AMA: Meta Product Leader - Ads, FinTech & Data/ ML, Bhaskar Krishnan on PM Soft and Hard Skills

This is a very interesting question and one that I keep touching upon on almost all career conversations with my teams & mentees. There is no one typical career path for PMs, which can be both liberating and challenging at the same time! It's liberating since PMs have the chance to shape their careers to what they would like it to be, playing to their strengths and having a fulfilling life & career. It's challenging since every industry and many firms in the same industry have different definitions & requirements for what a PM is! For instance, even within FAANG firms, the definition of a PM is different - Google requires PMs to market the work of their Engineers, Apple PMs are usually good at their domain of expertise but execute on Sr Management decisions, Amazon PMs are Business/ Program Managers with heightened focus on a few metrics, Netflix PMs are very Technical (most of their PMs were former Engineers or Architects) and Meta offers almost the full buffet but also the most agency & empowerment to PMs. I touched upon some of the PM archetypes in another answer and its great to see that PMs can succeed in any shape or form tht adds value to their firm! PMs who are early in their careers will do well to join established firms to understand the PM tracks and how senior PMs have shaped their careers. Working in a start-up or a 0-1 environment usually turbo-charges a PM's career but only if the PM is aware of their strengths & know-how to leverage them. I have found that alternating between large firms & startups or between established products/ projects and 0-1 initiatives is the best way one can gain the most perspective and shape their careers as PMs.

Empathy and the ability to connect with people across the board is the most under-rated skill for high-performing PMs. Empathy enables PMs to connect dots, build relationships, solve problems and dive-deep, to increase their expertise PMs need to exhibit people skills that span three broad categories and empathy for each of these different categories helps in its own way. 1. Managing XFN - PMs typically work with large cross-functional (XFN) teams and need to adapt their working styles for each of the XFN teams, their involvement in the product/ problem, the individual team members' seniority & their time at the company. Initiatives that are amongst the top priorities for the company might have a fully staffed XFN team and others would have varying degrees of staffing. Likewise, new initiatives, esp 0-1 initiatives would have gaps in resourcing and would sometimes be staffed with new hires or interns. The ability to connect with people will ensure the PM is able to partner with all XFN appropriately to get things done. For instance, at Flipkart & Rakuten, we were resource constrained and I hired interns for our Tiger (Innovation) teams. It was one of the most fun experiences I had since we could think big, not fear failure and also time-box our work (to match with internship cycles) to launch a prototype or pilot. Products such as Flipkart Merchant Ads, Flipkart Funnel Attribution & R-Pay Merchant Rewards developed from these pilots 2. Team leadership - PMs, esp later in their careers, would be managing teams of Product Managers, across their career spectrum. Every PM is different in their approach, some lean on context, others lean on passion, yet others on structured problem solving process and being able to identify what makes the team tick and make them the best version of themselves in key! My team had Rakuten had PMs that spanned multiple archetypes from the Captain (who likes to lead large initiatives themselves), the Generalist (who can shape-shift to any project), the Specialist (who likes to specialize in a domain), the Architect (Technical PMs who like to build) and the Integrator (PMs who are good at managing large, complex initiatives). Meta has an equally impressive range of archetypes for PMs and more for TPMs & Project Managers. 3. Executive Presence - The last & most critical category of people interactions for senior PMs is working with executives & Sr leadership in any firm. Here again, empathy for the leaders, for the scale & scope of problems they are solving, for what keeps them up at night, will go a long way in helping the company, the org & the product team. Sr PMs need to think of themselves as Chief Enabling Officers and the more they enable Executives, the more they enable their own teams

The best Product managers combine curiosity with structured problem solving skills. Being curious helps them look at problems as opportunities to learn & grow. Ability to frame & structure a problem helps them take others along in the process. Both these skills can be learnt & cultivated over time. Curiosity - Being curious is an under-rated skill. PMs who are curious keep learning, adding new tools (ideas, PM techniques, s/w tools) to their expanding toolkit and more importantly keep expanding their perspective. Structured Problem Solving - Being able to frame a problem in a simple manner, helps all cross-functional stakeholders & partners align on the problem definition (yes, this is key), the solution and then the execution I try to imbue these two values on a daily basis and this has helped me seamlessly transition across AdTech, Consumer Tech, E-Commerce & Fintech. And, it's a lot of fun!