 Hi, everyone. My name is Sanam Darula and I am a senior PM at Amazon. Before Amazon, I have worked in various startups as well as big companies. So I've seen both the environments of how you work as a PM in small startups, middle-level startups as well as big companies. So today, I'm going to share some of my learnings that I have had in past 10 years. Being an engineer first and then moving into product manager and learning through the product manager discipline. So one of the theme that I have today is accelerating your PM career. So when I think about this theme, the most thing that comes to my mind is communication. As a PM, communication is a really important factor on how good a PM you can be. And when we talk about communication, as you can see, I have a definition here for a reason. Mary Webster defines communication as a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of simple science or behavior. Normally, when we talk about communication, people think of like having good listening as a PM is very important or speaking is very important. But there are other ways to communicate that you communicate without even knowing is like how you behave, how you show signs to your team. It says a lot about any leader, but PM specifically, because they talk through the organization with various stakeholders. It's very important that how you're being perceived or how you're communicating through your actions. And also like, of course, writing is a very important way of communicating like your thoughts, your vision. So like today, the theme that I have is like communication would be around all the agenda that I have, but in different forms. And we'll also talk about something more than that. So let me go to the next slide. So today's agenda is like, I have read a book which is like Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. If you haven't read through it, like I highly recommend that book. That book talks about a concept called circle of influence. So as a PM, like a circle of influence is something that you definitely need to have bigger and bigger as your role grows. So how can you start? First of all, I'll give you a little bit what the concept is. It is that when you are in a group, your influence might be limited to you and you can slowly work through your group to increase your influence. First, your inner circle, then you keep going outside and outside and proactive people actually do this way rather than thinking like, oh, I cannot impress like president of the state, so I should not do anything. So let's get to it and agenda also revolves around that. Those circles like you start building trust with your team and then you go to your manager and then you go even outside your manager realm. So we'll talk through those things. Let's go to the first one. So building trust with the team, which is your core inner circle, is very, very important. Then whenever you join a new company, this is the first people that you are interacting with regularly. So you definitely need to listen, identify the needs of your team members. And when I'm talking team here, it's not just the development team or your testing team or your design team, but all the other stakeholders as well are part of your team, like legal customer service. So I would expect you to listen, identify the need of all these team members and understand what motivates them. What is it like that their purpose is driven off? How do they get excited about the work and what are they expecting from you? So listening is very important. Not only at the start of your new job or new role, but all through the career. Second piece is empathizing with your team members. So we have heard a lot about empathizing with your user, but I highly recommend building empathy for your team members as well. If you're thinking about development team, how do they feel about the project that you are proposing or things that you are proposing, think about how it helps them and what are their concerns. It is important because PM is a rule which is widespread and you can do your job in a great way when you have this agreement or alignment between all of these stakeholders. And it is very important to understand their point of view before jumping on any of the conclusions. Second thing is communicating why regularly. So I think alignment, as I said, is a very important part of PM's role and how do you make people align? You can see already here in this picture there are more than 10. I haven't had all the stakeholders that a PM can have. So how do you align so many people? So it is very important to tell the story as the same goes like facts tell, stories tell. If you can tell a really nice and crisp story around your feature, around your product, which you are proposing or project that you are proposing, people would understand. The way our mind works is it understands stories rather than numbers. This number makes sense, but in order to truly drive, you need the story to tell why this problem, solution to this problem would solve a crucial customer problem. Why is this needed? It's definitely like you need to tell that in your story. And how you can do that is by communicating your story through writing. It depends. If it's a three-year document, you want to tell your strategy, try writing it down, putting it on paper and circulating it among your stakeholders and asking for feedback. What do they think about this? It helps in clarifying to people what you are thinking. Also, try to write these kind of context and give this context. Even in smaller tickets, like GRI for grading, anything for BI, like I want this data, try to give them more context as to why do you need this data. Giving that context helps building the rapport that they are not doing some work which is random. It has some meaning and it ties to something. Always try to include a why and try to give context on the things that you asked for. And then a very important piece, right? PM's currency of trust is delivering products and great and impactful products and features. It's not just for PM's, but your team, right? They are working with you day and night on these problems and if they don't solve a real problem, their hard work is also going to waste. So it's very important you deliver impactful product and features which actually makes the difference on the company's trajectory, on the product trajectory, or in the user's perception of the company. And one thing is about delivering these, but there's another piece that you need to make sure that work of the team is visible outside your team members as well. People on other teams should know that this product was delivered by this team and it performed really well or how did it perform? How did it impact the company or the product? So it's not about you here. It's about your actual team because this builds the ultimate trust. If you are able to show the team that the work that they did actually impacted and is communicated across the company, next time you bring a project, this team would be excited because they know that this person brings projects which have ultimate impact and then this impact is also communicated across the company. So I would highly recommend make sure that the work of the team is visible to the company. So this brings us to the second topic, which is kind of our second circle or like a second layer of the circle is your manager. And once you have a good rapport with the team, actually these are parallel so they don't need to go one by one but like second piece that you also need to take care of is like managing your manager. And I've mentioned it here, a myth that I had earlier in my career as like manager is responsible for my promotion but that's not the case. You and only you are responsible for your career trajectory. Manager can be your