[Notes] Shreyas's weekend seminar on PM getting things done

06 Apr 2023

https://twitter.com/nurijanian

Shreyas Doshi: PM Habits for getting sh*t done (and more)

• think first principles, and be creative!
• Unblocking https://twitter.com/nurijanian/status/1642950649204670465

Habits

1. Summaries meeting into decisions made,actions required, owners assigned Challenge : Takes more than action, intent Hack: Feed Rewards to your Primary Motivator Challenge: Resistance/fear to habit 1 Hack: CHoosing words correctly, always recap action/owners/decisions whether lead/participate, Practise more

2. Prep for meetings in daily early routine

• Questions: What is outcome? What are challenges? How will it be concuqred?

• First, understand the collaborative situation you’re in. Meta-framework: 4 types of cross-team collaboration dynamics
• Inter-team conflict arises when:
  • There is low alignment between goals & incentives between teams, or
  • There is interpersonal conflict between leaders or key players between teams (compatibility of personal values and working styles)
• Low-low: frustrated
  • The worst-case scenario
• High-high: integrated
  • The best-case scenario
• High-low: pragmatic
  • Most important and trickiest
  • Conflict arises due to how work gets done and who gets credit
  • Focus on clarity of expectations and emphasize evidence-based decisions
  • Always communicate progress jointly
• Low-high: empathetic
  • Show early progress to management to create greater goals alignment, to influence them to support on better aligning goals moving forward
  • Avoid giving in for relationship reasons when it might compromise broader company outcome

3.Create Routine Of day divided in slot

• Morning Routine
  • Calendar > to-do list
  • Limit meetings and cluster meeting times
  • At the end of the work day, plan next day
  • Fit the next day’s tasks in calendar
  • Plan next week on Friday PM
• DeepWork Block
• Continuous Meeting
• Break+Email/Slack/Ops
• High Leverage meeting
• Emails/Slac/Ops
• Continuous Meeting
• WrapUp, Next Day planning Or Weekly Plannnig

1. Schedule initiated/influenced meetings around imposed meetings
   • 3 types of meetings:
     • Imposed on you
     • Influenced by you
     • Initiated by you

6.Break, Slack/Email Blocks 7.deep work blocks

• Make use of no-meeting days
• More hours of deep work
• Mute Slack notifications during your deep work blocks
• Change your working location for your deep work

8.High leverage meetings Shreyas absolutely swears by

• Weekly Sales sync
• 2:2s with EM and PM of each team
• Monthly Execution Review
• Business Growth Meeting
• Monthly career chat with direct reports
• Product deep-dives
• Pre-mortems for big launches
• New team member intro bubble tea party

9️.Plan for next day, before signing off for the day

• Block time off on your calendar!

10.Monthly planning my big 3 priorities

• Rule spend 60-80% of your time in the month on big items

11.Fight resistance with first drafts

12.Writing and sending interview notes

• 45-min interviews + 15-min debrief
• Google Doc template for interview notes
  • During the interview, fill in raw notes
  • Score each response as you’re going through the interview
  • Summary: call out pros and cons of the candidate
  • Overall verdict about the candidate

13.Debrief meetings after important Exec meetings

• Right after the important meeting
• Core team and stakeholders who participated in the meeting
• Structure to meeting
• Benefits:
  • Brings everyone on the same page
  • Improves morale

1. Running your own performance cycle
   • Google Form survey or during 1-1
   • Share with 3-5 colleagues whose feedback really matters to you
   • Works particularly well with a colleague you find more challenging to work with

15.Building a great network,strategically

• Ask trusted colleagues to name 5 people they know are really great in your company
• Reach out to them with a friendly message
• Not everyone will be able to respond, but usually 4/5 of them will