 Hey everyone. I'm James and I'm thrilled to be back with the product school community. I've gotten the opportunity to speak to this community a couple of times and it's always a blast. I love the enthusiasm and the appreciation for the craft of product management. Today I want to talk to you a little bit about how to stand out as a generalist PM. This is a topic that is especially important to me because I am a generalist PM and I feel like I've struggled at various points in time to figure out how to use that as an asset for myself and my career. And so I want to talk to you a little bit about what I've learned and what I've observed from others. Hopefully this is helpful for a lot of you out there. Before we dive into the content I want to tell you just a little bit about me and my background. I've most recently been a product manager at YouTube on both the creator tools and search and discovery teams. Prior to that I worked at a company called Adroll. Now called Nextroll. And before that I did product at a place called the Climate Corporation. And what you'll notice here is it's three different industries. YouTube I'm sure you know. Adroll is ad tech and kind of marketing for SMBs and B2B companies. And then the Climate Corporation was focused on software for farmers. So kind of a data studio for farmers. There's three really different industries playing into kind of that generalist model. I want to give you guys a little bit of an idea of what we'll cover today. First we'll talk about what life is like as a generalist PM. Both the good and the bad. Some of you might be in a place where you're still shaping your career and deciding what you want to do. And I want to give you a sense for how to pursue a generalist path if you want to do and what that looks like. And then we'll dive into how to stand out if you're a generalist PM. You might already be there. Maybe that was a choice. Maybe that just happened the way that your career played out. And then what can you do to make the most of that. Make that an asset for yourself. All right. First let's talk about what it means to be a generalist PM. So the first thing to say here is that typically a generalist PM has all of what we would consider product management table stakes and stuff that if you're a regular product school attendee you know all about. So high degree of user empathy, great analytical skills and ability to kind of quantify the impact of potential changes, creative thinking about how to solve problems or pursue opportunities and then high degree of delivery and execution. Not only can you conceive of it you can also figure out how to get it done. A great generalist PM does all of these things. The key is that a generalist usually doesn't have a specific industry or functional experience. So this is somebody who maybe has done both B2B and consumer software or has done ad tech and fentech and maybe even something else. They don't have a huge depth of knowledge in any particular industry or area. I'm sure you've all run across these before and in particular the major tech companies so the Google's, Facebook's of the world tend to have a generalist model in part because they have such a broad array of businesses and they kind of want you know product managers to be able to move. Maybe you're in Facebook's AR, VR unit at one point and then you move over to the ads unit for another you know promotion step in your career. Okay first I want to tell you what's good about being a generalist PM. The great thing to me is that there's such a broad range of potential companies and problems that are open to you. A really high caliber generalist PM sort of can kind of pursue their interest wherever that goes and if you are somebody who finds yourself kind of with you know various interests that are really changing that might be a sign that you've got kind of that that generalist call in you. As a generalist you also have less industry or technology risk. One of the PM managers that I've had that was most impactful for me when I was talking with her about this talk she actually pointed out that this is both a benefit for you within your career as well as companies right because if you're a company that is taking a very you know specific type highly specific product management path and the fundamentals of your industry change maybe a new interest changes how you know the product is made or product is done but maybe you go from a desktop world to a mobile world or you enter a kind of a new phase of competition you have some insurance if you're if you have a strong generalist PM workforce you have the ability to kind of pivot a little bit more easily than if you have a team of specialists that same dynamic plays out at the personal level if you if all of a sudden you know a new interest comes in it kind of changes the domain of competition within a particular area that you're working if you're a generalist PM typically you can find your way into a new industry a new technology a new tech stack yeah and then last but not least I think a great generalist PM has an opportunity to be even more creative and see opportunities that a specialist PM wouldn't see and I'm heavily influenced here by a book called range by David Epstein that talks about how uh seeing problems across different domains increases one's productivity one of the stats I love from that book is that when you look at noble prize winning um noble prize winners they are more likely than their peers to have a hobby whether it's music or writing a novel or you know some kind of focused work outside of their core domain and and you know throughout the book he makes what I think is a very compelling case that fundamentally being a a great generalist is about increasing your ability to solve different types of problems and I think as a journalist PM I know I see this all the time through my work how solutions from you know a different industry uh end up giving me a clue to how to solve something where I am today all right so by now you're probably thinking why shouldn't everyone be a generalist PM and I think there are really good reasons if that's the good uh let's talk a little bit about the bad right um if you're a generalist PM there are going to be certain roles that just are not available to you and I've definitely seen this within my career so uh you know I would give an example I uh you know at one point was looking to move locations and I wanted to work in uh San Diego and I'm looking at the Google San Diego office and they've got a lot of roles for uh product managers for silicon chips reading the role and the job description and these are these are jobs that I'm completely unqualified for would be unable to help the team um to be a great uh uh silicon product manager you need a depth of expertise in in how uh uh chips are made and that's not that's not me so that's a path right that on some of what I think is really interesting uh I enjoyed I would definitely enjoy learning about but where I'm not going to be able to be effective the second thing I think that is a little bit challenging about being a generalist PM is that uh opportunities don't come and find you so you uh you know a really great specialist PM who has a a great understanding of a particular industry or a particular uh way that something complicated in the world works will have people will have companies coming and looking for somebody who can do that specialty and um and they'll be very easy for them to be able