coach, mentor, he can help like he or she can help. They are there to support you or help you with whatever you need but it is you who is responsible for that. So how do you go about it? First thing is like in any performance evaluation it's always about expectations versus reality. So it's your job to clarify with your manager what is the expectation? What is expected of the current role that you are in? What success would mean in that role? Try to have that clarity very, very early on in your, hopefully in your interviews you would have that clarity but like once you join like have that dialogue write it down in a common documentation that you have with the manager that this is what is expected and this is how I'm going to go about it. And do not stop at that. The second piece is like try to understand what your manager's goal is and help them achieve it. Your manager like believe me like our PM managers are like three times more busier than the PM's. As a PM I used to think like oh I'm doing all the work my manager is not doing the work but like I have realized like managers are three times maybe more busier than you. So like if you help them achieve any of their goals which are actually basically your goals rolling up to them you're helping them achieve it but no like what is important to your manager and try to help them achieve those goals. Another I would say like misconception that I have in my career is like as the myth says like manager is responsible for my promotion but also like my manager would tell me like oh now you are ready for the next level and like I made that mistake earlier in my career but it's again on you that you need to discuss this thing with the manager like once you are you feel like okay this is my current role I'm doing okay I've been hitting things now like let's talk about next level and what skills do I need to build to go to the next level and you don't need to wait for six months, ten months a year before having this chat with your manager like noticing that you definitely need to start this but there are environments where I've seen like you get promoted without having this talk but what having this talk does is like shorten that time period rather than having that promotion in three years you can have that promotion in two years if you start early and start clarifying these things so have these talk chats with your manager like as early as possible like as I said there is no timeline you do not need to wait probably four to six months once you have proven yourself and you have things delivered you can start having this chat and fourth piece here is like document your accomplishments why I say that is like your manager is probably managing five more people directly and then countless indirectly like they have been dealing with projectives and other people they do not have time to remember everything that you did across the year sometimes you yourself would forget so have a continuous stream of accomplishment that you have been doing keep documenting it because what it would do is like at the time of promotion this would help you or end your manager to make a case because you have it all documented it is much easier to provide all the contacts all the information you have written down when it happened so I highly recommend doing this okay another piece is like your manager should know if you need anything what I mean by that is like early in my early years like I thought like oh my manager knows like okay I am doing these 10 things so he knows how busy I am and he would help when he has time or if he thinks I need something but this is wrong way of thinking and if possible you should always tell your manager about your problems why I shied away early in my career was like I thought like maybe my manager would think like I am not up to my job why am I having problems I could solve it myself and you can solve it yourself but there are two reasons like when I am taking about problems it is like complex stakeholder or like product issues not like simple problems the two benefits of sharing it with your manager or discussing it with your manager is you can basically brainstorm together you go like they are your manager they have for valid reasons right like so they have more information on org level they have maybe more experience they might have seen that problem before they can guide you or mentor you into the right direction talk to these things about with them second important thing is they would know some of the challenges with your role and I have worked at places where PM managers already know like what are the challenges of the role but there are places where you need to also clarify sometimes to your manager that these are difficult part of your product role sometimes it comes to stakeholders as well so do communicate your problems with your manager second piece is communicate good news as well as bad news so like it has often happened that you would feel like it would often happen that you would feel like maybe I do not need to tell this bad news altogether now maybe I can wait but it is always good to in a similar fashion you communicate good news with the same urgency but of course if you launch something it did not work you should have some next steps of how you are thinking good work or some learnings from it but do not shy away if you are doing things right in your career there would be instances where you would not get it right in the first time you would iterate and then reach to the right level you cannot always have all the good news coming so it is just part of the journey like the more I would not say more mistakes you made the more you would learn but it is always starts like that it would not be hit at the start but you get to it I am sorry and then use your one-on-ones very effectively I have seen this tendency like where one-on-ones you would start talking about your work your problems and discussing those things one-on-one is about you talk to your manager about your career aspirations what do you want to get out of the role or what is the next thing you want to explore more I can give you a personal story like where I use my one-on-ones always about like work things and did not talk about the thing that was calling me is like I wanted to move to a product role which was more user focused and I was doing really great at my role I was loving the company people everything was great but I just wanted like a different role in my company but I never had a chat with my manager and I end up like leaving the company and when I put my papers my manager told me like they wanted me to do that role without me telling them the reason that why I am leaving and it left an imprint on me that is that you do not ask for you would never get so do ask for things you never know what is in store for you and one last piece on manager piece is like keep them informed by sending an end of work peak email so what this is basically what I do is at the end of the week Friday what I would do I would write an email where to my manager where I am telling them that these are the things I am working on or completed this week with the next steps if they are in progress like what is my next step for this and then these are the things that I plan to work on next week and these are the things that are long so this again like going back to my point like your manager is informed now with the plethora of things that you are doing even if you start using your one on ones to discuss you can because as a PM you are fighting like endless fires and there are weeks where you won't be doing any product work at all and all you will be doing is fighting fires so this helps keep your manager informed about things that you are doing and second benefit of this is like every Friday I already know like what I need to do next