##### Aakash Gupta - 15 principles for driving better PM execution:  
1) Be as close as possible to the work. Don’t go a week between catching up on eng or design status.  
2) Be a human unblocking machine. Be the teammate who figures out the answers to the tough questions.  
3) Drive short build-ship-learn cycles. Avoid endless build periods.  
4) Worship at the altar of speed. Avoid long timelines in steps.  
5) Consider off-cycle releases. Each day waiting for the release train is a day lost.  
6) Involve analytics before building. Ensure the tracking is set up, and you are aligned on the success criteria.  
7) Get cross-functional buy-in early. Don’t let another team derail once you have already begun building.  
8) Put the strategy in writing. Make the thinking clear as day to everyone.   
9) Evangelize broadly. More of the company needs to support than you usually realize.  
10) Empower the team. When designers & engineers can make decisions on how to build, less burden is on you.  
11) Know what you can drop. You’ll have to make tradeoffs to ship: identify must vs want.  
12) Analyze the metrics deeply. Tie back each result to the broader picture.  
13) Track progress to the billion. Regularly measure how you are tracking.  
14) Parallelize work everywhere. Design the next feature ahead of time. Test similarly.  
15) Drive shared ownership of the goals. Ensure your design & engineering counterparts are measured on the same.
##### Shreyas Doshi notes on product manager's meetings
10 high leverage meetings I swore by (and really enjoyed) as I learned how to lead product for a couple of Stripe’s fast-growing products back in the day 📈
1) EOD sync with Eng counterpart:
Informal sync at the end of the day on issues, the day’s developments, and for venting at times.
2) Weekly Sales Sync:
Very informal meeting to have our finger on the pulse of what sales conversations are happening in the field, what objections we are hearing from customers, what big deals we can help win. 
Usually with the AE rep and the AM rep assigned to liaison with us and a senior PM or two from my team, and at times, someone from Product Ops.
3) 2:2s with EM & PM of each team:
Agenda entirely driven by the EM & PM of the team within our org. This is time for them to get my & my Eng counterpart’s help for unblocking execution, flagging issues / escalations, getting decisions made quickly, etc.
Usually held on Friday mornings, back to back.
4) Monthly Execution Review:
All goals in a spreadsheet, each team’s EM/PM shares how they are tracking against their quarterly goals, we discuss remedial actions / re-prioritization / new dependencies / escalations / etc.
5) Biweekly Business Growth Meeting:
Every 2-3 weeks, very formal meeting with a specific agenda to review business metrics, and to deep dive on what a specific x-fn team is seeing as the business & usage grows, and what we can learn from that.
6) Monthly career chat with my directs:
I noticed that many driven PMs did not spend enough time in regular 1:1s to talk about their career. So I asked them to schedule a dedicated slot in my calendar if they’d like. Optional, their call.
Only rule: no talking about projects at all, only your career.
7) Product deep-dives:
An ad-hoc meeting in which the team e.g. the engineer, designer, PM, etc. could get feedback from me on their product proposal, mocks, intermediate product, about-to-be-dogfooded product, about-to-be-launched product.
Positioned as feedback / working session, not a “review”.
8) Pre-mortems for big launches:
As needed, very structured meeting to identify and mitigate major issues, before they happen, so we didn’t have to deal with an ugly post-mortem afterwards.
I have extensively talked about the format of my pre-mortems already.
9) New Team Member Intro / Boba Party:
All new team members who joined since the last meeting are asked to “introduce yourself & tell us what’s your favorite dessert”
(Either I or the managers on the team would note down each team member’s favorite dessert in a private spreadsheet)
There was often boba tea, including for folks who joined over Zoom🧋
10) Birthday Celebration:
Wish team members happy birthday and order their favorite dessert that they mentioned when they joined the team 🧁
Loved seeing the smile on their face when they saw their favorite dessert 😋 

##### LinkedIn product director tips
My top 20 learnings from building products at LinkedIn:
🚀 On how you show up and grow
1/ Ask for feedback regularly. Act on it.
2/ Assume good intentions.
3/ Be proactive. It goes a very long way.
4/ Communication is more important than you realize. Practice. Be concise. Be engaging. Nail the "so what". Read the room. Don't talk for the sake of visibility. ...and you are still never as clear or memorable as you think.
5/ Don't hide bad news, especially from yourself. Don't make excuses, especially to yourself. And when you don't know the answer, own it.
6/ Being direct is better than dancing around things. Just have the conversation!
7/ Failure is often the most effective teacher. Be humble and pay attention.
❤️ On self care
8/ Always have a good friend at work (or many!).
9/ Everything is tradeoffs. Be deliberate what you choose and let go. Own the consequences of your choices.
10/ This is your life! End more days feeling happy and energized than frustrated and drained. It's time to make a change when that stops being the case.
🏗️ On product management
11/ Be curious, be impatient for impact, and be someone others enjoy working with. (Easy peasy!)
12/ Get into the details. Then go deeper!
13/ Saying no is a superpower. Be clear on what 2-3 things are most important for you. Design your schedule, commitments and routines to hold you accountable to those things.
🫶 On supporting others
14/ Take responsibility for failure. Give credit to others for success.
15/ Make sure your team agrees on what mountain you're climbing and how you're climbing it together.
16/ Your team is way more expert than you are. If something they're doing doesn't make sense, it's likely because (1) you don't agree on the mountain to climb or (2) you are lacking context they have. Ask questions, don't jump to giving direction.
17/ Everyone is doing a million things that you're unaware of to keep the trains running. Learn about all this stuff so you can be more empathetic and reduce the load.
18/ When in doubt ask, "How can I help?"
19/ Hire and surround yourself with people who are better, kinder, and smarter than you. Create lots of runway for them and do all you can to set them up for success.
20/ You didn't get here on your own. You probably had (lots of) help and privilege accelerating your path. Pay it forward!
(Of note: all of these are hard things! I still am striving to live up to them every day.)