to say oh yes this person you know if we need to build out uh you know banking infrastructure this person is is the perfect PM for us they can read their resume and immediately know that like yes this person is it um and as a generalist that doesn't happen quite as much it can be one of the the uh uh challenges sometimes will be convincing uh a company that you can uh succeed in their company even though you don't know the industry um and and you know that that's uh a challenge that comes with with the path and then last but not least I find it can be a little bit difficult to stand out from the pack because uh you know if by its nature uh almost anyone can find their way into being a generalist PM right there's no barriers to entry here uh whereas to be a specialist uh you may need an advanced degree you may need a certain amount of experience in an industry there are certain things that kind of act to um to keep you apart uh from the pack whereas uh as a as a journalist you have to find ways to show people that you are great at what you do uh that are that yeah that are that you have to be able to explain to people why you're unique okay we're gonna spend some time talking about that last one how to stand out from the pack if you're a generalist PM first I'd like to talk a little bit about why standing out matters um all of you are here uh you know listening to a product school talk so you are clearly thinking a little bit about you know what's happening in your career although many of you might be trying to figure out your first PM role uh maybe how to get into it or how to succeed within it and this might seem not super important to you but I think it's something that you should be thinking about from the start because um more often than not even if you you know totally love your company totally love your manager you want to be thinking a little bit about what the next opportunity is going to look like for you um as we move into a remote work world there's uh you know there's already lots of competition for product roles there's going to be more competition in the future uh you know once anyone can kind of uh hop online uh from wherever they are and and you know to some extent do the job uh you need to know how you're gonna stand out and how you're gonna uh uh be be be better than them kind of earn the role um and then last but not least even if you kind of feel good about you don't you know you don't feel good about next opportunity you don't feel like you know there's there's competition it's always nice to have choices I think one thing that oftentimes makes me feel better about the current role that I'm in is looking at other roles and like actually I don't think I would enjoy that as much and it helps me to kind of be like you know what whatever is like frustrating right now or is you know a little bit annoying today actually isn't that big of a deal because I have a really good setup on all of these other dimensions so this is this is why you might consider thinking about why to stand out so how do we actually do this the first important thing uh for standing out as a generalist PM is is being intentional about how you select your projects and uh the question that you need to be asking is am I working on the things that are going to deliver the most valuable for the customers or the user and for the company that I'm working on and uh if you're not why aren't you doing that and I know that some of you are sitting there and you're like well listen man like I'm not the CEO uh I've been asked to work on this right uh and so I've got to go and do what people are asking me to do and you know to some extent that's probably true but if you're a product manager kind of by your nature uh people you know part of the role is telling your leadership team what you should be focused on and where the most value is so even though you might have kind of things you need to execute on this month this quarter you should be actively looking for areas of opportunity and figuring out how to get them on the company's roadmap and telling your leadership team in an appropriate way if you're not working on the highest value things uh and I promise you that if you if you approach that with humility and with tact and with kind of an open mind then it will it will be well received now don't go you know if there's a huge opportunity there's already a team staff done it's already pm staff work don't go and try to like take their role look for the look for the blind spots and you know just based on my experience across you know a bunch of different companies it's it's almost never the case that every single area of value is like perfectly optimized you should be able to find some way to put yourself and your team in a little bit of a better position to to uh kind of expand uh expand the their impact once you've kind of figured out like what what projects you want to you want to orient yourself towards you need to think about how your work is going to impact the product so you know I talked a little bit before about the downside of being a generous pm is is that it can be difficult to show people how your work hits the product and what I wanted you to think about in this part of the talk is what was different because I was there and so you really really really want to be thinking uh have an orientation towards launches shipping right this is obviously a good product manager trait to have but it's especially important if you're a generalist being able to show how the product evolved because of the work that you and your team did and and to be able to quantify this so you want to be thinking about the metrics how do you tell the story in numbers uh particularly numbers that matter to the c that would matter to the ceo or that are easily you know understandable by outsiders things like customer acquisition or churn or revenue um these these are things that help people understand okay yes I see how this person was impactful the good news here is that this this really dovetails uh nicely with what it takes to be an awesome pm so to some extent it thinking with this kind of longer term kind of career lens how am I going to sell this opportunity next rather than kind of pulling you away from what's best for your team it's probably pulling you closer to what is best for your team because I think if a lot of us are honest you know when when we get into the day in and day out it can be hard to have a real focus on how is this launch going to move you know the metrics that the ceo cares about and if you you know you this can pull you towards that mindset just a little bit all right so now we have our projects we have uh thought about how to frame uh or how to measure their impact the next thing that's important if you're going to be a generalist pm is is really thinking about how you're going to talk about your impact to people that don't understand the company that you work for I mentioned this question before around impact which is what is different because you were there and the other question I want to introduce now is what is the scope of what you were responsible for and you really want to practice being able to talk about these things because you're going to have to explain them to people that don't have any context so within your company people probably know the answer to these these questions they have a lot of contacts they can kind of they understand your scope they know how impactful it was to have you responsible