What accomplishment in your product management career has brought you the highest level of satisfaction and joy? Can you narrate why?

B2B commerce is  highly assisted, w/ companies getting almost 100% of their orders via  fieldforce. At Jumbotail, we built an offering that was so compelling that  100% of our orders were unassisted and that's something I'm proud of.

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What aspect of product management did you struggle the most with? How did you overcome it?

PMs say no  to stakeholders, a lot. I struggled w/ doing it in an empathetic way. I've  improved a lot, and following are the key changes I made

   1. Make the person feel heard. Let them explain the idea, why it is  important etc. even if you're already aware.

   2. Explain your side of the story. What are the goals you're chasing,  initiatives you're working on and have an honest chat on if/how this fits in  the current roadmap.

   3. Partner is solving the problem – Explore no-tech solves/workarounds  etc.

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What's one common myth about product management that you find common among aspiring PMs?

You need to have a  tech background to break into PM. There are ample non-tech PMs who are quite  successful.

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What are some common pitfalls that product managers must be aware of?

PM is a very diverse  field and early stage PMs should spend time understanding the different  flavors of Product Mgmt. Tech. PM, Platform PM, Consumer PM, Program manager  vs product manager, PM in a product company vs a service company etc.

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If not product management, what career would you have picked? Are there any complimentary skillsets that you see between being a PM and your alternate choice?

Designer, creativity  being the common thread :)

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What is something about product management that you wish you knew when you started out?

There was  zero awareness of PM as a career path when  I started. We need to do more to increase awareness and understanding of this  role on engg. campuses.

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