Jackie Bavaro on getting better at product strategy, what exactly is strategy, PM pitfalls to avoid, advancing your career, getting into management, and much more

Lenny's Podcast: Product | Growth | Career

Lenny Rachitsky

Technology, Business, Entrepreneurship

5 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 16 June 2022

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Jackie Bavaro is the author of the best-selling books Cracking the PM Interview and Cracking the PM Career. She was most recently at Asana, where she joined as its first product manager and later became the head of product. Earlier in her career, Jackie was a PM at Google and Microsoft, where she worked on high-impact products such as Google Search and Microsoft SharePoint.

In this episode, we cover:

1. How did Jackie become head of product at Asana? Start writing the best-selling PM books on interviews and the career ladder?

2. How and why to find a product coach.

3. What are the downsides of being a manager? How do you know if you want to go into management?

4. Can you stay an IC vs. becoming a manager?

5. What is “strategy”? What are the 3 components of a strategy?

6. What makes a good/bad strategy?

7. What are some ways to get better at strategy?

8. When should you start to invest in building your strategy muscle?

9. What are signs that your strategy is off?

10. What’s Jackie’s best piece of career advice?

11. Why is it smart to join a big company?

12. What are some of the most common mistakes PMs make early in their career?

13. What is the one thing Jackie thinks every PM should do regardless of their level?

Where to find Jackie:

- Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackiebo

- Books: Cracking the PM Interview and Cracking the PM Career: https://amzn.to/3If6X9U

- Medium: https://jackiebo.medium.com

References:

- Jackie’s book rec: Getting Things Done, by David Allen

- Current favorite app, Paprika: https://www.paprikaapp.com

- Favorite Twitter: https://twitter.com/hels

- PEARL framework: https://jackiebo.medium.com/interview-tips-for-senior-pms-2424f7b7c967

- Eigenquestions: https://coda.io/@shishir/eigenquestions-the-art-of-framing-problems

Thank you to our amazing sponsors:

* Flatfile: www.flatfile.com/lenny

* Amplitude: www.amplitude.com

* PostHog: www.posthog.com/lenny

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	If you're're a
0:05.0	have almost surely read and been influenced by Jackie Bavaro, and if you haven't,
0:10.0	you're in for a treat.
0:11.0	Jackie is behind two of the most important books in the PM Canon,
0:14.6	cracking the PM interview and cracking the PM career.
0:17.4	And she's also one of the smartest people I know
0:19.8	on the essential skill of product strategy.
0:22.4	In our chat, we go deep into all the ways that
0:24.6	you can become better at developing your own product strategy including what is
0:28.8	strategy, what makes a good and bad strategy, and how to very tactically put together a strategy.
0:34.8	We also chat about what she's learned going from the first PM at a sonna to head a product at
0:38.8	a sona, plus a ton of tactical advice on getting to senior PM and then to manage her PMs.
0:44.4	A big thank you to Jackie for sharing her wisdom with us.
0:47.6	This episode is brought to you by flat file.
0:53.0	Think the last time we imported a spreadsheet.
0:55.0	Did it work the first time?
0:57.0	Chances are it did not.
0:58.0	You probably got some weird error.
1:00.0	Had to try a bunch of things like removing the blank title rows above your column headers or
1:04.4	googling how to save with UTF aid encoding.
1:07.0	What even is UTF?
1:08.0	Who cares?
	...

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