Building a Career like a Product
I recently conducted a zoom session on the topic ‘building your career roadmap’. The session was pretty well received — 89% of people rated it excellent. So I thought I would write a post around the key ideas from the session, and few more. It’s especially relevant at this time of the year, when we reflect and ponder on both our personal and professional lives.
Here are the key ideas to build a meaningful career:
Understand the game you are playing to master — There are domain which are well structured — computer science, maths, physics. The learning methods in these domains (concept + practice) is very different than learning methods in ill-structured domains such as product management, investing, etc. These domains rely on case studies, mental models, and are largely context-and-path dependent. Be careful to understand the game and how to master it best.
Start from the end — Rather than thinking about where you are and how to move to the next level, start from the end. Think deeply around where you want to reach in 10-20 years, and what you want to accomplish by doing that (for yourself, family, society at large). The choices you can make to optimise for getting to the next level are mostly different than the choices you make to optimise for the end goal.
Identify inflection points to your goal — An inflection point is where the skills you need to move further are considerably different than the one that you have right now. For example, in most professions, moving from an individual contributor to a manager is that inflection. Moving from manager to manager-of-managers is another inflection point. Most people get stuck at these inflection points by doubling down on what they have done pretty well so far.
Focus on Scope rather than the Title — India is a status-seeking and status-rewarding society, in most social settings. So its natural that people are always looking for the next big title. A hack to grow faster is to focus on the scope of the role. I have seen Associate PMs managing the scope of a Senior PM, and vice-versa. Years down the lane, these APMs grow way faster than the SPMs.
But the scope isn’t just a function of how large an area or team you are managing. It is also a function of which level are you operating at. Are you just following the orders (low impact), or discovering new problems and carving out new initiatives to help the org (high impact and founder mentality)? A good framework around this is PSHE by Shishir Mehrotra.
Culture fit is the most important thing for your career — Focus on values of your manager, followed by values of the company you are working for. If your personal values don’t align with the company, there is good chance you aren’t going to stick for a long time. Beyond values, it also matters whether how you think and operate aligns with the org. Culture is a fancy word and in simplest terms, it means how a certain organisation does things. Focus on whether your way of doing things is aligned with the org’s way of doing things. If they aren’t, you are going to struggle despite creating impact.
Self-awareness is paramount to move beyond a level — Self-awareness means how critically you evaluate yourself and how aware are you of your blindspots. It’s pretty easy to tell ourselves the stories that make us the hero. It’s harder to admit we have flaws and we have to work on them. Understand your personality through psychometric tests, look at peer and manager feedback, surf through your personal struggles — all of them will help you in self-awareness and self-management.
Create your own luck — There are 4 kinds of luck, and you should bank upon Type III and IV to excel in your career.
Type I is blind luck like winning a lottery.
Type II is luck through hustling and motion, like it happens in building a business.
Type III is when preparation meets opportunity, and happens through creating a prepared mind
Type IV is become excellent at what do, and attracting people who will reward you for it.
There is more in the session where this came from. You can find the recording on Youtube.
The slides are available in the description of the video, and attaching them here as well.
That would be all for now. Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas :)