A framework for PM skill development | Vikrama Dhiman (Gojek)

Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:00):
Your name has come up more times than almost any other product person when I ask people for their favorite product leaders in Asia.

Vikrama Dhiman (00:00:07):
I created a career growth framework for product managers, which comprises of three things. What you produce, what you bring to the table, and what's your operating model.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:18):
Your advice is early in your career, focus on just getting stuff out and done.

Vikrama Dhiman (00:00:22):
Can you show me your last PRD? Can you show me the last product note that you sent? Can you show me the product strategy doc? You must have that impact through the artifacts that you work on.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:32):
I'm curious what you found most impedes people's career growth.

Vikrama Dhiman (00:00:37):
How you view change, whether you are focusing on things you control, and third is how you see yourself. The moment you are able to correct those stories, you may be back on the growth path again.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:52):
Today, my guest is Vikrama Dhiman. Vikrama heads all things product at Gojek, including product management, design, program management, research and insights with teams across India, Singapore and Indonesia. He has previously worked at companies like Directi, Airtel, MakeMyTrip and WizIQ and is among the most well-known product leaders in Asia. When I asked people who their favorite product leader is in Asia, Vikrama's name has come up almost more than anyone else's. We chat about how to move into product management, how to be a great product manager, how product managers often shoot themselves in the foot, and so much more. With that, I bring you Vikrama Dhiman after a short word from our sponsors. And if you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes and it helps the podcast tremendously.

(00:01:45):
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(00:03:56):
Vikrama, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.

Vikrama Dhiman (00:04:00):
Thank you for inviting me, Lenny. I'm very excited to be here.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:04:03):
So as you know and hopefully as listeners know, I'm on this quest to meet the most insightful product leaders from all over the world and your name has come up more times than almost any other product person when I ask people for their favorite product leaders in Asia. And you're also the third guest from Gojek, so there's definitely something in the water over there and I want to talk about that. To just dive right in, you have a very strong reputation for building incredibly strong product talent and also design talent, and also helping people transition from other roles into product management, which a lot of people listening to this podcast dream to do. So I'm going to ask a bunch of questions around this area. How does that sound?

Vikrama Dhiman (00:04:47):
Sounds good.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:04:48):
Okay. First question is just when you think back to the people that have done best in the product management role and have had a rapid career rise, what are some of the most common traits or behaviors or habits that you find in these people?

Vikrama Dhiman (00:05:05):
Over the last decade and a half, I've had the opportunity to work with some really strong product managers, learn from strong product managers, and some of them have had rapid career growth. When I was younger and I was starting off, I used to think it's all about the product. If you've got a really cool product to work on, your growth's guaranteed. And if you got really a product which no one cares about or a stream which no one cares about, then your growth is going to be slightly slower. But as I started seeing more and more product managers at their craft, I saw that working on a cool product area is not the only thing. In fact, sometimes some product managers would come back and complain that despite their product doing really well, they've not really grown.

(00:05:51):
And while some other product managers whose product didn't have the impact really grew. And as I started looking at it and as I started making notes, as I started talking to other product leaders, what I discovered was that the really strong product managers who were also growing in their careers did some things differently. And based on that, I created a career growth framework for product managers, which comprises of three things, and I call it three W's. So what you produce, what you bring to the table, and what's your operating model? The really strong product managers are good at usually two of the three things. The ones who rise and when they are rising, they are performing well on all the three access. So if you would like, let's talk a little bit more about each one of these W's.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:06:49):
Yeah, I would love to. I love that you put the word what at the top and that makes it the three W's, which is clever because I find even if the acronym is not necessary, it's really helpful to help people remember so I totally respect what you did there. So the three is what you produce, what you bring to the table and what your operating model is. Is that right?

Vikrama Dhiman (00:07:09):
Yes, absolute.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:07:09):
Okay, cool. Yeah, let's talk about these.

Vikrama Dhiman (00:07:11):
So what you produce, a lot of people index on the impact while and they start thinking about goals, they start thinking about direction and they start thinking about strategy. While it is important to know at what stage of the career you are and what kind of a product that you are working on, the very first thing that anyone, when you're starting off, produces is outputs, okay? The output can be launching a product, it can be analyzing and running an experiment, and it could even be just being a part of the team and contributing to a go-to market strategy. So focus on that output significantly. As you get comfortable with output and you start getting comfortable with working with different stakeholders, you start controlling what outputs are necessary, which is when you move to the outcomes. Outcomes are product areas, goals that you can own and or collaborate with other stakeholders on.

(00:08:14):
And when you start figuring out which outcomes are necessary, that is when you move to the leadership and directional areas. The mistake that I see a lot of product managers make is they start operating in either output or outcomes. And when you are transitioning to outcomes, it's very important that you continue to still hone your craft on outputs. For instance, do you just give up on the go-to-market strategy or do you start making product nodes which are then picked up by marketing people and are able to be used to create that go-to-market strategy? You always, always have to have the output and outcome even when you're moving up the so-called career management ladder. So that is very, very critical that as you are producing, even when you are at the senior most levels, don't forget your IC roots, don't forget the IC component. And sometimes it is necessary to just pull up your sleeves and go back and keep working on those things. That also gives you a lot of creds with others in the team as well.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:09:20):
So highlighting one insight here is that a lot of advice you hear about how to do well in your career, which you pointed out at the beginning here, is it's not just not immediately drive impact. That's not necessarily what you need to obsess over, which is actually what I recommend to people is just find ways to have impact. So this is really interesting. Your advice is early in your career, focus on just getting stuff out and done. Don't so obsess with the impact. Can you talk more about just what, when you say output, what are you describing there? Is it just ship products and be helpful and produce something?

