Product Leaders Share Their Team Priorities for 2025

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Hannah Clark: I know something about you, and I know it because you wouldn’t be listening to me right now if it weren’t true. You really care about your career. And while I don’t know the specifics of what you’re dealing with day to day, what I do know is that there are a lot of challenges that product people have in common, regardless of seniority or company maturity.

For one, we’re dealing with an industry in a state of flux, but internally, we’re also struggling with silos. Not just horizontally between departments, but vertically between levels of leadership. Here’s what I mean. In most organizations, the disconnect between executive product leaders and first year ICs is so vast, they might as well exist on different planets.

Meanwhile, we’re also struggling to collaborate effectively with other functions of the business. The result is gridlock and it hurts our results as an organization, but more selfishly, it also makes it really hard to figure out how to move your career forward. And that is exactly why we held the panel event you’re about to listen to.

We got Melika Hope, Director of Product Management at Spotify — and Ken Romano, VP of Product at Stacker — to join us and answer the questions most of us would never be comfortable asking in our company wide town halls. We got clarity on what leadership teams actually care about in 2025, the skills and qualities that really matter to them when hiring and promoting product managers, and brilliant ideas for making an impact on your product, your team, and your career this year. Let’s jump in.

So, we’ll start with Ken. What’s your company focused on right now? And what are you focused on as a leader in order to enable that vision at a high level?

Ken Romano: Sure. So let me take 20 seconds to tell you about Stacker first, just so we understand the context. We’re a content distribution platform, so we sit right in between brands that are looking for syndication for the stories that they write.

And then on the other side, we have publishers like your local newspaper even up in Canada that are looking for additional content. So it’s almost like a PR newswire, but for stories as opposed to press releases. Over the past couple of years, we’ve really transitioned from a services business into a lot more of a platform.

So a lot more self serve, a lot more speed with which we can process those stories. And for me, I’m spending a lot of time thinking about insights and recommendations. Which I’m sure is something Melika and her team spend a ton of time on as well with Spotify. But just this idea that now we have so much data underneath our platform of all of these thousands of stories that have been processed, where they performed well, how many page views that they got, you can start getting all of this signal that we can then provide back to the brands we work with and the best time of day to publish the story, the best way to reach certain types of consumers.

And so the big focus for this year is really building out that kind of content insights area. And so I am trying to work with my team to shift us in that direction. While at the same time, not just running after the bright and shiny, Oh my God, let’s throw artificial intelligence on top of it.

And I think that’s one of the big leadership challenges is making sure that we stay focused and use the right tools for the right job without being distracted by what sounded great on a podcast yesterday.

Hannah Clark: Yeah, it seems like an overarching theme culturally, avoiding distractions.

Melika, how about yourself? What’s on your mind right now as a leader?

Melika Hope: A lot. So definitely agree with Ken that I think we’re all across the industry in a bit more of a resource constrained environment right now. There’s no longer the, oh, just throw a headcount at that problem. And so both there’s obviously personal challenges that come with that, but also how do we ensure that we’re still able to deliver because of course we’re still expected to drive growth.

And so ensuring that we have the right data to make those decisions and that we are really thinking about what will have the greatest impact with the least amount of work or the least amount of time is super important. And then constantly top of mind is I was super affected by the climate right now.

Like I worked at Twitter pre takeover and then no longer worked there shortly after the takeover. So I have a first hand experience of what a lot of folks are going through in the industry, how hard it is to get new roles and a lot of fear that I think a lot of people in the product community are feeling right now.

And so how to hold that, in my head and have a lot of empathy for folks that This is a challenging time to be in our industry, but at the same time, to not lower the bar and to ensure that we’re still driving a high performance culture and that cannot be compromised. So how to balance that as a leader is definitely something I’m thinking about every day.

Hannah Clark: I’d like to continue on that thread because yeah, like this has been such a turbulent time recently in the tech industry.

Melika, as a leader, what’s been your biggest takeaway from 2024 and how things have sort of shaken out that you feel has impacted your approach to leadership for 2025?

Melika Hope: I think that is the big one.

