly it's around how we ingest the healthcare data. How do we automatically extract diagnosis and diseases and so on and I'll win that with the code so that the manual labor of looking at the code is reduced and that way we can add value. And then from there onwards we add value by generating graphs as well as insights from the data which takes a lot of time for healthcare professionals to do. I mean, if there's approximately around 50, 60% time often healthcare professional goes in understanding data and interpreting instead of spending time with the patients which is their core where they want to really focus on. So that was what was the basis for the PRFQ of outlining the problems, exploring why it matters and then coming up with a comprehensive piano as well as a frequently asked questions to show that we can drive a meaningful business out of it. Again, the PRFQ went through multiple reviews before it went into anti-JSC for review and approval. And at the end when it was done you can clearly when you read it you see that it doesn't assume that you already have healthcare background or machine learning and deep learning background. Kind of the target audience that we wrote PRFQ for is like a New York analyst. So there was no assumption that everything was explained first before the, you know, the concept was used. So for example, for peers to explain what peer does what provider does for each of the use cases there was enough data provided by the use case test matter. And then for solutions similarly in simple English language is explained on what is the potential benefit associated and how machine learning and deep learning can help in reducing time and cost without using jargons or medical terms that nobody else understands, right? So those were very important. Most of the executives that we presented neither had healthcare background nor had machine learning and deep learning background. So it was very important to simplify that and that took bulk of time to get that up memory. But at the end it was approved and health play was launched and right now it's a very important service that is being offered. So if I have to do a few key takeaways I would say less is more. Don't go into the details. Focus on why you are saying or highlighting certain things and why does it matter more on the impact rather than the nuances of execution. And then again, in questions that are being asked understanding why is it is asking that question what are they trying to get or what is their angle and connect the dots for them when you're responding to the question will go a long way. The other thing in many companies that you might see is getting buy-in. So you need to make sure that you have sessions allocated with leaders from each of the cross-functional business units. Like for example, in case of Uber the Market Plus team plays a very critical role because they're involved in pricing. We want to make sure the Market Plus teams are brought in. The driver teams, for example, they are completely aligned in terms of the impact to the drivers if you're doing a product which impacts drivers and obviously on the rider side as well. So have those buy-in, make sure design is involved, data science is involved, engineering is involved and they are completely aligned with the direction being proposed so that you come out as a cohesive united voice to the leaders. The worst thing that can happen is suddenly if the engineering leaders picks up or the design leaders picks up in the meeting says that, hey, you know what? I don't agree with this vision or they start asking questions. It can completely deal the entire discussion. So getting that initial buy-in and feedback ahead of time would go a long way. And finally, practice, practice, practice that goes a long way for this kind of discussions. I hope this was useful. Again, I wish you the best if you have some presentation coming up. As you saw earlier, I have a one-on-one session that I provide. Ask me anything. So if you guys are preparing for high-stake meetings and want to have someone just, you know, run through it more than happy to do that. You can schedule it through the clear website I created. Thank you so much. Take care.