You don’t need to be a well-run company to win: Lessons in product leadership & AI | Tamar Yehoshua

What are the key habits for career success in tech?

According to Tamar Yehoshua, certain habits and skills are essential for success in the tech industry. Here are some key takeaways:

Do a Great Job in Your Current Role

Tamar emphasizes focusing on excelling in your current position. Being ambitious is good, but your future opportunities rely on how well you perform now. Here are some habits she highlights:

• Knock It Out of the Park: Whether your job feels simple or challenging, exceed expectations.
• Understand Your Product Deeply: No matter your role, knowing your product inside and out is crucial for making informed decisions.
• Master Technical Skills: Staying updated with the latest technology and understanding metrics is fundamental.

Cultivate a Broad Skill Set

Product managers, in particular, need to have a wide range of knowledge:

• Stay Technical: Technical proficiency is a table stake in tech roles, especially for product managers.
• Track Metrics: Understanding metrics deeply can help you measure success and make data-driven decisions.

Prioritize Impact

It's important not just to hit goals but to make a significant impact. This approach often stands out more in the long run.

By integrating these habits into your work routine, you'll be well on your way to career success in tech. For more in-depth advice on handling life's challenges and balancing learning with impact, explore our in-depth articles on new roles and challenges.

How can understanding people and motivations boost your career?

Understanding people's motivations is crucial for succeeding in both product development and team management. It empowers you to build products that resonate with users and foster strong, cohesive teams.

Tamar Yehoshua highlights the significance of this skill. "When you're building products, you have to understand why does somebody want to use your product? What problem are they solving?" she says. Knowing what motivates users helps in creating features that genuinely add value to their lives.

Additionally, Tamar shares an invaluable lesson imparted by her father, a psychiatrist, on observing people. "Afterwards, in the car ride back, he would always give his perspective of analyzing what happened at the event" she recalls. This insight taught her to read the room and understand the subtleties of people's reactions and motivations, a skill indispensable for effective leadership.

When managing teams, asking questions to understand what drives each member is paramount. "You have to be able to read people, ask lots of questions to understand them," Tamar advises. This approach helps in aligning individual goals with team objectives, fostering a more engaged and productive work environment.

To delve deeper into effective team management and communication, this guide highlights the impact of understanding organizational culture and norms.

By integrating these strategies, you can significantly boost your career through better human-centric interactions and product developments.

Why is impact more important than just hitting goals?

Driving impact goes beyond merely achieving set goals. According to Tamar Yehoshua, the true mark of success is how your work moves the business forward.

Key Points:

• Focus on Business Growth: It's not just about completing tasks but about whether these tasks drive the business ahead. For instance, Tamar's proposal to disband a team because it wasn't benefiting the company highlighted her commitment to impact over mere task completion.
• Enable Organizational Productivity: Enhancing productivity across the organization is more valuable than individual achievements. Tamar recalls successfully pushing her team to be more productive at Slack, helping scale the company significantly.
• Strategic Alterations for Impact: Even saying no can be impactful. Tamar’s decision to turn down her first management role, arguing the team was unnecessary, ultimately led her company to re-organize more effectively.

Impactful work gets recognized and often leads to better opportunities and growth within a world-class team. Prioritize actions that make a difference.

How to navigate chaos in fast-growing tech companies?

Navigating chaos in a fast-growing tech company requires a strategic approach. Here are some strategies Tamar Yehoshua suggests:

1. Prioritize What Matters Most: Focus on product-market fit and ensure customers are clamoring for your product. Product-market fit solves many problems, but without it, your efforts may be in vain.

2. Maintain Consistency in Leadership: Effective leaders have consistent principles. This makes it easier for the team to operate. For example, Jeff Bezos’s principles on customer obsession provided clear guidance at Amazon.

3. Know What to Ignore: Not everything broken matters. Identify what issues are critical to your growth and address them first. Non-essential problems can temporarily take a backseat.

4. Adapt to Growth Phases: As your company scales, the level of chaos and the tolerance for it changes. What works for a 100-person company may not for a 10,000-person one. Align strategies with your growth stage.

5. Create a Strong Engineering Partnership: Ensure you have a trustworthy engineering partner who shares your vision and will tackle the most pressing issues diligently, enhancing productivity across the board.

By focusing on these strategies, you can effectively deal with chaos and stay on the path to success in hyper-growth environments.

For further insights into effective team management and cutting through organizational bureaucracy, explore how founders cut through bureaucracy.

Is career planning necessary for success?

Tamar Yehoshua believes a rigid career plan isn't necessary for success. She emphasizes being open to opportunities and focusing on continuous learning.