for this you know particular thing that's really difficult when you start to want to move into something new you have to be able to phrase it in a way that you know your parents or maybe your best friend from university that's in med school you know somebody smart and capable that but but not in your specific context and I think that you really want to practice this because it's difficult to do and yeah and then specifically with scope of responsibility you want to be able to talk to like what part of the business broadly defined were you responsible for and which people on the team were looking on you to provide product direction so typically this can be very broad sometimes product roles are very oriented towards partnership or towards support but you definitely want to be able to say okay you know these are the engineering teams that were looking to me for product impact these are the other PMs that were looking to me to provide product direction kind of explaining uh yeah the the the complexity of what you were working on we've kind of talked all of this through so far on kind of a single project level what projects am I selecting how am I going to measure the impact of those those projects how do I explain to somebody why that project was important and what was different because I was there now I want to you know kind of move one level higher and talk about how different projects or different career experiences fit together into something bigger um if you really want to pursue a generalist product career you want to be seeking out experiences that are complementary so instead of moving you know from role to role to role you know within an industry you sort of want to be looking out and saying okay um how do I get an experience that complements the one that I have if I've got a really great consumer experience how do I find something with a partnership's angle uh if I've had you know deep b2b experience with really complicated customer journeys how do I find something that's a little bit more intuitive or fun uh that shows people how able I am to solve problems in different domains um this can take some thought to figure out how to do well it's not always immediately clear how to do it but I want to give you some things to think about uh that might help you see where these opportunities are one thing I like to do is take a look at you know kind of my own team or my own company and look at what sorts of problems uh are uncommon uh or really difficult where are there places where actually only one person on the product team really knows how to do the thing or how to figure it out um especially things that are growing quickly but from a really really small base so not not uh you know today like mobile phones are ubiquitous everywhere uh there's there's lots of different kind of mobile challenges that are out there in the world you sort of want to look for things that that are um coming up infrequently maybe you're on a product team right now and there's just a whole lot of uh angst around uh you know audio uh particularly audio layered over uh real world experiences and it it it's not maybe you know p0 every day but it comes up now and then and when it comes up it's really confusing for people that's a great area to dive in on now I don't know whether or not that area is the next thing to bet on I that's not um one that I've run into but that's the sort of thing that you want to be looking for what's inconvenient or frustrating the things that only one person or two people on your product team seem to know how to do and when you find those things you want to go and see how you can become an a and a like mini expert in them I'm not talking about like you know going and getting a degree I'm talking about the sort of learning that the internet has made has made uh way way easier than before so you go find out everything you can find online and if you can't find uh anything good online you go and maybe make a quick explainer yourself to kind of show how to get started and seeking out a community that can teach you just a little bit more and these are the sorts of things that kind of allow you to differentiate yourself from uh from the crowd and and put together a a career experience where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts I one way to kind of uh think about this is the quote that I have on the slide here that I really love by AJ Liebling where he says he's a journalist and he says I can write better than anyone who can write faster than me and I can write faster than anyone who can write better than me and I think that's a really good way to think about it you're not necessarily trying to be the best writer or the fastest writer you're trying to be the best of both uh and and that's how to think about some of these kind of complementary experiences okay so we've talked about projects and how to select those as a journalist we've talked about uh and how to perform within those as a journalist now I want to talk about kind of even more the stuff that kind of goes beyond the core of the product job and how to demonstrate ability beyond your core role so uh one place in particular where I think and this is a place really in particular where I think journalists have an opportunity to stand out um product is really unique and that it touches so many different parts of a business um and you get to interact with so many different types of people you should be thinking about your job as broadly as possible and looking beyond just the job description for areas that you are interested in where you can kind of pitch in and help out so um maybe you're looking to kind of demonstrate your ability to lead a team uh you're not you're an individual contributor now but in two years or four years you want to be able to be a team lead okay are you you know finding time to mentor others are you giving back to the pm community uh are you seeking out opportunities within uh within your company to develop the product function and and kind of show people what it's like to be a great PM those are the sort of things that will kind of set you apart as you want to move up the ladder maybe you want to get closer to sales in your next role are you spending time with the sales team are you facilitating uh feedback between sales and product are you doing kind of uh uh how two sessions to kind of make make the let the sales org understand how your product works those are all opportunities to kind of show your ability beyond your core job and then one thing I just want to call out uh specifically here is is that sometimes these opportunities uh are really they come to skies it's just opportunities to be to be kind to other people and so particularly as a as a PM you want to be thoughtful of how you treat other people almost all of the standout PMs that I know are incredibly incredibly humble and willing to help uh even when it seems like they don't have time for it so that sort of orientation I think really opens doors that aren't available to people that uh aren't humble or arrogant and don't have time for others uh that's my presentation for today I am really thankful that you gave me the opportunity to spend this time with you if you have any questions or want to talk about this further I'm always happy to talk you can find me on Twitter uh or LinkedIn or I've got my personal website up there as well and if you have questions or feedback I'd love to hear it and thank you for spending this time with me today