Lenny's Newsletter · Product & Work
TIER 4 2021-06-29
> ## Q: I recently transitioned into a PM role, and I never quite know if I’m doing a good job. We have career ladders and performance reviews, but day to day, how can I tell if I’m doing what I should be doing? There was a period a few years into my PM career when I was certain that if I made a single mistake, people would see how little I knew and everything would come tumbling down. I’ve since learned that this was [classic impostor syndrome](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/this-week-overcoming-impostor-syndrome), and everything worked out A-OK (even though I made numerous mistakes), but what I needed at the time was a way to know what doing a good job as an IC product manager looked like and felt like. Although I’ve written about the [10 jobs of a product manager](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/jobs-of-product-manager) and the [14 habits of highly effective product managers](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/14-habits-of-highly-effective-product), those are a *lot* of things to keep in your head day to day. **To answer your question very practically, although the PM role varies widely by company, you can evaluate an IC product manager’s performance with three simple questions (in priority order):** 1. **Is your team delivering business impact?** 2. **Are** ***you*** **personally contributing to the team’s success?** 3. **Do stakeholders regard you highly?** Answer yes to these questions and you’re doing great. Answer no to any of them and you’re doing OK. Answer no to all of them and you’re failing.  ### 1. **Is your team delivering business impact?** You could be executing like a boss and everyone in the company adores you, but if your team isn’t delivering meaningful impact to the business, you won’t get very far. As I've written before: > #### *The job of a product manager is to deliver business impact by marshaling the resources of their team to identify and solve the most impactful customer problems.* Your job as a PM is to provide leverage to the team to deliver more business impact, and so if your team isn’t delivering impact, you are failing. Impact can be a lot of things, however: 1. Accelerating the company’s growth 2. Making internal teams more efficient 3. Helping the sales team close more deals 4. Making important customers happier 5. Launching an important product **Takeaway:** When in doubt, find ways to deliver more impact for the business. ### 2. **Are** ***you*** **personally contributing to the team’s success?** While the team’s impact is priority number one, your *individual* contributions to the team’s success is a crucial element of your performance. The company isn’t looking to you to simply coordinate and execute—especially as you become more senior. Your managers will evaluate you based on what you’ve individually contributed to the team, i.e., whether you’ve: 1. Informed the product strategy and vision 2. Contributed great ideas 3. Uncovered unique customer insights 4. Enabled the team to operate like a well-oiled machine 5. Pushed the company and team to prioritize the correct work The more senior you get, the more important this component of your performance becomes. **Takeaway**: Contribute to *what* is built, not just *how* it’s built. Your company is expecting more from you than simply coordinating, note-taking, and communicating. ### 3. Do stakeholders regard you highly? The third leg of the PM performance stool is stakeholder perception. Unlike a CEO, for whom results are all that ultimately matters, successful product managers need the approval of their teammates and company leaders in order to do well in their careers. Impact and great ideas alone (at least at most companies) won’t get you there. Are you seen as a leader? Do engineers want to be on your team? Do people want to give you more scope? You want people to be “Hell yes, this person is awesome” not “They hit their goals but I wouldn’t want to work with them.” I remember shipping a few super-impactful features (features that I proposed) that helped us blow out our quarterly goals, but a few key leaders within the org were not happy with the product. They felt these were bad for users, and not something we should have done. This ended up hurting my performance review (as it should have), and it taught me the lesson that perception matters heavily in the PM role. It’s easy to over-index here and focus *too* much on people liking you and doing everything leaders suggest. You don’t need 100% of people to love you, and part of your job is pushing back on bad ideas. To be honest, if 100% of people love you, you may not be pushing hard enough. I’d aim for 80% of people loving you, 5-10% feeling uneasy, and (occasionally) a few people being like WTF. People don’t need to be