Natalia Baryshnikova

AMA: Atlassian Head Of Product Management, Confluence Experience, Natalia Baryshnikova on Developing Your Product Management Career

February 16 @ 10:00AM PT
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Natalia Baryshnikova
Atlassian Head of Product, Enterprise Strategy and Planning4y
Ultimately, prioritization comes down to a chain of decisions. Regardless of the framework that you use, the question I see folks overlooking a lot is "who is the right p...
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1437 Views
7 requests
Natalia Baryshnikova
Atlassian Head of Product, Enterprise Strategy and Planning4y
First thing I'd recommend is asking your team if there is a formal description of levels and skills associated with each level. More and more companies, whether large org...
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1288 Views
10 requests
Natalia Baryshnikova
Atlassian Head of Product, Enterprise Strategy and Planning4y
The biggest struggle I have observed is related to transition from an individual level product craft growth to growing that of a group. Andy Grove in High Output Manageme...
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1298 Views
8 requests
Natalia Baryshnikova
Atlassian Head of Product, Enterprise Strategy and Planning4y
1. Storytelling. You need to be able to tie many disparate pieces of product work - user needs, business goals, technical limitaitons, competitive landscape, innovation o...
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1280 Views
6 requests
Natalia Baryshnikova
Atlassian Head of Product, Enterprise Strategy and Planning4y
First thing to do is to check with your manager how they think about your growth. They may be thinking that they are helping you, and it is just your perspectives that ar...
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1187 Views
3 requests
How do you manage the 1000 questions and tasks that are shot at you when you are a PM in an early stage startup?
I'm the first PM in a startup that used to be sales led. I'm trying to set up the proper discovery processes, prioritization tactics and strategy, but I find that extremely hard to do as I'm getting carried away in the day-to-day tasks around requests, issues reported and project management.
Natalia Baryshnikova
Atlassian Head of Product, Enterprise Strategy and Planning4y
Startups are all about speed. To move fast, you need to know where you are going (aka what to be ruthlessly focused on) and allocate the most of your time/energy to that....
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1515 Views
3 requests
Natalia Baryshnikova
Atlassian Head of Product, Enterprise Strategy and Planning4y
There are three aspects to selling this well: 1. Empathy. You have to start with acknowledging the validity of a need or ask. Folks often skip that step and go straight ...
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1408 Views
5 requests
How to make a career change to PM?
Any tips, strategy, success stories?
Natalia Baryshnikova
Atlassian Head of Product, Enterprise Strategy and Planning4y
See my answer above on breaking into tech as a PM for one of the options. Another option, if you are a mid-to-senior career professional is to build ties with your produc...
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1955 Views
2 requests
Natalia Baryshnikova
Atlassian Head of Product, Enterprise Strategy and Planning4y
"Assume I don't know anything. Teach me something in the next two minutes about a topic you are passionate about - can be anything". This questions helps me understand ho...
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3404 Views
Natalia Baryshnikova
Atlassian Head of Product, Enterprise Strategy and Planning2y
Will add my favorite question to ask the managers of product managers (GPM, Director and above): "Tell me about a product manager you've worked with, and who's better tha...
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1175 Views
2 requests
Natalia Baryshnikova
Atlassian Head of Product, Enterprise Strategy and Planning4y
At Atlassian, we look at multiple pillars of value PMs bring to the organization: delivering outcomes (think - moving business KRs and goals), leadership (inspiring other...
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986 Views
2 requests
Natalia Baryshnikova
Atlassian Head of Product, Enterprise Strategy and Planning4y
I see a lot of PMs succeeding in startegy and operaitons roles. I have been tapped a few times for COO / Strategy & BizOps / Chief of Staff types roles because of the...
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1391 Views
2 requests
Natalia Baryshnikova
Atlassian Head of Product, Enterprise Strategy and Planning4y
Being patient when I would like to be impatient. Product management is deeply humbling in that good things often take time. I like to say that I am "tactically impatient,...
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1243 Views
3 requests
Natalia Baryshnikova
Atlassian Head of Product, Enterprise Strategy and Planning4y
First, like to work on problems that I am passionate about. I love to learn and make impact in areas that I think, pardon high brow speak, will make the world a better pl...
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637 Views
2 requests
Natalia Baryshnikova
Atlassian Head of Product, Enterprise Strategy and Planning4y
There is a fork in the PM career path road: one is becoming a people manager, the other becoming an expert in a deep thinking product area sans managing a team. My recom...
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2575 Views
2 requests
Natalia Baryshnikova
Atlassian Head of Product, Enterprise Strategy and Planning4y
In short, you have to go from being a thinker to being a doer. The biggest mindset change is about learning when to stop with the analysis and transition into acting on t...
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1200 Views
2 requests
Natalia Baryshnikova
Atlassian Head of Product, Enterprise Strategy and Planning4y
Two ways. First sweet spot is to pick a mid-size startup (round B or C) that is growing. They need folks all the time, and they need folks who can roll up their sleeves a...
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1070 Views
2 requests