Vikrama Dhiman (00:09:51):
Absolutely. So outputs is shipping products, but it also comes in smaller things. For instance, if you are sourcing content for your homepage, what are the different avenues that you can source content from? What is the easiest to source? What is the most difficult to source? Just ranking it all in that order goes a long way. And one of the product managers actually did that yesterday and I went, wow, it just made my life so much simpler. And not just my life but so many other people's lives so much simpler, and we were able to take that specific output and use it as part of our overall strategy. If that PM would have obsessed about the overall content strategy, overall how we are going to do it versus just how we are going to be sourcing it, they would have indexed on something bigger and maybe would have not even been able to make that impact. But now, they were able to show something which was a small part, which was an output, but it fell into the overall outcome.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:10:54):
The way I think about what you're describing, which I actually 100% agree with, is when you're starting out in your careers, execution is where you need to deliver. People just want you to get stuff done when you're just starting out. It's not like help us define our strategy and vision for the next three years. We just have stuff we need done. Can you help us get it done? Well, yes. And then essentially the advice is as you get more senior, you'll have more opportunity to think about strategy and what to build versus just how to build it and actually execute on it.

Vikrama Dhiman (00:11:25):
Absolutely. So focus on outputs at the start of your careers and don't forget outputs even when you grow in your career.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:11:33):
So along those lines, just to close the thread on this idea, it's still helpful if you work on something that does have impact that matters, right? How important is that? And you said that you've seen successful product managers work on things that aren't as impactful and still do really well, but I guess would your advice be tried [inaudible 00:11:52] be in a place that is going to drive more impact versus it's not actually that important in the early career?

Vikrama Dhiman (00:11:58):
So I'll give you my example. In one of my previous roles, there were two product areas that were important for the organization. My product area ended up being the center and focus of the organization, yet the product manager who was chosen to lead the area when it became big wasn't me. It was someone else. At that time, I really felt very bad that okay, why did that happen? But now when I look back, I can see why that happened because that product manager was so much better at the overall craft of output, yet when they were focusing on outcome, we're not forgetting the output as well. So they were just better at me on launching products, they were better at me on working with design, in producing design artwork, and they were definitely better than me in running the experiments as well.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:12:49):
I love that. Yeah, basically when you're just starting out, just execute well, execute smoothly, ship things on time. I'm going to say a few things, but I'm curious what else comes to mind here of just what does good output look like? Is it do things that are helpful to your team and manager, ship things on time, bug-free, have a clean road map, everyone's aligned behind, [inaudible 00:13:11] deadlines, things like that. I guess what else along those lines should people be like, "Okay, here's what I should be doing to have good outputs?"

Vikrama Dhiman (00:13:16):
Some of the things that I think are useful. So first, what's output? Output is something which is very tangibly defined, which doesn't take too much of your time, effort, and energy to visualize and think and strategize over and you are able to quickly get moving on. Go and ask your product leader, go and ask other leaders on what are the areas they are blocked on. Sometimes they will be blocked on, "Hey, I need to prepare this brief for this particular summit", "I need to prepare this particular slide for a leadership review", "I need to prepare a review, I need to prepare a review which has to be done with the legal." You can volunteer and definitely own and deliver the first drafts of those even if the final draft is not something that you own. That's a simple example of an output, which I feel a lot of people miss because they want to be focusing on the bigger strategic pieces.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:14:16):
It's basically be useful. That's the way I always like to talk about this, just like your job as a PM is be useful, make your team more effective, help your company be more successful. Just find ways to be useful to everyone around you.

Vikrama Dhiman (00:14:27):
Absolutely. And be useful in doing the small things which make an impact and also contribute to your learning versus being useful in areas which you think the mini CEO should be working on.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:14:44):
Right. There's all this talk about being an empowered product manager, building empowered product teams. I think there's an important nuance. When you're just starting out, you haven't earned the right to inform strategy and vision people. Why would people follow you at this point? We just need to get stuff done, so that comes over time.

Vikrama Dhiman (00:15:01):
Absolutely. And it's not just when you are starting off or when you are young. Even with if you are senior and you're starting off with a new team, even if you're starting with a new company, you need to have that mindset. And sometimes you will not know the best. And we'll talk more about how to, what is your operating model, which is how you work with others. It's a very, very important thing for you to know that you are one part of the cog wheel, you're not the entire wheel yourself. And a lot of the folklore around product managers can make you confused, especially when you're starting off in your career.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:15:40):
I love it. Okay, let's keep going. Number two.

Vikrama Dhiman (00:15:43):
Number two is what you bring to the table. Now, I think how I describe that is what is your impact on impact? So the first access is impact, but you also need to have an impact on impact. And this is what I had missed a lot in my early career, that you put the coolest product areas, your product area is successful and that automatically guarantees your growth. It doesn't. You have to also show that yes, you were a useful contributor to having that particular impact. The simplest thing on this is that is your PRD quality good enough? Are you writing that the draft notes that go and circulate to the care teams, to the marketing teams and so on? Are you making sure that you are deriving from the strategy that has been shaped or you're constantly just pushing back on the strategy? Similarly, you also how you are drafting the north stars, how you are working on the experiments, how you're working on the data, how you're working on the metrics.

(00:16:43):
All these things take time, effort, and energy. And I know there is some literature and there are some operating models where people are working only at strategy levels while all of these execution of these artifacts is being done by some other people. I don't think, especially when you are starting off, that's a very, very good thing. Even when you are mid-senior, I don't think that's a very, very good thing. You have to have to be able to produce these artifacts which are product artifacts. Even if there are people in strategy creating their artifacts, even if design is coming up with a design brief, you need to have a cohesive product strategy or product PRD and work backwards from PRD and product knows yourself. These things are important to show you are progressing on four pillars, which is data and metrics, design and research, technology skills, and strategy.

(00:17:41):
Product managers constantly are evaluated on this when you interview, but you also have to demonstrate these on the jobs. And the best way to demonstrate these is through the artifacts, through the notes that you are sending. So you must have that impact to impact through the artifacts that you work on. For a lot of product managers, when I ask, "Hey, I was working on this very impactful area. I'm not able to have the impact on my career, what is missing?" And when I go and ask, "Can you show me your last PRD? Can you show me the last product note that you sent? Can you show me the product strategy doc that you have or collaborated on? Can you show me the brief that you sent to the design team on the problems and the ranking of those problems?" Usually, you'll find something or the other missing.

