Gangsta Vision: Recipes to break into product management leadership

By Dilip Ramachandran

Do you want to tap into your highest potential and break into senior leadership?

In Gangsta Vision, Dilip Ramachandran explains that reaching the top requires more than hard work and a focus on metrics. With insights from various experts in the product management field, <

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: May 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9798885041812

Book preview

Gangsta Vision

Gangsta Vision

Recipes to Break Into Product Management Leadership

By Dilip Ramachandran

New Degree Press

Copyright © 2022 Dilip Ramachandran

All rights reserved.

Gangsta Vision

Recipes to Break Into Product Management Leadership

ISBN

979-8-88504-074-7 Paperback

979-8-88504-702-9 Kindle Ebook

979-8-88504-181-2 Ebook

This book is dedicated to my mummy.Diloo, try try try again, until you succeed.

–Nirmala Ramachandran

1954-2020

Table of Contents

Author’s Note

Chapter 1. Introduction

Part 1. Preparation

Chapter 2. Charting Your Own Course

Chapter 3. History Shapes the Future

Chapter 4. Addressing Your Gaps

Chapter 5. Ingredients Matter

Chapter 6. Story of Your Value

Chapter 7. Evolving your Craft

Part 2. Presentation

Chapter 8. Anyone Can Lead

Chapter 9. Is Senior Leadership for You?

Chapter 10. Unleash Yourself into Senior Leadership

Chapter 11. Unlearning & Relearning

Chapter 12. Senior Leadership Superpowers

Chapter 13. True Ownership

Part 3. Promotion

Chapter 14. Finding Purpose

Chapter 15. Changing Your Purpose

Chapter 16. Gangsta Vision

Chapter 17. Lifting Others

Chapter 18. Create Opportunities as an xceptional Senior Leader

Acknowledgments

Appendix

Author’s Note

Despite all our technological innovations, writing continues to be the medium offering the best structure and synthesis of profound thought. Therefore, writing can truly captivate, inspire, and motivate the reader.

About twenty years ago, I started writing a book.

For those who knew me in high school, I was hyper-focused on my grades. I had no time for friendships or anything fun. I was shooting for A-plus. I had to get to America.

Once I arrived, I struggled to answer many questions. Why do you believe in that? What’s your purpose? "What is your opinion on

?" I didn’t know how to process that. I had spent most of my time with my nose in mathematics and physics books.

I reflected a lot. I molted many times. There was an internal battle of who I was and who I wanted to be, and it was mired in the expectations of my conservative society and upbringing. I remember sitting in my dorm, thinking for hours straight, still trying to answer those questions.

I poured a lot of those thoughts into a book. At first, they were only a few pages of handwritten notes. But fueled by a summer internship in Princeton while living in Philadelphia, I used my daily three-hour commute to grow those few notes into an entire diary.

It was a neat black leather-bound diary, one that fit in the left pocket of a tweed professor jacket I had acquired on eBay.

As I always did, I took a nap on the last leg of the journey from Princeton to Philly. That fateful evening in the summer of 2005, I woke up to find my jacket was stolen together with my book. That terrified me. Up to that point, I had not thought through the ramifications of my personal thoughts being out there in the open for everyone to read.

I wouldn’t write again—or at least I thought I wouldn’t.

It is funny (or obvious) to think that someone like me would gravitate to product management, a field with a lot of writing. Sure, I justified it as technical, nonpersonal, for work writing. It felt good to write, and I occasionally flirted with blogging my personal thoughts, but for the most part I avoided sharing personal feelings or opinions as that fear from the past still lingered.

Therefore, when my friend, Ahmed Siddiqui, suggested I should write a book, my first thought was hell no.

But I just had to cross this hurdle.

I have had so many life experiences and stories that needed to be shared. There are teachings here that could help others avoid the pitfalls I experienced in my career. My journey to find my purpose was long and stretched out. I could be making a difference sharing what I know now.

At several points of the book journey, I felt those pangs of fear from the past. I doubted if I should go forward and share my thoughts with the world.

But each time I decided to commit and take another step forward. Through my interviews, I got stories from others as well. All this content was assembled to create the first rough draft of this book, and this is when the concept of Gangsta Vision emerged.

I knew then this book had to see the light of day, and through all my difficulties, I persevered.

Everyone has these hidden stories; these struggles. I got my second chance to try to tell a story.

I’m grateful I found myself in a network of family, friends, writers, and editors who encouraged and helped me write and refine this book. By doing this work, I overcame a fear and closed a lingering chapter of my own life.

