Sachin Rekhi

Product managers most often reach out to me for advice when they are in the midst of contemplating their next role. In our discussions, we talk about all the usual things: their ultimate career aspirations; their understanding of their own strengths and weaknesses and the skill gaps they hope to fill; as well as the specifics of each role they are considering, including scope, responsibilities, title & compensation, and manager. But the one conversation that people often tell me they find uniquely insightful is our discussion on finding product culture fit. So I wanted to share my thoughts on this more broadly.

It has been incredible to see such a positive response to my OKRs post. So many of you reached out telling me how valuable it was to hear about the details of implementing a successful OKR program. Many of you also reached out with follow-up questions asking me to dive deeper into aspects you were struggling with in your own implementation. I thought I would share the most frequently asked questions as a follow-up post for those interested.

I'm a firm believer that Objectives & Key Results (OKRs), the goal-setting framework invented at Intel and popularized by Google and John Doerr, can be a highly effective leadership tool for a team of any size. When done right, they help drive focus, alignment, accountability, and an outcome-orientation throughout the organization. However, too often, OKRs are implemented poorly, resulting in the promised benefits never being realized. After spending the last 8 years implementing OKRs at both large organizations like LinkedIn and small startups like Notejoy, I wanted to share what I've come to appreciate is required to develop an effective OKR program.

James Clear's Atomic Habits provides a compelling rationale for why frequently practicing small and easy to do atomic habits consistently compounds in benefit to ultimately generate incredible results. It then goes on to provide a comprehensive guide for reliably forming such atomic habits, regardless of the level of self-discipline or willpower you may naturally have. While many of his ideas naturally appeal to those seeking to develop lifestyle habits like exercising, losing weight, or quitting smoking, I found his ideas to be equally relevant for product managers looking to accelerate their career.

There is a whole host of skills that product managers seek to develop that can only truly be built through deliberate practice. This includes everything from honing your analytical rigor, to building your product intuition, to becoming more strategic. You can't just attend a class or read a few blog posts and expect to become great at any of these. At the same time, simply doing your product role the same way you've always been doing it is also unlikely to help you develop the specific skills you're after.

Instead, the formula for mastering these types of skills requires first developing atomic habits to encourage daily or weekly practice and then performing the habit with deliberate practice. For example, building your analytical rigor requires setting aside time every day to critically review dashboards and form hypotheses from the trends that you see, running weekly ad-hoc queries to deep dive into specific user behavior, putting together metrics recaps a week after every feature launch, as well as spending time each month determining how to improve or augment the dashboards you currently have. Yet the daily demands of a product management role are already so taxing that if you aren't already performing these activities, you'll find it difficult to incorporate them into your weekly routine. That's why to successfully build any of these skills you'll need to first develop the right atomic habits to support them. I wanted to share three of my favorite strategies for doing just that from the book.

I always cherish the holidays because it gives me the perfect opportunity to reflect on the past year from both a personal and professional perspective. This year, as we roll past the end of the decade, I've found myself taking it in as a whole. What I came to realize is that this blog had it's humble beginning in 2009, meaning I've now been writing for over a decade! In that past decade, I've authored 150 essays, mostly sharing everything I've learned about product management and entrepreneurship throughout my career in Silicon Valley. But I occasionally dabbled in other passion areas of mine, including career optimization, life hacks, and software engineering. Over the years, readers have pushed me to expand beyond just the written word to a variety of other preferred mediums. Not to disappoint, I ultimately published 12 talks, 10 podcasts, and 13 SlideShare decks as well. What has absolutely blown me away is that all of my content has now been viewed over 1.5 million times! I never set out to build this blog with a certain reach in mind, but even if I had, I certainly couldn't have imagined how many people would find their way to my little corner of the Internet.

I want to thank each and every one of you as you are my continued motivation to share everything I learn. I have saved every note you've sent me over the years as a rallying cry to keep on penning my thoughts. I always thought that if my career in technology didn't work out, I would have been a teacher. So I feel blessed that I've found a way to still do exactly that through my writing. 🙏

Today I thought it'd be fun to take a trip down memory lane and recap my 15 most viewed posts over the past decade.