Neil Kulkarni

AMA: Cisco Director of Product Management, Neil Kulkarni on Product Management Skills

January 22 @ 9:00AM PST
Register for AMA
We will email you Neil's answers to these questions after the event in case you can't make it.
Switching back to product management
For someone who used to work in product management but switched to product marketing for the last 8 years, why is it so difficult to get back into product management at Cisco?
When joining a new team as a product manager, is it better to have the right soft skills and have to learn the hard skills of the job? Or vice versa?
What real world experience and skillset do your product org look for in potential candidates?
How do product management skills change as you get more senior in the role?
I'm a technical product manager now and I find that the execution piece of my previous roles is not as desired in my current role and I am trying to balance what I deem as PM fundamentals with what my new role expectations should be.
How do you retain good talent, especially when PM roles are in such high demand across the industry?
How can someone from a different field like engineering transition to product management?
What hard skills are must haves to be a Product leader? What are nice to haves?
What are the most important product management skills or perspectives that others inside an organization could benefit from that would improve their day to day?
Running a "Think Like a Product Manager" course next month and would love to hear others'
What are mistakes product managers make when trying to get buy in for their roadmap that end up damaging stakeholder relationships?
How can I navigate a situation where I am frequently assigned project management tasks rather than product management responsibilities, and where there seems to be a lack of emphasis on product vision and impact-based product building?
Should product management decisions be data-driven or more so data-informed? Should Product Managers lead with intuition and use data to back up their assumptions?