I hope this personal story gives you the power to unleash yourself and do something you’ve always wanted to do.

Introduction

You’re the stupidest PM I have ever worked with, said the CEO.

I was shocked to hear such a thing, as this wasn’t my first rodeo.

Nobody would use this product! he continued.

The room with over fifteen people took turns staring at each of us.

I pushed back, But I’ve talked with the customers. This is what they want.

The CEO was now furious. The customers are wrong! They don’t know anything!

This went back and forth for what seemed like several minutes. Then there was silence.

I could feel the drops of sweat on my warm forehead from the heated debate. As I cooled down, I became aware of my surroundings.

These weekly product meetings were always like this. I was advised by a peer on the product team to listen, nod, and execute on the feedback provided.

Follow the formula and you will be fine, the peer had said.

But somehow, in that moment, I had forgotten that advice. I was having a public debate with the CEO. This would not go well.

After the meeting was over, I was asked to pack up and leave for the day.

At that exact moment I had no idea what went wrong. After some reflection over the next few days, I concluded I had hit yet another ceiling in my product management career.

The only question was: will I continue to operate in a mediocre fashion, or will I break out of this cycle?

These are the kind of stories we will explore in this book to help you navigate the common challenges product managers face when they attempt to break into senior leadership.

What would you have done if you were in this position?

You see, this didn’t happen early in my career. I was already ten years in and at the director level.

That was particularly painful. You will see in this book that throughout my life I have faced challenges seemingly impossible to break through. I have been discouraged again and again that I wouldn’t amount to anything.

As far as I can remember, my mother had an infinite amount of belief in me and what I was capable of.

It has had a profound impact on how I show up as a husband, father, brother, friend, and leader.

My foundation of grit and perseverance comes from there, but a situation like this taught me resilience, while powerful, doesn’t cut it.

As an experienced product manager, I paid close attention to the metrics. By working with real customers, I crafted, with an obsessive amount of detail, a solution I believed would impress the product team and the CEO.

Despite all this hard work and planning and following all the rules of product management, I still fell flat.

It was a reminder that it doesn’t matter how hard you’re working; if you are not meeting your leaders’ expectations, you’re missing something big about your role and how you write the story of your value.

To solve this, you need to go back to your basics and understand your strengths and gaps and create a plan to address them. After that, you need to decide if senior leadership is for you or not. If it is, you will need to invest in the skills and superpowers to transition to senior leadership. Finally, you have to dig deeper into purpose and commit to it.

This was how I broke through.

If I can break through, you can too.

***

If you are an individual interested in product management and see a long-term future in it or want to pivot into product management and avoid the same mistakes many individuals before you made, you’ve come to the right place.

The book in your hand is the one I wish I’d had. In this book you will find a collection of inspirational stories and tactical tools for the product manager who has hit their ceiling and is moving laterally from company to company. This book is for product managers who have felt left behind, thinking there’s some information others have that they don’t.

Product managers tend to fall into the trap of having a metrics-driven mindset.

Here’s the belief: grow the number of users, get them engaged, innovate user experiences to increase conversion, drive revenue, and you will make it into senior leadership.

There’s no ambiguity with a metrics-driven mindset. You either achieve them or you don’t. With this view of the world, a product manager can get comfort, because you know what to expect, and so you know what to put in.

To provide some contrast for how to make decisions without metrics, consider this question: What is the ideal color for a bicycle rack? These are questions impossible to answer. There’s a lot of ambiguity here because picking a color can be highly subjective. Product designers are challenged with these problems every day.

As an analytical person myself, I have benefited deeply from the comfort of leading my communication with metrics.

By evangelizing a metrics mindset, we have created a game by which only the most efficient and effective win; a sort of perfectly designed meritocracy system.

In other words, the system creates mercenary product managers—individual contributors competing fiercely with each other. These mercenary product managers work toward outcomes and get fair merit for the effort they put in.

I’ll bring you in on a secret.

This meritocracy system is a fallacy.

This system keeps you in a hamster wheel. Most likely you won’t even notice it, as I experienced, for years.

Nobody will tell you that to truly find success, you need to shift to a mindset of True Ownership.

You must act like a missionary, let down your guard, inspire, and collaborate rather than compete with your peers.

Product management is going through a renaissance and it’s about heart: starting with empathy for all the stakeholders, internal and external, combined with a commitment to solve challenging problems.