week like I do not need to come on Monday and decide because I have this email I CC myself as well so I know like okay these are the things that I need to work on next week I come in and I I do those things so it would not only increase your visibility but also your effectiveness this brings me to the third and final circle which is like beyond your manager or like your manager's peers like it's like your company other stakeholders your skip level so when it comes to like especially once you become come to intermediate or senior level your visibility needs to be more to go to that extra level I know like this might be daunting at times like that you need to convince like a million people to get promoted and go to the next level but PM is a rule which can take a company to the next level if you are going to go up level like at a level where it is like director or like even senior PMs like or principal PMs I would say to perform at that level have that kind of visibility because in that way you would be impacting the trajectory of the company so that's why like you need to convince so many people but yeah like there is a way to do that which we are going to discuss now so how you can do it this thing is like various forms one is like have a regular one with your skip levels as well like by that I mean like not like weekly but like at least there should be monthly catch up on now to understand what their priorities are how they are seeing the work happening and like other things as well about the product and market you can discuss your ideas with your skip level as well so do not shy away from meeting your skip level often like at least once a month or one supporter at least if they are super busy with their director level but I would recommend as much as you can second piece is like communicate wins we have already mentioned that we need to do this but like what you can also do is like depending on your org again like it's a smaller company or what works for you like send the end of quarter or year email to show the total impact that your team had again like it's not of course it is for your visibility as well but like it also gives your team more visibility which would help you again like in different ways which we're going to discuss next slide is like this influence actually does not come directly with you talking to people but also like all these team members that we had a chat like we saw at the start like they also tell their manager how how do you work how is it working with you so like think about those perspective as well when when you are planning for your career next levels the next thing we will chat about is like how do you go about building your brand with these team members like you are working with if you are early in your early phases of your career actually these things also apply to the senior level but like you wouldn't get enough time but if you are early in your career PM career make sure that you know basic SQLs by basic I mean like you can do at least two joins in a SQL and handle data visualization to yourself this gives a lot of credibility to you especially when you join a company you are you need to ask a million question from data and you cannot go to BI for every question even at senior level like you should be able to handle of course like as you get senior you do not have enough time to keep writing SQL but I still recommend highly recommend that you should be able to pull data at least simple queries yourself and handle data visualization this builds a big like this has helped me a lot I come from engineering background so by new SQL but like I was amazed how much visibility you get just by learning SQL especially in like entry level PM and intermediate second thing is like work collaboratively this goes without saying but like when you are working with design do you have time storming as well like you can bring like okay I have brought these from different apps that I have seen or companies or products that I have seen bring data when you are working with design like tell them like why this problem is important like how many users are interacting with that specific page how much impact we can have these things actually make them motivated to like design and work with you because they do not know the impact of the work that they are going to do so seeing that upfront and being open to ideas like helps you a lot builds a lot for again and same thing goes with sales customer service like what I'm trying to say here is like again building empathy and trying to understand their function it will make you a better PM like accompanying sales team to customer visits or listening to their calls would give you actually more understanding of your own product and there is no better way to know your customers or 10 points of your customer than to go through customer tickets so it should be absolutely on your agenda to regularly check customer tickets or regularly meet up with customer service team to get like crux of the month week like what is the boys of your customer basically and as you can see here like hopefully you are doing all the things that I have mentioned on the previous slide but it becomes more important that you are thinking big first of all like you need to ask the right questions or correct questions what I mean by that is like you know where the problem is and what questions would lead you there hopefully over time you build that kind of rapport or understanding of the product, market and problems that you know like what kind of questions to ask to unearth the problems and then like as a senior PM, principal PM it's your duty to understand or come up with the opportunities that are impactful for your product like how do you take your product like 3x, 10x it's up to you like and do not afraid to think big what I mean by that is like we and like when I see like I'm talking about me like I used to have a tendency of like delivering, showing more impact but by delivering more so if there would be a project that's going to take 8-9 months like even though you can prototype like you could get into this like a small team you want to be like as I work quickly and then what it ended up doing was like I was picking projects that I can deliver which was wrong you can still think of bigger bets of course they are constrained and constrained usually leads to innovation so think big and then try to work backwards in chunks and see like how you can deliver that thing and then one like two last things that I want to say one is like we both like if you have seen in last 50 years of technology you don't need to go actually that back like look at last 12 or 20 years companies that had bold ideas have done phenomenal well and same thing goes with PMs like one of the job that as a PM you have is alignment but you do not need to agree with everyone like you could have bold ideas and if you have enough qualitative, quantitative or like if your head is there like you should definitely pursue those ideas and be bold in them and show your stakeholders company how you can pursue those ideas and have an impact on the product one final piece is like write online and share your learnings this piece actually brings your rapport like because nowadays like all your company like your manager everybody is on in your circle once you write online it helps not only helps like crystallize your thinking but it also helps people see as an expert like in your org in your past role so if you have had enough experiences you should share them as much as you can that brings me to the end of my presentation one last thing I would say is like take your work seriously but not yourself yeah thanks hope this was helpful for some of you people you can always follow me on LinkedIn for some more advice on writing your campaign career thank you