Background: Pradeep joins HelloAB, a series C startup as VP of Products. He was brimming with excitement to solve some of the important problems facing the startup. In a couple of weeks, he understood that customer focus was broken. He created a plan to bring back the focus and showcased the same
New leaders find it difficult to delegate their responsibilities to their team. A consequence of this is another challenge that leaders hardly notice and reduces their effectiveness. We call this ‘reverse delegation’. Imagine you are the leader. One of your team members drops by your desk and says ‘Boss, there is a
Many years ago, I was building a team in a startup. One day my manager pulled me into a conference room to discuss something ad hoc. He asked me – “I noticed that you were in the boardroom with your product managers and the engineering team for hours together. What is happening?”.
Lakshmi was a hungry Product Manager. She had enough work on her plate but still sought more work where she can learn and grow. Her boss, being appreciative, gave her more features to own and build. I.e. more of what she was already doing. In a couple of months, Lakshmi became tired
Rahul (name changed) joined a series-B startup to lead the product function as Senior Director. He was the first product hire and had the mandate to build his team from scratch. He was excited about this new role and the prospect of faster career growth. At this stage, he needed solid PMs
Ahamed has been leading a product line at Ring-ring technologies for the last 3 months. He has 4 Product Managers reporting to him. Prior to this, Ahamed was an individual contributor (IC) and was given the leadership position owing to his contributions as an IC PM. Ahamed started feeling overwhelmed in the
New leaders are busy working towards the goals and proving themselves. In the process, they become unaware of the image they project to the team and to the senior management. When things don’t move the way they planned, they can end up projecting one or more of the following images – a.
New leaders tend to spend a lot of their time and energy in fire fighting. They tend to move from one firefight to another until they put off all the fires. Unfortunately, there is always some fire or the other in fast-moving firms and so they can continue this eternally until someone
New leaders tend to mimic their bosses’ style and actions. This happens in a very unconscious manner and may or may not work depending on the context. In my first leadership role, I started following (unconsciously) my manager’s style of working. My manager was hands-off, looked only at high-level details, and provided
A typical scenario that plays out when disseminating Product vision within the company: Product leader unveils the vision in a town hall or a large gathering of employees. He/she shares compelling stories and memorable sound bites. The leader gets applauded A few weeks later, while conversing with a few employees, he/she realizes