(00:18:31):
In cases that those are bad, you will find that the pre-iteration planning, pre-sprint plannings are not running properly. You will find that the Jira storyboards are very empty and there's just a title in the subject and nothing gets described and so on. So you'll miss all these pieces. So these are the things which you bring to the table and it's very, very important that you work on these aspects as well. Finally, we have what's your operating model, which I feel is the most important thing which you have to have to focus if you are going from mid-senior to senior level. This is essentially about communication, collaboration, organizational skills and community skills.

(00:19:16):
And across product managers, again, because of the folklore of mini CEO and others, I see that a lot of people get carried away in the way they operate as product managers with other stakeholders. There are three tenets that I define in working well as a product manager with others. Number one is raise difficult issues without being difficult to work with. Bring out important topics without drawing importance to yourself. And finally, you are in charge of getting the decisions made and not making all the decisions yourself. I think as long as you follow these three tenets, you will have a successful relationship across stakeholders. These three tenets are easy to say, but they become very, very hard to embody and display on a day-to-day basis. But this is essentially going to be your struggle no matter at what level of product management you are operating at in your career or within your company.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:20:28):
First of all, can you just repeat them? Because I think this is... Essentially, it's like a mantra that PMs can think back to of, "Am I doing these things?"

Vikrama Dhiman (00:20:36):
So the three things which are very important for product managers to work with others and other stakeholders are raise difficult issues without being difficult to work with, bring out important topics without drawing importance to yourself, and be able to get decisions made without having to make all the decisions yourself.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:21:02):
I like this list a lot. It reminds me, there's this product leader I worked with who their team got pushed to do a bunch of stupid stuff. And he realized later that, "Hey, it's actually my job to have pushed back on doing this stuff." He was the head of product for this business unit and he realized, "Oh, I see. That's actually what I should be doing now that I'm in this role." And you sometimes forget that one, you have that influence. And two, that's something you should be doing.

Vikrama Dhiman (00:21:33):
Absolutely, absolutely. It's always within your control and it's always the things that are within your control that you should be controlling rather than focusing on the things that are not within your control and obsessing about those.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:21:49):
I'm so aligned with the way you think about all these things. Coming back to the second actually, just to give people something they can do with this trait. So the way I think about what you described, and correct me if I'm misinterpreting it, is there's a detail-oriented-ness, high quality-ness to the way that you should be crafting all the documents/artifacts you're creating, your one-pagers/PRDs, your roadmaps, your strategy docs, just like they should be really high quality. So along those lines, if you're an ICPM trying to get better at this stuff, how have you found is the best way to level up in these things? Is it working with your manager and getting feedback? Is it peers? What helps somebody get better at the quality and yeah, the quality of these documents?

Vikrama Dhiman (00:22:34):
What you bring to the table is one of the most misunderstood attributes and aspects of product management. On one end, you could get around and say, "Here is my PRD, here is my JIRA board, here are my stories, here is my pre-sprint planning or pre-iteration planning document" and go. It's not just about the spread and the width of the things that you're doing, but it's also about the depth of those things as well. Some product managers, what they bring to the table is arguments, what they bring to the table are debates, what they bring to the table are pushbacks, while others are able to channelize the questions, channelize the inputs, channelize the direction and convert that into strategic choices which can then shape discussions, which can then shape direction. Be the latter and you will rise faster in your career.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:23:26):
So you have these three buckets of what you produce, what you bring to the table, and what your operating model is, the three W's. So let try to summarize and see what I missed and then we'll move on. So one is just focus on executing, getting things done that are helpful to your team, your company, your manager, and focus on just getting stuff out. Not so much in necessarily in strategy. Even when you're a manager and a leader and a VP, just like you're still responsible for producing things, not just telling people and being wise. Two, what you bring to the table, my takeaway here is produce high quality artifacts that raise the bar.

(00:24:05):
The way I think about this is as a PM, you want to have this aura of I got this. People put something on your plate, you want to feel like Lenny's got this, I'm not going to have to worry. It's going to be forgotten and I know it's going to be done well. And then the third piece is this idea of an operating model. Basically just make sure decisions are being made. It's not about you that you're pushing back on bad ideas. Is there anything else I missed before we move on?

Vikrama Dhiman (00:24:31):
No. I think the art of pushback is another important factor because if you're pushing back a lot and the way you are pushing back matters a lot as well. Just don't be someone who's seen as an obstacle and a hindrance and as someone who's just very difficult to work with, but rather see as someone who's able to actually add value to whatever your leader, your stakeholders, your product area demands and you are able to advance the product and the direction and execution forward. Once you do that, I think keeping that as the intent and ensuring that your team is getting unblocked and not getting to do work on anything which is stupid or is likely to be changed, then you've really got it.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:25:23):
Do you have any advice for how to pushback in a way, the way you describe it is not to be difficult to work with or without seeking importance? I guess is there words or phrases or approaches you found are effective for pushing back against ideas that you disagree with?

Vikrama Dhiman (00:25:38):
What I've seen that people who do pushback very successfully and are still considered not difficult to work with, they are also able to bring the tempo of the conversation to a more logical space from an emotional space. I think that's such a useful skill and I sometimes am guilty of operating on a slightly emotional note, which is useful. Sometimes you need a war cry, you need a high pitch, you need execution on war footing. All that is fine, but it's only fine in some cases. In other cases, it's always very important that you're able to bring it down to the logical space so that a logical and a little more equal footing of the discussion can happen. And a lot of this is something that leaders need to ensure is happening, but product managers and product leaders who are working with executives who are able to bring this tempo down and bring it to a little more logical space will also do far better in their careers and they'll also have a lot more rapid career growth.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:26:55):
So let's talk about the flip side of rapid career growth, which is career growth that stalls. And I'm curious what you've found most impedes people's career growth. What do PMs do that shoot themselves in the foot and slow their career? Any pitfalls do you find are important to try to watch out for?

