 Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another fireside chat. I'm very excited to be joined today by Manash, who is the head of product at PepsiCo. Manash, thanks so much for being here today. Thanks, Ellen. I'm really excited to be here today. I hope you're doing well. Yeah. Thank you. Maybe let's start by learning a bit more about your personal story. How did you get started in the tech industry and in product management? Sure. I have to go back in a few years back. I started my career as an engineer with Oracle. We were building the foundation of the cloud computing way back in 2004, 2006. I was building the early versions of APIs and cloud capabilities. Then post my MPA, I decided to change carrier and went into product management. I've worked for Thomson Reuters across five countries and three continents. Eventually, coming to New York, I moved over to Payments to lead digital payments as the director and then VP for MasterCard. Then eventually joined PepsiCo as head of product management, product design and operations when basically the size of the team was zero in 2018. Now we are close to 60. Wow, amazing. Job titles obviously fluctuate between companies, between industries, like anything can change a title in product management. What does head of product look like for you? Can you maybe walk us through an average day to day and some of your responsibilities? Sure. From the head of product role perspective, I am responsible for five areas. The first is vision. Typically, when we look at product vision, we look at the essay at the stack. As we are looking at the only majority of the things at the stack, the product vision is in the middle of that stack. On the top, you have the organization vision, organization goals. That rolls up into product vision, which then rolls down to product, strategy and product roadmap. As a head of product, just like the CPU or product or my organizations, I'm responsible for product vision and then how does it influence the organization goals and organization strategy. And at the same time, how does that roll up to product strategy and product roadmap for my individual teams that roll up to me? The other parts which are responsibilities are building the culture. Very critical, right? So again, PepsiCo is not known as a technology organization. So building the right set of culture that helps us build a product not only for end consumers, but also internal tools that builds competitive advantage. So that's the second area. And the third area is hiring talent. I've been very passionate about hiring the right talent and building the right structure within my teams in terms of pods, so that we can make decision pass, we can move in a agile manner. So hiring talents are the key part of my job. And then fourth is execution. So how do I, as a leader of the organizations, help my team to execute in a seamless manner, in a faster manner? And the fifth piece is creating a inclusive and culture which has a lot of diversity, right? So my team has 60% plus women in technology as well as people from underrepresented areas, right? So that's a very core pillar of my, right? So those are the five roles, right? So vision, culture, talent development, execution, and diversity and inclusion. That's quite a lot of hats that you have to wear all at the same time. So as you mentioned, PepsiCo, maybe the average person, when they hear the name PepsiCo, they don't instantly think of technology. Can you tell us a little bit about the solutions that you're trying to build and the problems that you're trying to solve? Yeah, yeah, this is a really good question. And I get this question all the time, like what is product in PepsiCo? What is technology in PepsiCo? So way back in 2017, 2018, I think PepsiCo did a really great job in thinking that, okay, in order to win in e-commerce and digital commerce, they have to build a technology-first organization. So PepsiCo e-commerce was created as a concept of how do I say that, like an incubation center or a center of excellence, right? And our charter was that we would build capabilities across data consumer B2B supply chain and marketplace that helps us build competitive advantage in this space, right? So over the last three and a half years, we have built capabilities in retail media, right? So where we are using our API connections with Amazon, Walmart, Instacards, and the likes of those retail marketplaces and using platform and machine learning to make decisions in terms of which products should we promote in those platforms? What price, what messaging, what time, right? So all those decisions are now being taken with the combinations of platform, APIs, data, and machine learning, right? So that's a big part and DNA of our endeavor. The other areas that we are investing a lot is supply chain, right? So supply chain, both in terms of how do you do, how do you manage orders from, let's say Amazon or Walmart, right? Where you are receiving those orders and then pushing it into their warehouses, but also think about the new format stores which are coming, right? So Amazon Go stores, DoorDash is coming out with Door, like Dashmark, you have Gopal, Instacard, they're coming out with lots of micro-performance centers. How do you build supply chain capabilities to address all those new agile formats which are coming up? And the third is like, as we expand into direct to consumer and B2B, even if you're ordering from Amazon or you're ordering from direct to consumer stores like Solar Stream or HelloLife, it's our warehouses from which the shipments is happening, right? So supply chain is a big part of the capabilities they're developing. And then end-to-end stack across B2B, direct to consumer, and also how do you experiment in new areas like IoT? So we have been building across all those verticals and figuring out, you know, build by or borrow decisions like which makes sense to build inside within our scope of our team. And where does it make sense to basically look at external capabilities to augment our solutions? Sounds like a really exciting space to be in at the moment. Speaking of that, let's dive into hiring a little bit, because I know that's a really juicy topic that we can definitely get our teeth into. You're hiring at the moment for a lot of different rules that you were telling me before we went online. What would you say is the secret source that you're looking for in candidates? Who are the people that you really want on your teams? Yeah, yeah. So let me tell you a little bit