While some people may benefit from having a structured plan, Tamar advocates for a more flexible approach. Her advice includes the following points:

• Follow Great People: Seek out leaders and colleagues who are the best at what they do. Learning from talented individuals can propel your career forward.
• Embrace Learning Opportunities: Instead of sticking to a rigid plan, be open to new experiences and roles that offer growth and learning.
• Focus on Skills: Acquiring skills and knowledge is more important than following a predetermined path. Skills can’t be taken away even if the company fails.
• Be Patient: Early career decisions often seem monumental, but Tamar advises the younger generation not to stress too much. Over time, the right opportunities will present themselves.

Tamar highlights that she never had a five-year plan. This approach allowed her to seize unexpected opportunities and learn from the best in the industry. She emphasizes, "You follow people where you're going to learn the most and go step-by-step".

To her, the key is not where you start but how you leverage the journey for maximum growth and learning.

What can we learn from tech leaders like Jeff Bezos and Stewart Butterfield?

Tamar Yehoshua has gleaned crucial insights from working closely with formidable tech leaders like Jeff Bezos and Stewart Butterfield. Their unique approaches to leadership and product management offer valuable lessons for anyone aiming for career success in tech.

Key Lessons from Jeff Bezos

• Consistency and Principles: Bezos's unwavering principles made it easier for Tamar to operate within Amazon. She recalls, "You knew what he cared about because he always had these principles." This consistency provided clear guidance for the team.
• Customer Obsession: Everything had to be customer-driven. Bezos’s focus on relevance for the customer ensured that the team aligned with Amazon’s core mission.
• Long-Term Vision: Bezos emphasized long-term planning over short-term gains. "It takes seven years to build a product," he would say, highlighting the importance of patience and persistence.

Key Lessons from Stewart Butterfield

• Prototyping Power: Butterfield valued hands-on experimentation. Tamar notes, "Stuart would always say, 'I can’t tell you if this is going to work. I have to feel it.'" This approach ensured that only well-tested ideas made it to final production.
• Detailed Orientation: Butterfield married long-term vision with meticulous detail. He had a master plan for Slack that remained constant, guiding every strategic decision from 2014 onwards.

By integrating these lessons into your own work, you can significantly enhance your leadership abilities and product management skills.

For more insights on effective leadership and driving impact in tech roles, check out how effective management drives results.

How to build strong cross-functional relationships in tech?

Building robust cross-functional relationships is essential for tech success. Tamar Yehoshua offers several strategies to achieve this:

1. Align Roles and Responsibilities

   • Ensure clear understanding of each partner's duties. Misalignment can create confusion and inefficiencies.

2. Foster Mutual Respect

   • Respect and trust are key. Always uphold your partner's decisions and communicate openly about disagreements.

3. Spend Quality Time Together

   • Regular, dedicated time fosters better understanding and teamwork. Use structured meetings and informal chats.

4. Use Effective Communication Tools

   • Employ tools like OKRs and Slack channels for updates, documentation, and async reviews. This ensures everyone stays informed without endless meetings.

5. Divide and Conquer

   • Clearly delineate areas of ownership. This prevents overlaps and ensures accountability. Focus on what's urgent and important.

Building strong cross-functional relationships isn’t just about formal structures but also knowing how to influence decision-makers. For further insights into this, check out how to enhance engineer collaboration within your organization.

How will AI change the role of product managers?

AI is set to revolutionize product management, according to Tamar Yehoshua's insights. The advancements in AI tools promise to enhance productivity and blur the lines between traditional roles.

Key Points:

• Enhanced Productivity: AI tools like ChatGPT and Figma AI enable product managers to build prototypes quickly and efficiently. This capability allows PMs to focus more on strategic decisions rather than routine tasks.

• Blurring Role Lines: The use of AI will enable PMs, designers, and engineers to perform overlapping functions. For instance, product managers might create initial design mock-ups, while designers might be involved in strategic product planning.

• Automation of Routine Tasks: AI can take over repetitive tasks like updating JIRA tickets and summarizing news articles. This not only saves time but also ensures that PMs can focus on creativity and innovation. Tamar created prompts in Glean to get status updates on features, freeing her from reading multiple channels.

• Creative Differentiation: Despite the automation, AI tools necessitate creative problem-solving and strategic thinking. Good PMs will still be needed to interpret AI outputs and make impactful decisions.

By leveraging AI tools effectively, product managers can significantly boost their productivity and strategically guide their teams.

For additional insights on how AI impacts tech roles and business models, see our detailed discussion on the potential impact of AI on internet services.