Vikrama Dhiman (00:27:15):
I think part of it is on a lot of us in product leadership space. We've not done a very good job in defining rubrics, growth frameworks and so on. But even in places where growth frameworks exist, like three W's, what I've seen is that clean mindset shifts and changes can enable faster growth, but those mindset and changes also can hinder your growth, right? So the first thing is whether you are focusing on things you control or whether you're focusing on things that are beyond your control. Second, what's your relationship with change? And third is how you see yourself. The third is very, very powerful and we'll talk about that as well. The first is what you control. If you drew an access of what you control and what you cannot control, as you're starting your career, most of the work that you're doing is in what you control, right?

(00:28:15):
You are very obsessed with feedback, you're very obsessed with, "Okay, can I do this?" "Can I do this?" "Okay, I'll probably not do this. I'll probably do this", and so on. You're not worrying about the overall corporate strategy, you're not looking at what the competitors are doing, what is their market cap and all those things. You're focused a lot on your craft, you're focused on a lot on your output and you're focused on how you are growing. As you start becoming mid-senior, I see the conversation shifts from what can I do, how am I learning, how am I growing, to why is the organization not doing this for me? Why can that stakeholder not change this thing about themselves? Why do I not get to work on projects like this? Things which start going outside your control. And it is very, very important that you keep your focus no matter what stage of career you get into what you can control.

(00:29:16):
And again, it's easy to say that everything in universe should be in your control. It doesn't happen like that, but a large number of things that impact your career are within your control. And go back to the three W's that we spoke about, what you work on, what you produce or what do you bring to the table, and what's your operating model? And there is tons to do on data, tons to do on technology, tons to do on communication, collaboration, design and research, strategy and community. And you can spend years and years and years crafting those things. Focus on those things, growth will happen at every single stage. The second aspect of it is your relationship with change. Again, when you are younger, when you're starting off, rate of change is crazy. You are growing almost every six months. You are picking up skills and experimentation, you're picking up skills in how to analyze.

(00:30:15):
You're picking up skills in how to work with different kind of stakeholders. And since the rate of change of your skills is high, your rate of growth is also high. Again, as you start becoming mid-senior, I start seeing conversations on, "Okay, maybe I should not do that. Maybe I should not take on this product. I don't know what it means for my career. I don't know what it means for my growth" and so on. So your rate of change slows down. So it's very important that as you get to mid-senior level, you are constantly checking on what you can do to keep increasing your rate of change. And one of the simplest things that you can do is if you think you are four on data, figure out who. And you may be four on data out of five in data. Within your organization, start benchmarking yourself with the best in the industry.

(00:31:13):
You'll automatically see that your scale drops and as your scale drops, you start seeing what you need to improve and do. If you start seeing that on communication and collaboration, you're reaching four out of five within the PMR, start mapping yourself to other stakeholders in other functions. Again, your score will fall in your eyes and you will start figuring out what are the things that you can do as well. So keep your focus on rate of change and rate of growth will automatically take care of itself. Sometimes it also involves changing your team or even changing your company, but those should be the last results. There are significant things that you can do within that as well. One of the final things that I see which limits you, especially as you start growing in your career and you reach mid-senior levels is how you see yourself.

(00:32:04):
I see a lot of product... And I've been guilty of that. When I see that a lot of product managers, that's included me at some stage, doing these things, people will come back and say, "Oh, I am a very high agency PM" or, "I'm a very collaborative PM." Earlier on, I used to think that okay, I need to give this kind of work to these product managers. I need to fit them with these kind of team, these kind of work areas, these kind of opportunities. But then I started understanding these things are not just signaling, they are also anti-signaling. They are like, "Oh, I'm high agency. So it's sometimes okay if I'm little brash, if I cut corners somewhere, if I sometimes come across as a little rude to some people" and so on, right?

(00:32:55):
Similarly, if I'm seen as a hyper-collaborative person, so it's okay if sometimes I'm not very decisive, if I'm not moving fast and so on because I'm this kind of a PM. So it's very important that you check for what are the stories that you're telling yourself because those stories are defining you at a basic level, which is then very hard to correct through frameworks and structures. So figure out what is the story that you are telling yourself. If you are not able to figure that out, talk to the people you trust so that they can tell you that as well, and then correct those stories. And the moment you are able to correct those stories, you may be back on the growth path again.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:33:39):
Wow, there's so much meat and wisdom in what you just shared. I want to go in so many different directions. Maybe just to follow on this last thread, did you go through something like that yourself where you have this sense of yourself that hindered you? Okay, awesome. You're nodding your head, if you're not on YouTube. Can you share that?

Vikrama Dhiman (00:33:57):
Yeah. So I'll give an example of when I joined Gojek. The very first thing that I learned in my career was SQL and Oracle. And I was very proud of the fact that my data skills are awesome and I know several frameworks and I know several tools and so on. And when I joined Gojek and I saw one of your guests, Crystal, and I saw the work that she was doing and her team was doing and I just immediately was like, "Yeah, no, this is not... I'm nowhere near", right? And similarly, I also thought that my communication skills are really good and my product strategy skills are very good, but then I worked with people like Dito and people like Sidu who was so good at their craft that it challenged me to see that okay, what is it that I am missing? What is it that I am doing wrong?

(00:34:57):
And it auto-calibrated me in my eyes on where it was, but that also created a hunger in me that this is what I need to fix. And I immediately corrected my assessment of myself that I'm not the strongest product manager on data. I'm not the one who knows all the strategy pieces or even strategy frameworks or how to bring everything to a strategy point of view or communicate it from an effective perspective. And then I started framing I'm still in a learning phase. When I see that I'm not in that phase now, I try and make myself humble by interacting with people who are far smarter than me on different scale or reading different books, or watching podcasts like yourselves. And that keeps you grounded on the fact that okay, you are always learning. And I also found that seeing yourself as someone who's a learner is an enabling story to tell yourself, okay?