construct of my team, right? So my team right now has three areas, right? So there is product management, and I have five directors of products right now rolling up to me. We have design and I recently hired my head of design from Facebook. And then we have the operations team, right? So supply chain operations, data analysts that's helping us run our data consumer B2B marketplaces and those businesses. So in all of that, let's say, if you are looking at product management, there are four things that we look at, right? So we look at people who have a strong product vision, second is they are customer centric, right? So the history of building capabilities with either end consumer or enterprise stakeholder as being basically the core product development thesis, right? So I talked about, and then third is collaboration, right? So people who can work in a collaborative environment and can bring a lot of thoughts and ideas together from different stakeholders and then drive engagement with them in order to move the teams towards a particular goal. And the fourth is execution, right? So who has a focus of not only coming out with ideas, but can also help the team execute, right? So if you're looking at product management, those are the four areas that we would look at. Excellent. And where's the first place that people should go if they're interested in getting a job at PepsiCo? Do you have a careers page that we can point them in the direction of? Yeah, so if you go to PepsiCo carriers and if you search for e-commerce, right? So you will see the range of profiles that we would be hiring for right now. And right now in my organization, which is technology organizations, we are hiring for a lot of rules across product management, both in terms of direct to consumer as well as enterprise tools and platform. We are also hiring for principal designers, design managers, operational analysts, data analysts, and a lot of engineer rules are currently open, right? So if you are interested, feel free to reach out to me or go to our carrier page. And I'm sure we would be able to reach out to you and I'm engaged in this. It's exciting. And there's something that I'd love to chat with you about that we briefly touched on before we went live. It's this idea of hiring people into product management roles who may not have product management experience, kind of solving that chicken and egg problem of how do I get PM experience if I've never been a PM before and all of this sort of thing. What's your approach to giving people an opportunity to show off their PM skills in that role if they haven't had that role before? Yeah, no, I think that's a good question. I think when I moved from being an engineer to getting into product management, we did have that, I mean product management is still, I would say, it's still in the early or last 10 years of the industries where you see more product management managers having an official title of product managers, right? When I was an engineer and I talked about it with my other colleagues that at Oracle, we used to be both the engineer, the designer and product manager combined together. And thankfully, those models have changed, right? And we have more specialized roles because I think that helps make better decisions and better execution with respect to the goals. So what we are doing right now is come out with a product management development program within PepsiCo where we grew people who are interested in product management but haven't had a history of being a product manager to get into a product management vertical, right? And Prog School has been a really great partner, right? So as part of the program, we would select, we will go through a selection criteria and identify those candidates which have an overlap with the four qualities that we talked about, right? Who are customer centric, who can think big, who are collaborative and are execution driven, right? So if you have, you know, if you are into any of those four areas, there would be some areas where you need to go through, you know, development. So one opportunity of leveraging Prog School is that we will then take them through a three-month course with Prog School while they are still going through their day-to-day job. And after that, we would assign them an internal PM mentor and take them through a onboarding of a PM project from end to end, right? So we will let's say assign someone with a less than supply chain operation experience. We can assign them a pod within the supply chain group and say, okay, you lead this particular development, right? And act as a PM, right? And I believe that that's the best training that you'll have. If you have a mentor within that group, you would have engineers and designers who will work with you. But at the end of the, let's say three to six months, we would see how the particular person is performing in terms of in the product management group. And then we would, you know, formally get them into a product management function, right? So that's been our approach. And we tried it out for a couple of iterations this year and it's been pretty successful. Sounds great. It sounds like a really like 360 training opportunity for the individuals. I'm glad it works so well. And continuing on our theme of hiring, just in general, what are some of the things that you like to look for in the people that you're working with, maybe some of those softer skills and other attributes? Yeah, so interestingly, Francisco, you know, product organizations as well as tech organizations, we started scaling predominantly in the last two years, right? I mean, even in 2019, we were pretty small. We started predominantly scaling in 2020 and 2021. So what we look for is people who can work in a pod or a squad structure, right? So typically our pod would be structured with a PM, with a dedicated PM, with a dedicated designer and engineering lead, and then it's a sort of engineers plus operations resources, right? Like data analysts and operation resources. And as an entity, what we look forward is that one that they are making independent decisions, right? Second, those decisions are aligned with the core OKRs of the organization. So OKRs play a very critical role in our day-to-day as well as our product strategy and execution plan. Third, we look at in collaboration because quite a lot of time, we are building capabilities which are connected capabilities, right? So retail media would work with supply chain, will work with sales, would work with connected systems, would