Andrew Skotzko

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2020 Resources for Product Leaders: a Curated List

Congrats, you got the job! You’re leading a team of product managers. Now what?

“How do I get into product?” is a super common question, with a corresponding number of articles. But there’s far less good information out there about how to level up once you’re already in product.

What skills do you need to develop as you move up into product leadership? Roles like group product manager (GPM), director of product, VP, or CPO need different skills.

The challenge is how to keep learning and getting better in a structured, step-by-step way.

This, my friends, is where most people plateau.

There’s far less guidance available after you grok the core PM role and level up into leadership. My experience has been that there are a bunch of resources to help guide you into product management and learn the core role. But afterwards… you’re kind of on your own.

When you were a line PM, you spent most of your time thinking about the product, users, and how it needed to evolve. Sure, you had to deal with the stresses of roadmapping, stakeholder expectations, and product reviews. But at least the product itself bounded the work.

You were responsible (hopefully) for helping your team ship features that would delight customers and serve the business.

Now, you have a whole new set of challenges to think about: People management. Org structure and team design. Feedback and communication architecture. Connecting strategy and vision with line-level execution. Protecting your PMs—not to mention the engineers and designers they work with—from the whiplash of the latest “just this once” sales special and the CEO’s pet project of the week.

It’s hard.

And, there aren’t that many places you can turn to for help along the way. It’s time consuming to find the best resources and filter out the bad ones. There’s a dearth of quality, actionable resources for PMs that already have the job and want to level up.

Between my own product career and researching the podcast, I’ve invested MANY hours exploring these challenges. It’s been a very aggressive learning curve, and I’ve found quite a few good resources that will save you time.

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Introducing ENLIVEN: the project I couldn’t not do

I launched a podcast, and 14 episodes in, I just remembered to explain why I did it and what it’s about. Whoops.

TL;DR

I started a podcast last fall, ENLIVEN. As of yesterday, we’re 14 episodes in.

The show is an exploration of what’s possible. It’s me going on a learning journey with my guests, exploring how we make products and companies that have a soul. Exploring how we make things that truly make things better, and use business as a force for good.

If you’re the kind of person that is interested in a positive future of business, who believes that business has the potential to be the greatest force for good the world has ever seen, then this is a show for you.

I don’t have the answers. I’m exploring the questions. I invite you to come on that learning journey with me.

You can find all 14 currently released episodes, as well as links to subscribe to the show, here. Please rate it on the iTunes store and subscribe!

See you out there.

More context below…

Hypothesis & intention of the show

The hypothesis behind the show is that there is a new, latent form of organization seeking to exist in the world. One that leaves everything it comes into contact with better for that contact. I call this kind of organization an “enlivening organization.”

The word “enliven” means “to give life, action, or spirit to; to animate.”

What if this was the effect our companies had on every person and environment they affected?

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Permission to Fall

In life, I regret the things I didn’t do more than the missteps I made along the way.
– David Stanley

For the last three months, I traveled throughout South America. Despite what my Instagram photos may suggest, for the first month I was on the road, I was not enjoying it. Everything was new and stressful. There were no familiar places or friends to fall back on. The lack of regular schedules shot all my routines to hell. I felt lonely without my friends, and had no idea what I was doing. I drank too much, and exercised too little.

Searching, far from home

I had gone away to get out of the tech scene for a while, for a change of pace and scenery. I had recently left Chill, where I’d driven myself at a maniacal pace for almost three years. I needed time and space to think, refresh, and get some perspective.

But I was 6,121 miles away, and it wasn’t working.

On the night of December 21st, I remember calling Matt from my apartment in Buenos Aires. I’d talked myself in circles, about whether this crazy trip was still a good idea.

Should I just go back to California and take another job? Should I scrap the idea of trying to build something of my own? I was minutes away from booking a trip back to the USA so I could spend the holidays with friends and family. [Read more…] about Permission to Fall

Analog Hearts In A Digital World

If there’s ever a time of year when we want to feel human connection, it’s around Valentine’s Day. And connection requires vulnerability and honesty, experiencing the world through another’s eyes.