(00:35:58):
It may not be the most exciting story, it may not be the most memorable story about yourself, but it is definitely one of the enabling stories as well. Similarly, I think one other thing that I used to say about myself was more that I'm very high agency PM. But as I started working more in Southeast Asia, I learned that mindfulness is also very, very important, that not every team, not every culture will work with you in a very hyper aggressive style. But you still need to get the work done. And I'm still learning on that and therefore, I've started using a word, I don't want to be a high agency person, I want to be a mindful agency person. And so these terms are very important because these are the stories that you keep telling yourself and these also then start shaping your behavior. I do feel that I have a lot to do, I have a lot to learn on these skills, but these things definitely keep you grounded and you keep coming back to the learning phase again.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:37:09):
It's interesting that when you saw Crystal being incredibly good at working with data, you just realized, "Hey, maybe I'm actually not very good at this." And your reaction wasn't, "God damn it, I'm really screwed and this is really depressing me", it's, "No, instead I'm going to try to get better at this." And that reminds me some of the feedback I get with this podcast, those people are like, "Man, these people are so good, I'm never going to be this good. It discourages me from thinking I will ever be super successful in this career." Clearly, you have a different approach. Do you have advice or guidance to folks that are sometimes discouraged seeing people being so incredible and helping them actually continue to level up in this rate of change you talked about versus just like, "Nope, I'm never going to be that good?"

Vikrama Dhiman (00:37:54):
I think as product managers it becomes difficult because a lot of your growth is being determined because of feedback of others. And because product management is so ambiguous and still not defined, the stakeholders can also give feedback on variety of dimensions. Some of them may not even be important enough to give feedback on, but they are important enough for them and so therefore, they give you feedback. And therefore, you have to shape that feedback in. But you also have to consider that there are these eight access that we spoke about, the data access, the design and research access, the technology access, the strategy access, communication access, collaboration access, organizational skills access, and the community access. You need to channelize feedback into okay, is this an area that you are targeting for growth or not?

(00:38:51):
And one of the most important things that I learned was that when I joined Gojek or even earlier, there would be so many different areas that I needed to improve on and still need to improve on. You can't improve on every single area. That's what overwhelms you. You need to pick which is the area which is the maximum leverage for you and improve on that particular aspect and then move on to the next area, then move on to the next area and so on. Obviously, if you are floundering in something, if you're really negative in something, then you fix that first because that will give you the highest leverage. But if you are picking up data and design and strategy and technology all at the same time, that's when you'll overwhelm you.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:39:33):
So to summarize the advice there is one, be actually very open to feedback you're getting. It's easy to say that, it's hard to actually listen to people criticizing you and act on it. So I think that's an important takeaway here is just actually, feedback is a gift and actually understand that and try to act on it. I have a great interview with Jules Walter who's a PM at Google now, and he has this awesome quote about how whenever people give him hard feedback, it's like internally he's just melting, but that's externally he's like, "Thank you so much for that feedback, I really appreciate it. It's very valuable."

(00:40:10):
And so that's a good way to get people to keep giving feedback. Okay. And then the other piece of advice you just shared there is pick a focus area. Like say you're getting all this feedback, your strategy isn't amazing, your PRDs aren't great, just find one thing to focus on. And I don't know, do you try to do somewhat quarter? Somewhat year? Do you have a heuristic of how long to spend on one thing?

Vikrama Dhiman (00:40:31):
So different skills take different time and how you are progressing also depends a lot as well. For skills which are softer in nature like communication and collaboration and community, those are skills that you will work on all your life. You'll never achieve anywhere near two or five on five on those ever. There'll always be something that you will miss, there will always be a new context, there'll always be a new set of stakeholders, new company cultures that you have to adapt to. For others, you have to see that what gives you the maximum leverage in your career. When you're starting off, my recommendation is that you pick between data and tech one, and definitely one on design and research and strategy.

(00:41:18):
So usually, that's the combo that I recommend. My advice is if you're coming from design and research background, then you pick data or tech. If you're coming from a data or tech background, then you pick design and research, and that gives you the maximum leverage because that's a skill that you will necessarily not have developed over the years. Once you've demonstrated on two of these three, between data, tech and design and research, then you start focusing on strategy. We've had great success at Gojek in transitioning a lot of product managers, especially in Indonesia, using this framework. And it's produced a lot of good product managers for us.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:41:59):
Well, let's actually follow that thread. That's really interesting. And so the approach is you have this access of skillsets and you pick, for this person moving from say customer service to product, here's the two things you need to focus on. Can you talk more about that?

Vikrama Dhiman (00:42:15):
Yeah. For instance, we recently had two PMs, one who came from a growth background. This is actually [inaudible 00:42:24]'s team. And one from a research background. And with both of them, we use very different tactics. So we gave one of finding driver redesign, which was very much a very design-focused product, but we still had them leverage their data skills because we were able to create a PRD with incredible amount of data on exactly what different segments of customers we're doing. And that then we worked with designers on what the designs and the framework for that will be. And even now, Lenny, if you will come and see our finding driver redesign next time you are in Asia, it's a piece of art. And if you would see that that was worked on by a product manager who actually came from a growth and data background, that makes it even more special.

(00:43:13):
Similarly, the PM who transitioned from research, I kept giving feedback on technology and data skills are the ones that we need to check. And I need to hear from engineers that yes, they're able to work with her very strongly. And once she was able to do that, she's recently turned a very heated question on one of the features that we were doing into a full-blown solution with designs, with trade-offs and everything, and able to now convert it into a question for leadership on how we should be approaching this particular product and direction. So I think that's proven successful as well. Similarly, there's another person who took risk who was originally from research and again, worked a lot on our products, including our enterprise product. And she's doing an amazing job as well. Again, going through that path of okay, these are the things that you need to leverage.

