30 Comments
Dec 22, 2020Liked by Lenny Rachitsky

Nice work! My big takeaway is the one truth for me which is business impact/customer value always wins. That in the end is the job. Good design, luck, timing, market forces, great data strategy, execution are all components. Whatever you build has to move the needle, even if it's not in pure revenue terms, it has to be valued externally. The magical "So what?".

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Jul 21, 2023Liked by Lenny Rachitsky

Great article/survey. Any chance of running a refresh?

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Dec 24, 2020Liked by Lenny Rachitsky

Hi Lenny. Very interesting perspective. Can you share the questions you asked to determine the responses? Was it just a 1 to 10 scale on the particular attribute?

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Dec 24, 2020Liked by Lenny Rachitsky

Very insightful. At right on time for our Company. Thanks! :)

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Great article! Would love to see how this develops over time.

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Dec 23, 2020Liked by Lenny Rachitsky

I have one correction note - the CEOs also need to do impeccable stakeholder management. Actually, even more than the PMs.

It is a myth that the higher you are in the ladder, the fewer stakeholders you need to bring with you onboard. It is actually the opposite - as a CEO, you have the most stakeholder management work in the company.

Great newsletter this week! I really enjoyed it, and I shared it with friends :-)

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Dec 23, 2020Liked by Lenny Rachitsky

My biggest takeaway was that "keeping stakeholders on board" is almost as important as showing significant business impact when it comes to rising in the ranks at the company.

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Very interesting insights! Thank you so much for your efforts. Though I don't think I saw the survey form, some thoughts came up reading this:

(1) These are less than 2 responses per company. So the entire data point will only reflect what these two think. Heavily dependent?

(2) In Skills Most Valued, both hard and soft skills are weighed similarly? As a result, empathy comes among the last two :(

(3) How can so many say Hit Goals is NOT a criterion to get promoted?

(4) Interesting to see some of us PMs think we run the show and other non-PMs think we don't ;)

(5) Suprised to see Tesla more on Hands than Head!

Thanks again for this!

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Surprised that empathy is rated so low (unless people are including it in product sense). Low empathy = low user engagement and adoption.

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thank you for the amazing results

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I suspect the age of the company has something to do with the influence a PM has. Companies that have been around for awhile may have been late to adopt a product mindset.

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AnonymousJan 4, 2021

In the "Getting promoted" section, how to interpret "Make their manager happy"? Feels like it's asking the question again: _how_ do you make your manager happy? (shipping a great product, hitting goals, etc.) Or is it to be taken as needing to play a game of politics?

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Interesting compilation. thank you for sharing.

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Great insights! Thank you for conducting the survey and sharing the results with us! One question I have is how comparable the results from different companies are? For example, if a PM of Company X rated Strategic Thinking as the top among all the options and gave it a very high numeric rating, while another PM of Company Y rated Strategic Thinking as the least important among all the options and gave it a very low numeric rating, it doesn't mean PMs in Company X do Strategic Thinking more often or more seriously. This is one caveat I have found. Still, this is very helpful!

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Such great insights here! I’m wondering if you are open to sharing the survey out to smaller companies where less formality/structure/process exists? This could be a great tool for stakeholders to use in order to align on expectations and priorities for their PM, especially when expanding into that area for the first time.

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Nice one. That's quite insightful.

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