By reading this book, you’re going to figure out if senior leadership is for you. If it is, I’ll guide you to put your best foot forward to counterbalance the information asymmetry.

I will guide you to fill your gaps using a Career Map and crafting a Master Plan to find your true purpose.

By authentically aligning your personal mission with that of the company, and the agency arising from that act, you will be catapulted into senior leadership.

Once you go through the path I have laid out for you, filled with specific tools, tactics, and supporting stories, you will achieve Gangsta Vision and evangelize it to lift others up.

This is my commitment to you.

I’m really excited to take you along this journey as you unlock your true potential.

How to Read This Book

I put a lot of thought into the design and the layout of the book, especially the division and order of the chapters.

The book is broken into three parts and each part is broken into several chapters.

Of all the chapters, six of them have a very specific teachings in mind to prepare you for the content in the following chapters. To make these teachings fun, and easy to relate to, I start that teaching with a real recipe I’ve made.

The recipes are dedicated to my mother who passed away two years ago. In recognition of her life, I have inspired myself to do more by giving back.

The rest of the chapters focus on specific frameworks or tools you can use to achieve your Gangsta Vision.

Most of the text is designed to provoke thought leadership with stories. I certainly do not want to make you feel I have all the answers. I expect you to figure out the path best for you.

That said, I understand you may feel stuck and wonder how to apply my advice tactically. In each chapter, I have included Going Gangsta callouts with the intention of providing a tip, a tactic, or an exercise that might inspire you to get started.

This is an immediate and tangible benefit from using this book.

Even though the book was primarily written for experienced product managers, I wanted the book to be accessible to product managers from all skill levels, including those new to product, as well as those who had recently made it into senior leadership.

The first part of the book is called PREPARATION. This part sets up the background for the rest of the book and introduces the Career Map to help you identify if you have hit a ceiling. My goal is for it to allow any product manager, even those new to product, to have a crucial conversation with themself. You will emerge understanding what you really want in product management and what part of your craft requires some evolving.

The second part of the book is called PRESENTATION. Here I provide experienced product managers a set of proven techniques to unlock the superpowers required for senior leadership. If that’s why you came to this book, then you can start here. You can also choose to go back to the first part if you feel you might need a little more help in building a stronger foundation.

The third and last part of the book is called PROMOTION. It is here where I introduce the Master Plan to identify and align purpose and to assemble all the components for Gangsta Vision. I’ve also included a chapter for new senior leaders to scale to the next level of growth by evangelizing the Gangsta Vision Movement.

My expectation is you will continue to refer to the different sections of the book as you evolve in your career or take on a new job or challenge. I have written stories in the chapters so they can be effective on their own.

You can read each chapter on its own, and you can move back and forth if you prefer not to follow the chronology I’ve set out for you. I’m merely providing you the tools. You get to pick the way you want to use them.

Throughout the book I have fictionalized the names of select companies and people to respect their privacy. You’re not going to know who they are. Focus on the teachings rather than trying to figure out who they could be.

Part I

Preparation

2

Charting Your Own Course

Appa’s Turkey Meatballs

Ingredients

• One pound lean ground turkey

• Grated hard cheese (e.g., Fontina)

• Two cups finely chopped cremini or baby bella mushrooms

• Two cups coarsely chopped spinach

• Five cloves of garlic, minced

• One half onion, finely chopped

• One egg, beaten

• Two cups Panko breadcrumbs

• Cilantro

• One teaspoon mustard seeds

• One teaspoon Sumac (spice)

• Your favorite pasta sauce

• Salt and pepper to taste

• Vitamix or similar blender

• Olive oil

Instructions

1. In a skillet, add a tablespoon of oil and fry the garlic with the mustard seeds.

2. When golden brown, add the mushrooms and onion. Once the mushrooms look a bit rubbery, add the spinach and turn off the flame when it shrinks.

3. Add this mixture into the Vitamix and blend on high for about thirty seconds.

4. In a large bowl, add the ground turkey, sumac, cheese, and the blended mixture together with the egg and mix it well with your hands. Add the panko and start to form meatballs (use a drop of olive oil on your hand so it doesn’t stick).

5. Use the same skillet with a very thin layer of olive oil at high heat to fry the meatballs. Once hot, turn down to medium and place all the meatballs close to each other but not touching. Cover for about five to seven minutes.

6. Check the meatballs. If they’re nice and brown, flip and cover. Another five to seven minutes.

7. Once both sides look good, turn the heat down to low, and add your pasta sauce. For the next ten minutes, occasionally