Never sweat the small stuff.
And beware:
90% of content you’ll find online DOES sweat the small stuff. It focuses on questions like…
“Are you trimming your roadmap effectively?”
“How should you estimate tasks properly?”
“How to define a Product Owner v. Product Manager?”
But these are foundation things — at best. At worst, they are completely irrelevant to the core function of a Product Manager: Creating value for your user & capturing some of that value for the business in the form of profit.
These are the kind of things PMs just starting out need to learn.
However, if you want to go from PM to more senior roles?
Forget about those kind of things.
It’s small change.
Instead, sweat the big stuff.
You don’t have the time or resources to worry about - let alone solve - every problem in your product team and org.
And most of it doesn’t matter any way.
Sweating the big stuff means being able to answer things like…
What’s your product strategy? Is it real, or just written on a Google Doc somewhere?
Is your product genuinely differentiated? I.E. Unique AND valuable?
Are you thinking long-term? If so, what defensible moats are you building?
And your team? Are you cultivating resilience in your team? In yourself, even?
Are you able to get shit done? Regardless of circumstance or resources?
To go to the next level, you need to switch focus to the things that really matter.
The things that will genuinely determine product success or failure (not just give you an extra 10% efficiency in your development process).
By the way, if you’re struggling to answer any of those questions in the affirmative, here are some actionable resources to help you get started:
👉 To create a real, actionable product strategy read my hands-on guide book for doing so here (only the price of a ☕️)
👉 Watch this hands-on workshop to differentiate your product
👉 An intro to defensible moats & another on network effects
👉 How to cultivate “soft skills” like resilience & essentialism in yourself & your team