(00:44:14):
The only watch-out is that it doesn't work out always. In some cases, some PMs will pick these things up fast, and it also makes a big difference if you are transitioning when you are slightly younger in your career. If you are already senior in a function and then you are transitioning, sometimes it can take a lot of time in transitioning and picking up those skills. But it's definitely doable if you get a very strong product leader working with you who's able to shape those skills for you. So it's sometimes okay to go a little slow when you're transitioning so that you're able to go faster later rather than getting faster somewhere and then being stuck there for a while.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:45:00):
This episode is brought to you by Coda, and I mean that literally. I use Coda every day to help me plan each episode of this very podcast. It's where I keep my content calendar, my guest research, and also the questions that I plan to ask each guest. Also, during the recording itself, I have a Coda page up to remind myself what I want to talk about. Coda is an all-in-one platform that combines the best of documents, spreadsheets, and apps to help you and your team get more done. Now is the perfect time to get started with Coda, especially its extensive planning capabilities. With Coda, you can stay aligned and ship faster by managing your planning cycles in one location. You can set and measure OKRs with full visibility across teams and stakeholders. You can map dependencies, create progress visualizations, and identify risk areas. Plus, you can access hundreds of pressure-tested templates for everything from roadmap strategy to final decision-making to PRDs.

(00:45:56):
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(00:46:29):
Something that you mentioned earlier that I wanted to come back to is this confusion about what the PM role is and how that trips people up in being successful in the role and continuing to thrive in the role. You mentioned this to me offline too, that this is just something you deal with a lot, just this frustration of what the hell is this job? What am I actually responsible for? What am I not? What do you find is helpful in helping people work through that, get past that, not make that a big blocker in their career, not knowing exactly what the PM role is?

Vikrama Dhiman (00:46:56):
I think we've been in technology product for several decades now, but we are still figuring out what an exact definition of product management is. And even the strongest definitions are slightly principled and philosophical in nature, they're not very concrete, and that also means that every and different technology companies have gone through different journeys and they've defined the roles very, very differently. And even within a very large company, you will see that different teams, different divisions are approaching the roles very, very differently as well.

(00:47:34):
And on top of that, what that does is that not only internally the product managers are figuring this out, their managers, their leaders are figuring these things out for them, but the other stakeholders who have to work with these product managers are also confused and they don't know what to expect. And the number one question I get from stakeholders is, is a product manager expected to do this? Because they also don't know, okay, is this expected from a product manager or not? And my general answer to that is, if this is something which is blocking the progress on the product, then yes, the product manager should work on that.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:48:09):
Love that.

Vikrama Dhiman (00:48:09):
But that works if the product managers have had some training and they have had some training in working with different stakeholders and they have had something on the job. What I've figured out is that there are certain functions and there are certain disciplines which you can't define, but you can only become better at with practice. For instance, what is an actor or what is a dancer? Right? So these are things that you will get better at as you become skilled at it. And earlier, these things used to be looked at as something which is very artistic, only the people who are talented or only specific kind of people can do it. But now, each one of those has become [inaudible 00:48:57] and frameworks as well. So there are courses on filmmaking, there are courses on acting, there are courses on dancing and so on. And similarly, product management is that space as well.

(00:49:08):
So you have to understand there's an art to it and there's a science to it, but you can use the science to figure out the art. So that's the philosophical side of it. The second side of it is what we spoke about earlier that instead of figuring out what is product management, figure out what's your contribution, what's your output and figure out are you contributing on these access on data, on design, on technology and on strategy. And one of my favorite things is that if you created these four circles of strategy, of technology, of design and of data, and you created a product management circle which encircles each one of these, so you are the only discipline, which is the co-collaborator for all of these disciplines and tying all these things out.

(00:49:59):
So it's not about you standing alone, it's you always collaborating and pairing with someone else. But you are the only one who's pairing with everyone else and therefore, you have that unique insight which no one else in the team will have. That role can be played by someone else, it doesn't necessarily need to be called a product manager. But if you are being called a product manager, you figure out the [inaudible 00:50:24] the time piece that you are. And when you are added to the team, you must dream the team's overall contribution, overall energy and overall output up and not down.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:50:37):
I love that. Something I always tell people is the PM doesn't necessarily have the magical skills other team members don't have, it's that they don't also have another job. Engineers may do a great job at being the PM, they just also have to build and code. And they don't have time to do all the things that a PM has to do, and a designer is in the same way, a researcher or data person. And so oftentimes, that's just like there's this person that has the time to do all these glue, work things between teams. And the great PMs also are very good at these skills that help you do these things, but it doesn't mean other people can't do them.

Vikrama Dhiman (00:51:19):
You see yourself as playing a role and not your title and not your function, and that just clarifies a lot of things for people. And different people will play different roles. And depending on the kind of a PM you are, are you in a specific domain or you are slightly generalist, the role that you will be playing in different teams can be different and the variety of roles that you can play makes you a better product manager.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:51:47):
I love that. You've mentioned these four access attributes of great product managers, overall product managers. Let's just spend a little time here. So you say basically the things you need to be doing and good at, data, design/research technology, strategy, and then you also mentioned collaboration and communication. Maybe you're-

Vikrama Dhiman (00:52:08):
Yeah, organizational skills and community. I think those are very, very important because one of the things and one of the things which one of the product managers works with me continues to say, and I really plus on that a lot, is that product manager is the all community enabler in the team, in the organization. And that community is the software aspect which ties everyone together towards a common mission of delivering an output. And that I think is a very, very important goal in today's context, especially for teams which are becoming more remote or teams where people are not co-located or they're distributed. That community aspect becomes a very, very important part that product managers need to focus on and bring and channelize as well.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:53:05):
So let's just quickly describe each of these attributes. I imagine people might be thinking, "Okay, what should I get better at as a PM?" And this is an awesome list. Each company has their own career ladders and attributes and things like that, but not a lot of companies don't. So I think for people that are trying to figure out where do I need to get better, I think this is a really cool list. Can you just maybe just a sentence explanation of each of these attributes and skillsets that a PM needs?

Vikrama Dhiman (00:53:31):
So each one of those skills, like the most growth ladders, what they will do, is they will have say for data, they will have level one, exhibits these traits. Level two, exhibits this trait. Level three, exhibits this trait. Level four and level five and so on. That's how they'll describe it. But five is absolute ninja level data quality, like you could probably do a data startup of your own.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:53:55):
Like Crystal basically?