work with machine learning pods. So we built capabilities in a very connected format. So collaboration play a very key role. And the fourth is like we would be looking at people who can resolve conflicts through either a dialogue or through an escalation process, right? So those are the four things that we look at when we bring teams together, different individuals together to be part of it. Awesome. Let's dive into leadership a little bit. So throughout your career, you must have worked with and reported directly to a bunch of awesome leaders. What do you think are some of the marks of great leadership? What are the things that set apart the good leaders from the incredible ones that really make an impact? Yeah, I think that's a good question. I think if I divided the two parts, or I have reported to leaders who are business-centric and people, leaders who are technology-centric, right? And in my history, I think business leaders, the things that I've really appreciated from business leaders is the push that they give in terms of driving the technology organization towards business goals. But a lot of time, sometimes the technology organizations build capabilities and are prioritizing things, but they are not tied up with the organization goals, right? So a good hallmark of a business leader that I have reported to is ensuring that there's a push coming from them to ensure that whatever we are building from the technology perspective is impacting the business, right? The second thing is to go beyond the current challenges, right? So people are predominantly focused on, okay, what are we doing for 2020? A big hallmark of incredible visionary business leaders is to also look at three years' perspective, five years' perspective, look at the competitive landscape, and bring all of that together in terms of driving the broad strategy and broad vision, right? So I think that is definitely a good hallmark of business leaders. On the technology leaders who have led, whom I have reported to, there's some really great examples. And what I've liked in that organization is like technology leaders are focused on innovation, they're focused on executions, they're focused on creating a really great broad culture. So those are the things that I've learned from those technology leaders in fact too. So in my current role, I have tried to implement both the things that I've learned from business leaders and things that I've learned from technology leaders to drive my role as a chief rock officer for the economy. And what would you say are some of the skills that you either had to intentionally work on or that you sort of gained organically as you moved into more of a position of authority? Yeah, I think, again, as I talked about there are five areas that my role entails, right? So product vision, culture, hiring talent, execution, and that was an inclusion. I think some of the most key roles were, or some of the most key learnings were in the product vision, right? And how does that product vision align with the organization vision and influence the organization vision? Again, prior to PepsiCo, I was predominantly in financial services, right? So I was in MasterCard before that, I was in Thompson Reuters. PepsiCo was a very different industry. So getting the domain knowledge, building credibility took me sometimes. And again, as people move from industry to industry, I think those are like building creativity, understanding the business and making decisions that has impact on the business. I think those are definitely a big learning or onboarding or learning path that stays with people when they change industry. And that was the same with me. And then also culture. So I had to build culture from zero, right? I mean, there was no product organization, there was no product design organization. We had a really great design center within PepsiCo, but they are not into software design or let's say commerce design like website design. So building the culture from ground up took time and iteration. So I think, as I look back, those were the key learnings that I had from getting into industry. What advice would you have for other leaders out there who are starting to think very consciously about building culture? Because as you said, it's not something that happens organically. It's something that you also have to work on. Do you have any advice for people in that position? Yeah, I think as part of, let's say transformation, a lot of companies are going through a transformation culture, right? So they are going from, let's say, a legacy to a digital first culture, right? And it's important to answer five critical questions, right? So one is why, right? And why becomes the most critical part because why do we need to change the culture or why should we go into a transformation strategy, right? Why the current format doesn't work and why should we, like what should we aspire to, right? And those are the most critical questions because if you don't have those rights, then you will not be able to drive any of the transformations that you are looking for. Then the other question that comes into the picture is what do we mean by a culture, right? Or what do you mean by a transformative culture, right? What are the components of the transformative culture? How do we measure whether we have been able to make progress or we are behind? So I think what becomes broad and a transformation culture or a culture of a product organization is a combination of multiple things. It's a combination of written norms as well as non-written norms, right? And then the other questions are like, how do we go about doing that? Like should we hire a consulting firm who would advise us to do that or should we basically have transformation leaders identified within the groups and they solicit information or views from the broader groups and make decisions, right? I think those are again very important decisions in terms of like once you have answered why and what, how do you reach there? And specifically where, right? So again, quite a lot of times the organization fails because they feel like they want to do a big bang and transform the entire organization. It's as with software development and lean software and lean startup, it's always good to experiment and test and learn, right? So if you're going to a big transformative projects, right? Or you're thinking about a major cultural change, it's a good idea to try it out with specific groups or regions or team and then expand it based on your learning, right? So