happy or agree with you all the time, but in general leaders and teammates need to feel good about how you’re operating and leading—and you need to deliver results more often than not. **Takeaway:** Relationships and perception matter. The PM role is weird and complicated, but I hope the above gives a clearer sense of what your company is looking for from you. As a final takeaway, here’s a handy guide to help you get a sense of whether you’re doing a good job as a PM:  ### 📚 Further study 1. [Ten jobs of a product manager](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/jobs-of-product-manager) 2. [14 habits of highly effective product managers](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/14-habits-of-highly-effective-product) 3. [A comprehensive survey of product management](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/product-management-survey) 4. [Becoming a senior product manager](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/senior-product-manager) 5. [Overcoming impostor syndrome](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/this-week-overcoming-impostor-syndrome) *Have a fulfilling and productive week*🙏 ## **🔥 Featured job opportunities** 1. **Squarespace:** [Senior Product Manager/Product Manager](https://pallet.xyz/job/84d30ce6-d293-4de6-a1bc-b9b7f0656440?n=Lenny%27s+Job+Board+&r=%2Flist%2Flennys-jobs%2Fjobs) (NYC) 2. **Piñata Farms:** [Senior Product Manager](https://pallet.xyz/job/9f90d5d9-288a-477d-b14b-8b4a9c589a87?n=Lenny%27s+Job+Board+&r=%2Flist%2Flennys-jobs%2Fjobs) (LA) 3. **Properly:** [Senior Product Manager](https://pallet.xyz/job/beefb83d-8775-4052-96e6-72d8f62ca3ef?n=Lenny%27s+Job+Board+&r=%2Flist%2Flennys-jobs%2Fjobs) (Toronto, Remote) 4. **Clearco**: [Product Manager - Capital Partnerships](https://pallet.xyz/job/82497ce0-6faa-4aa7-a321-86d525a23cd7?n=Lenny%27s+Job+Board+&r=%2Flist%2Flennys-jobs%2Fjobs) (Remote) 5. **Frame.io:** [Sr. Product Manager](https://pallet.xyz/job/4846ad99-c62d-4b4f-979a-a558342d6a68?n=Lenny%27s+Job+Board+&r=%2Flist%2Flennys-jobs%2Fjobs) (Remote) 6. **SnapStream Media**: [Product Manager](https://pallet.xyz/job/8bec1419-8512-4c77-b7a9-3351dfea8afe?n=Lenny%27s+Job+Board+&r=%2Flist%2Flennys-jobs%2Fjobs) (Remote) 7. **Gitpod**: [Product Manager](https://pallet.xyz/job/85a37e65-b9b3-4a93-acf6-e6a6d1f28fa4?n=Lenny%27s+Job+Board+&r=%2Flist%2Flennys-jobs%2Fjobs) (Remote) 8. **Shift**: [Senior Product Manager](https://pallet.xyz/job/2907defd-bb4b-4972-86d5-024eda23dcd6?n=Lenny%27s+Job+Board+&r=%2Flist%2Flennys-jobs%2Fjobs) (Remote) 9. **Postlight**: [Senior Product Manager](https://pallet.xyz/job/c205c9c1-b4e8-4a43-a538-adaa2bfe974d?n=Lenny%27s+Job+Board+&r=%2Flist%2Flennys-jobs%2Fjobs) (NYC, Remote) 10. **Noyo**: [VP of Product](https://pallet.xyz/job/7e49a835-3b73-4bc2-a397-feea3e8d3e80?n=Lenny%27s+Job+Board+&r=%2Flist%2Flennys-jobs%2Fjobs) (Remote) 11. **Polygence:**[Head of Product](https://pallet.xyz/job/55046525-1bd3-4901-8452-45fc1c643d82) (Palo Alto) 12. **Mage:** [Front-end engineer](https://pallet.xyz/job/d41acc31-b5fa-4e68-8c5a-7973c29ad712?n=Lenny%27s+Job+Board+&r=%2Flist%2Flennys-jobs%2Fjobs) (Santa Clara, CA) 13. **Pragli:** [Product Designer #1](https://pallet.xyz/job/75075700-7078-4664-a498-df280d166a9e?n=Lenny%27s+Job+Board+&r=%2Flist%2Flennys-jobs%2Fjobs) (Remote) *Browse many more open roles (or add your own) at [Lenny’s Job Board](https://lennysnewsletter.com/jobs).* ## **🧠 Inspiration for the week ahead** 1. **Read**: [The Power of Product Thinking](https://future.a16z.com/product-thinking/) by Julie Zhou 2. **Watch:** 💉😷 3. **Watch**: [Simone Biles, Mesmerizing in Slow Motion](https://kottke.org/21/06/simone-biles-mesmerizing-in-slow-motion) [Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmRHT4LdyMk) #### **How would you rate this week's newsletter? 🤔** [Great](https://t.sidekickopen82.com/s1t/c/5/f18dQhb0S7kF8cV_VXW1CdjwB59hl3kW7_k2847sD3qkVNxJHk1CX2ZcW2bzNJl8lkfc1101?te=W3R5hFj4cm2zwW4cQKtC3KcLnYW4hLZp03ZVbTxW1JB0ML1--tKxW20ZTw51-YpBFW1W_jBk1ZmvHBW21j9tt1-_j_TW1Vnkcj1V3fMvw1V21pC4Hp2&si=7000000001348012&pi=6174bab6-7009-4402-a497-3d6f867fbea1) • [Good](https://t.sidekickopen82.com/s1t/c/5/f18dQhb0S7kF8cV_VXW1CdjwB59hl3kW7_k2847sD3qkVNxJHk1CX2ZcW2bzNJl8lkfc1101?te=W3R5hFj4cm2zwW4cQKtC3KcLnYW4hLZp03ZVbTxW1JB0ML1--tKxW20ZTw51-YpBFW1W_jBk1ZmvHBW21j9tt1-_j_TW1Vnkcj1V3fMvw1V21pC4vX2&si=7000000001348012&pi=6174bab6-7009-4402-a497-3d6f867fbea1) • [Meh](https://t.sidekickopen82.com/s1t/c/5/f18dQhb0S7kF8cV_VXW1CdjwB59hl3kW7_k2847sD3qkVNxJHk1CX2ZcW2bzNJl8lkfc1101?te=W3R5hFj4cm2zwW4cQKtC3KcLnYW4hLZp03ZVbTxW1JB0ML1--tKxW20ZTw51-YpBFW1W_jBk1ZmvHBW21j9tt1-_j_TW1Vnkcj1V3fMvw1V21pC4kr2&si=7000000001348012&pi=6174bab6-7009-4402-a497-3d6f867fbea1) **If you’re finding this newsletter valuable, consider sharing it with friends, or subscribing if you haven’t already.** Sincerely, Lenny 👋