Here are two questions that I’ve found helpful in authentically opening up my work and thinking to others over the last few months, which has led to some wonderful connections and conversations:

  1. What do the things that I feel compelled to do tell me about myself?
  2. Why do I want this thing that I want?

[Read more…] about Analog Hearts In A Digital World

Have You Gotten Too Comfortable?

I’ve come to believe all creative work is a constant struggle between hope and fear. Hope that what I’m making will add value to the world. Hope that it will be accepted by the market. Hope that it will be interesting or resonate in a meaningful way. Fear that it won’t. Fear that everyone will laugh at me. Fear that people will call me names and think I’m an idiot for having made something so laughably dumb.

There’s a lot of fear. Especially when I let the noise in or get sucked into the trap of comparing myself to others.

But none of these fears outshines the biggest fear I have. Top billing is reserved for a fear that whispers to me in my quiet moments, the moments when I’m otherwise unencumbered and have some space to think: my fear of getting too comfortable. My fear that I’ll stop growing, which is the day a creative starts dying. The mere suggestion of such a stall scares me. But I remain hopeful.

Hope – Fear = Momentum

[Read more…] about Have You Gotten Too Comfortable?

Nice to Meet You, Again

It’s an incredible moment when you meet the real person inside someone you’ve casually known for years.

Tonight I was at a dinner at USC with a large group of people I’ve known since my time there. Most of us have met before, had some meetings, maybe even been out socially in that sort-of-colleagues-but-also-sort-of-friends way that was so common in my life before I got that I have to bring who I really am to everything I do.

At dinner, I re-connected with a college peer I’ve known for about six years. I wouldn’t say we were ever friends, but we knew each other and had worked together. After dinner, we walked together across campus and had the first real conversation we’ve ever had. It was exciting—I made a new friend, a real friend—we had independently experienced similar struggles and were discussing our journeys since leaving college. When we parted, I felt like I had just met an entirely different person. We hugged, and without even thinking I said “nice to meet you” to a guy I’ve known for six years. But in a sense, I had just met the real him for the first time.

Conversations are powerful.

Conversations are powerful because moments are powerful. Moments are where we take risk. Moments are when we expose ourselves in hopes that another will respond. Moments are when we push pause on our mental treadmills and appreciate something in the past that we were too busy experiencing to grasp the significance of. Moments are where we suddenly stop reaching, trying, stretching for something external and just…are.

Conversations may well be the most important tool we have for uncovering these moments. Conversations are often when those moments happen, or synthesize, come together, and coalesce into a cogent whole that has meaning and power.

Deep conversations like the one I had tonight are when I get to experience my favorite moment.

Whether it’s out of frustration, desperation, or exhaustion, eventually there is a moment where we all just get tired and say “Fuck it.” To the career path that cultivates money at the expense of meaning. To doing what we’re supposed to do instead of what we want to do. To playing the small game we’ve been told to play instead of the big game our heart yearns for.

This moment is precious. It’s exciting. Because the moment you stop trying to speak with somebody else’s voice is the moment you hear the first whispers of your own. And those whispers mark the beginning of the path that leads to what each of us is really seeking: ourself.

It’s the moment when someone begins to come into their own. The moment when untapped potential becomes reality-on-the-way, when hope becomes action, when things long dreamed of become memories soon to be cherished.

How you arrive at this moment doesn’t matter, but I believe we all must arrive there eventually if we’re to live the life we’re capable of.

There is nothing I want more than to help everyone I come in contact with to be closer to living at their potential, to experience these moments and the ripple effects in their life. That unleashing of potential in people and ideas is what I live for.

And there is an effective vehicle to get there: real conversations. I’m going to try to have more of them from here on out.

So I hope I have occasion to say “nice to meet you” to someone I’ve already met, again, very soon.

I wish the same for you.