I think as we look at culture, both in terms of building a new culture or transforming a culture, why, what, how and where are pretty important questions and strategies that you need to line up. Great advice there. I think we've got time for a couple of audience questions which I can see coming through if you're going to answer a couple of questions on the fly. So Robin wants to know, as a head of product, do you influence engineering? If yes, what's your strategy? Right, so thank you for the question. Again, I get the question a lot when I'm talking to other product and engineering leaders, right? So I would not say that, so again, so how we have structured our teams is that we would have different pods, right? So if I look back, we have five different verticals, right? Like supply chain, due to CB2B, middle media, connected platforms. So each of the verticals have specific teams and pods, right? And product and engineering leads are core components of those pods, right? So our core components of those pods and how we have been able to ensure that we have a strategy which our strategy, product roadmap, product vision, which is acceptable and which is where we get commitment from both engineering and product is that both engineering and product come together to come out with that product vision, right? And it's a very conscious exercise that we go through. It's a time investment. It's an effort investment. It's also training, but we go through that so that because otherwise we'll not have 100% commitment, right? So product will say that, okay, this is a product vision, but engineering will say that, okay, I don't believe in that because I'm engineering, I'm more into execution focus, I'll start working on it. But in order to have like 100% commitment as well as the pushback, it's important that product engineering and design come together when you're looking at product vision, roadmap, KPIs and all those mice. And OKRs are a very critical part of that. Speaking of OKRs, we have another question. Could you shed some light on how to create value continually aligned with OKRs? Right, yeah. And I think I see another question which is coming in about what tools and processes do you use to track product development from strategy road plan and slide features? I think I'll probably try to answer both of them together because they're kind of overlaps. So as I was talking about, right? We go through a stack, right? Then we are looking at vision strategy in roadmap. So at the top, you have the organization's vision and then organization strategy and goals, right? Which becomes the organization OKRs. So in my group, what we do is that from those organization vision, right? We identify what each team's OKRs are for 2022 as well as quarterly, like what are their quarterly, let's say Q1, 2022 OKRs, right? And then what we do is we identify what are the different... So we use something called opportunity solution tree, right? So we look at, okay, the organization goal. Let's say the organization goal is growing revenue, let's say 100%, right? So that is the 1KR one. So that's the key goal. Then we would identify different opportunities that helps us reach that goal, right? So we would have, let's say, you can invest or you can increase the return investment on customer acquisitions or you can increase, like check out conversion rates or you can reduce or increase supply chain efficiency to reduce time to delay of shipping products, right? So those are all opportunities. So what we'll do is we will start tagging ethics or major capability development with those KRs. And then we would put them into roadmap, now next later roadmap. And that day what we are doing is we are creating a thread between organization goals to product goals to quarterly milestones and then tagging our development efforts with respect to that, right? So that's how you can show continuous formats of development and you can also learn from, if you are delivering value or not and on what areas are you neglecting, right? So those kind of tagging have definitely helped us ensure that we are building things but they are directly impact the broader organization goals. And we are also investing on the biggest opportunities and not like just looking for things which provides incremental benefits. Excellent answer to two questions there. I hope those were the answers you were looking for everyone. So I see we're coming down to our last couple of minutes but I think we can squeeze in a few fun, quick questions. What advice would you go back and give your younger self at the start of your career? I would say take more risk and probably stay in engineering. So my background was in engineering, my culture was in engineering. And I feel that I really liked being an engineer, right? So again, I might say just stay as an engineer but again, but not say that product management is not fun product management. I think the impact that you can have from product management is quite huge. The problem that a lot of organization faces confusing product management versus project management. Project management doesn't have as much as impact as product management. So I think again, as I look back I would also give myself advice that, okay, start thinking from product mindset from an early age rather than think about project management which is more around execution. And what's one thing that you're really excited for in the future of the tech industry? So I think one thing that I'm really excited about the future of tech industry that I do see technology coming in and solving a lot of legacy problems in the industry as well as within our day-to-day life, right? So whether it's simplifying the way that you buy things or simplifying or creating an exciting way of consuming content, right? I do see technology kind of impacting every single area, right? So that's one thing that I'm really excited about. The second thing is a lot of organization, even large legacy organizations are looking at transforming themselves and are investing in digital transformation. I think that's also another area in which I'm feeling very positive. Amazing. What a positive note to end on there. Unfortunately, that's all the time we have today but Manesh, thank you so much for talking with me. It's been a real pleasure. Thanks, Ellen. It's really nice to talk to you. Thank you, everyone, for joining us. I hope you got as much out of that as I did. That was really fun. And we'll see you all in the very next fireside chat. Okay, bye. Thanks, Ellen.