Vikrama Dhiman (00:53:57):
Crystal. And level zero is someone who cannot even basically define the basic metrics for this particular product and won't be able to figure out is this particular thing impacting orders or users or revenue. And so you'll really not be able to figure even that piece out. Similarly, on design and research, for product managers, we focus a lot more on problems and are you able to identify problems from a user's perspective. That's at level zero. And level five will be somebody who's able to define the user problems but is also able to tie them to business roles as well. So that makes it the holistic. Similarly, on technology, it's one of the skills which is relatively easier to define where you don't have any tech understanding. If somebody asked you what is HTTP or API or internet and you'll be like, "Okay, I don't know what it is."

(00:54:55):
And while on the other end, you are able to have deep debates and could probably write technology design documents yourself as well. I think sometimes people get confused between data science. And in different organizations, I see data science bucketed either in data or in technology. Either is fine as long as you are clear on what your organization's framework is. Similarly then, there is strategy. Strategy is I think another area in product management which gets very confusing because there is obviously corporate strategy, there is business strategy, there's pricing strategy, there's strategy everywhere. Product strategy for me is where you are able to define that while somebody defines that this is the mountain that you're going to climb, but okay, how are you going to climb that mountain is basically the product strategy piece.

(00:55:47):
So you are not in charge of okay, are you focused on growth? Are you focused on revenue? Are you focused on profitability? That's someone's choice. Are you going to pick this country? Are you going to pick that country? But once that is picked, what are the user segments that you're going to focus on? What are the needs of those user segments? How are we going to figure out what the right product for them will be? What is the order in which we are going to work on that? That whole piece of product strategy is with the product managers. And again, in the first case, you are basically going to rely on everyone to tell you, do this, do this, do this. In second and in the level five cases, you are able to articulate a very coherent product strategy at a broad level as well.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:56:33):
Amazing, thanks for sharing that. I think for people that are trying to craft career ladder for product managers, this could help inform the way they think about this. By the way, when we mentioned Crystal, for folks that have no idea who we're talking about, she was a early head of growth at Gojek back in the day. She was a previous guest on the podcast. I always forget how to pronounce her last name exactly, but I think it's Widjaja, Crystal Widjaja.

Vikrama Dhiman (00:56:33):
Widjaja.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:56:54):
Widjaja? Okay, okay. Great. Going in a different direction, we're going to move to contrarian corner. I'm curious if there's anything that you believe that other people wouldn't agree with or generally just don't believe?

Vikrama Dhiman (00:57:12):
I used to think intent is the most important thing, right? And when I was starting off, that used to be the advice that as long as your intent is right, even if some of your words are not landing, even if some of the comms are not landing, that will work out. What I've seen is that it's not enough. Your actions, your behavior, and the way you communicate, the way you collaborate, that also has to communicate and show who you are as well. So intent is not enough. And that's a thing which I think a lot of people in my age group just don't get, but people who are slightly starting off their career, it resonates well with them. Second thing I think where I feel that it's become, I don't know, is it contrarian or it's become politically incorrect, is that you still need to put in the effort and our number of hours is effort.

(00:58:23):
And I think that's one thing which has become very politically incorrect to say over the years when I was younger, it was the norm that yes, you will have to put in the effort, you will have to put in the hours to grow and improve your skills. And it's not even about your growth in the company, it's just your own growth. You have to spend the time, effort, and energy into growing. I think a lot of that is getting lost in the debates between complete workaholism and just being not very serious about your growth at all. So I think those are the two that I find myself having to explain myself again and again and why I feel this way.

Lenny Rachitsky (00:59:14):
I completely agree with that. I find a hugely strong correlation between hours you put into the work you do and success. And I think there's been a return to okay, working hard is really important and you shouldn't be afraid of promoting working really hard. So we've actually gone through everything that I wanted to ask you. Before we get to our very exciting lightning round, is there anything else you wanted to share or is there anything you want to leave listeners with?

Vikrama Dhiman (00:59:41):
No, I think it has been great talking to. I hope it was useful to people. I've tried to keep it real, but also in takeaway format. And if there are any questions that you have that I feel I have not answered, I'm happy to answer them.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:00:01):
Okay, amazing. Well, we'll have people post in the comments if there's anything else they would love to ask you. With that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready?

Vikrama Dhiman (01:00:12):
Yes.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:00:14):
First question, what are two or three books that you've recommended most to other people?

Vikrama Dhiman (01:00:19):
The first book is a book which I feel is not quoted enough in product management community, is a book called Small Data by Martin Lindstrom. This is a person who was an advertiser or marketeer who would go and make campaigns for big brands in different countries, and so would have usually very short time to get the pulse of that space and design a campaign around it. And how he got insights very quickly from, and what are some of the takeaways that are there for people working in product space, not just product managers, but designers, researchers, strategy people, anyone really, I can't recommend that book more. And I've cited that book a lot internally.

(01:01:09):
The second book that I recommend is Adam Grant's Originals. I think it's a very important book. It changed a lot of things. When I spoke about that I was going through this crisis of, oh, I'm behind so many things after joining Gojek, Originals was one book that I read which really, really helped me think about my growth and how I see myself. And anyone who is stuck or anyone who feels they are superstars, they are the innovators of the century kind of a thing, it's a book that gives you a very good reality check. And the third book that I recommend is definitely Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow. I think especially the thinking slow part becomes very, very important piece as well.

(01:02:11):
And the reason why change is hard, the reason why feedback is hard is because we are used to thinking fast and we are not used to thinking slow. While if you actually think slow, you'll actually welcome change and growth.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:02:26):
Amazing. That book's come up a bunch actually recently on the podcast and it is always sitting under my laptop, holding up my laptop for these interviews. So I fully agree. Next question, do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show that you've really enjoyed?

Vikrama Dhiman (01:02:41):
I haven't seen a lot of movies recently, I think. But while I was on the flight back from Dubai, I saw Miss Congeniality again and I really, really enjoyed it. I thought it's a very fun movie, but also had a pretty good message. I know it's probably not the movie which anyone would want to cited, but I think it's sometimes good to just watch good entertainment.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:03:18):
That's quite the contrarian pick. Yeah, nobody has cited this movie, Miss Congeniality. This is a first, but I love it. It's way out there. I would never would've expected this.

Vikrama Dhiman (01:03:27):
In terms of TV shows, I think the show that I really go back to all the time is Schitt's Creek. I think it's a show which operates at so many different levels without taking itself that seriously, and it just lands. And especially as a product manager and as a leader who obsesses a lot about diversity, I think it did a fantastic job in showing different sides of motherhood, of the LGBTQIA communities, and also teenage girls figuring themselves out as well. I think it did a fantastic job.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:04:07):
Do you have a favorite interview question that you like to ask candidates when you're hiring product managers especially?

Vikrama Dhiman (01:04:13):
So it's not really one question, but what I like to do with them is to brainstorm choices on an actual product. And I'll typically pick up a product that they use most often and then I will be like, "Okay, what if this product were to do this? Then what do you think, it makes sense? Don't think it makes sense? What about this? Okay, how would it evolve in six months? What would happen in 12 months and so on?" I think it gives you a far better insight into how would it be on working with them on a real case. And you also keep... And what I like about it is that you can keep going back deeper into it and develop it together. So I typically try and pick product that I will also not have very strong opinions on so that it can become a two-way conversation.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:05:14):
What do you actually look for in an answer that tells you, "Okay, this candidate is amazing" versus flags that are like, "Hmm, maybe not?"

Vikrama Dhiman (01:05:21):
There are some obvious check marks that are they able to first abstract out and figure out what the overall goals for the product are, who the users for that product are, what would they be focusing on right now, whether this will align with that or not. And then a reason backwards that okay, maybe this may not work, but something on these lines. Are you obsessed about this feature or are you obsessed about okay, what this enables you to do? So if this is what it enables you to do, then are you okay with considering some other options and so on? So I think that's the direction which usually goes in the right way.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:06:04):
Is there a favorite product you've recently discovered that you really love?

Vikrama Dhiman (01:06:08):
So the reason why I've not watched a lot of drama or TV recently is because I've discovered these short video apps through Instagram and all of these apps, they dub Chinese TV serials into English or there will be subtitles in English and they are delivered in TikTok style two-minute videos. And it's a masterstroke in how the series are constructed. The first few episodes, which is like 10 episodes which is about 10 to 15 minutes, sets up the story in such a way that you have to unlock the next 10.

(01:06:47):
And these videos are quite expensive. They end up, one series takes more than the entire cost of monthly cost of Netflix to view. But it's just amazing how the whole product has been put, how all these products have been put together on unlocking the lamification aspects of it, the storytelling aspects of it, the content cutting part of it, and even the selection of the stories part of it. And what I'm told is that once I've learned about it, I've also been reading about it, they're actually companies which are able to give you tools of where you can construct this app yourself. And multiple people, two-people, three-people companies are churning these out and earning a lot of profit from it as well.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:07:41):
What is this called for people that want to check this out?

Vikrama Dhiman (01:07:43):
So you can start with DramaBox, you can start with [inaudible 01:07:47] Reels and so on. And there are multiple of these. And those of you who are very familiar with TikTok, you would've seen that some of these show you the first 10 episodes on TikTok and then they take you to their app to view the rest.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:08:01):
Wow. I love so many unusual contrarian pieces of advice here, I love it. Two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to, share with friends or family, either in work or in life?

Vikrama Dhiman (01:08:15):
For me, the most important thing has been that I started my career very late in tech. I was already 25. For the first several years, I worked in a small [inaudible 01:08:32] town in India. I came to Delhi only in 2013, and I joined Gojek in 2018. I think I've done reasonably well for myself. And it's never late to do or what do you want to do and what do you want to be. I think that's the thing that I really, really believe in and I also advise in. Especially as the world is aging and a lot of people are thinking about it, I would say that it's not too late ever. You can be and do what you want right now.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:09:17):
So good. It's not too late. I really, really like that advice. My wife is an illustrator designer. She has a book she put out called Am I Overthinking This? It's in my background somewhere there. And she has a chart that communicates that exact message in a really cute way, and we'll try to link to it in the show notes. Final question. You live in Singapore, I know you travel a lot. But if someone were to come to Singapore, is there a food that you think they need to try that's unique to Singapore?

Vikrama Dhiman (01:09:45):
Singapore? There are multiple. So Singapore is a melting pot of different cultures. There are four official languages. And the only thing I will advise is depending on your taste buds, whatever you want to do, you should go and visit a Hawker Center. And it's an amazing experience in itself. And those of you who've seen Crazy Rich Asians, the first thing they do when they land in Singapore is go to the Hawker Center. So it's an experience of its kind. And if you are looking for a specific recommendation, go to Lau Pa Sat. If you are a fan of Indian, you'll get that. If you're a fan of Malay cuisine, you'll get that. If you're a fan of Singaporean Chinese, you'll get that. So you pick what works for you.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:10:36):
I love that. Vikrama, I feel like we've produced both a lot of output and we're going to have really great outcomes from our conversation. Thank you so much for being here. Two final questions. Where can folks find you online if they want to reach out and follow-up on any of the stuff we talked about? And how can listeners be useful to you?

Vikrama Dhiman (01:10:53):
Thank you, Lenny. It's been great talking to you as well. Hopefully, this turns out well. You can reach out to me either on LinkedIn, Vikrama Dhiman, or you can reach out on Twitter. Twitter works better. And the listeners can be useful to me by, well, just sharing whatever they feel. And I continuously follow a lot of people, a lot of people who are not yet famous. Just tell me what your story is, just tell me what you are working on. And as long as you are passionate about it, I will try and find time. Maybe I cannot talk to everyone, but I'll definitely try and find to chat with you and listen out and support or connect you to someone who can help support you.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:11:44):
That's a very generous offer, I think a lot of people are going to take you up on that. Vikrama, thank you so much for being here.

Vikrama Dhiman (01:11:51):
Thank you so much, Lenny.

Lenny Rachitsky (01:11:53):
Bye, everyone.

(01:11:55):
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