Like I think that we thought it was going to be a temporary thing or we’re just seeing a bit of a dip in the tech space, but I think it is continuing. I think we’re still seeing layoffs happening, we’re still seeing companies cutting budgets. And so again, like how do we operate kind of business as usual when all of this turmoil is happening around us?

And how do I help the team stay super focused on the top priorities and still be excited to come to work and excited to deliver value for customers when there’s this weight hanging over everyone’s heads? And it’s something I struggle with as well, but how to keep the team excited and motivated when we’re in that environment is really what I’m focused on and what I’m thinking of long term.

Hannah Clark: How about yourself, Ken?

Ken Romano: One of the things I try to focus on is encouraging people to be intentional about where they put their energy and their focus. Right now we all only have so much and I think product managers are used to being kind of generalists that can be chameleons and do a little bit of everything. And what I try to encourage people to do is not set themselves up for failure, where they feel that they have to be an expert in every single thing. There are people that are experts in kind of the customer facing aspects.

There are people that are aspects in the internal technology and operations aspects, and let’s build a team where everybody can focus on what they are best at. I think the other thing is, because I know I fell victim to it earlier in my career is making sure people don’t feel that they need to also be a subject matter expert in everything.

I remember maybe five, six years ago when blockchain was the thing everybody was talking about. And I said to myself right now, I just do not have the mental capacity to learn about blockchain. And I might regret it in six months, but I’m just not going to focus on it right now. And I think right now, with so many different tools out there, so many different platforms, things changing every single day, just making sure people understand that they aren’t expected to be an expert in every single thing.

Hannah Clark: So speaking of expertise and finding those skill sets, I’m going to be directing this at Ken first. Given your experience from the past year and the priorities of what’s coming up, what are you really depending on the direct reports in your review to be able to do? So what are some of the key skills that really stand out in mid senior people, managers, that make you say, this person could probably do my job someday?

Ken Romano: I think the biggest thing, and it’s actually in the onboarding deck that I take all new hires through is, I always tell people two things; one is, “Don’t lie, don’t cover things up, don’t feel that you can’t deliver bad news because there’s just bad news every day that we need to figure out. So be very upfront about what’s going well, what’s not going well.”

And then the other aspect is just having a point of view. That’s really when I see that someone is ready for the next step or ready for more responsibility when they’re not just saying, well, customer X and Y requested this, so let’s build it. But when the person comes to me and says, customer X and Y requested this.

Here’s the budget build out. Here’s the competitive threat that we see from three other competitors. Here’s the industry environment. And for all of those reasons, I think we should do it. I think we shouldn’t do it. So that ability to just connect all of the dots is one of the most valuable things that I see when I’m usually ready to say, okay, you’re ready to take on a little bit more, or let’s talk about a promotion or things like that.

Hannah Clark: Interesting. That’s really good insight.

And Melika, how about yourself when you’re speaking with people in your team, what are some of the factors that tell you that person is ready for the next step, but that you’re really depending on them to deliver?

Melika Hope: I think there’s two things. And one of them’s connected to what Ken mentioned, but I would say decision making skills and executive communication skills.

So similar to what Ken said are you decisive? Can you come to me with a strong point of view and can you make a difficult decision, understanding the trade offs? But just make the decision. Are you coming to me with decisions and solutions versus coming to me to solve your problems? So that is like a super strong indicator to me that someone is ready for that next level.

This is consistent pretty much through every level for me, but executive communication, can you speak concisely? Can you dive to the point and give the information that is required? If you’re looking for people to make decisions or what have you, and that’s written, that’s verbal, et cetera. I’ve seen people hugely accelerate their careers due to having strong executive communication skills.

And I’ve seen people flounder when they might have the capabilities, but they are simply unable to articulate those effectively.

Ken Romano: I 100% agree. And I’ve seen sometimes people get a little bit flustered, whether you’re in real life, whether you’re in Zoom, it’s Oh, I’ve got this executive presentation that I need to give and maybe I’m not good in front of that level of people.

What I try to encourage people to do is remember that there’s so much power in the written word as well and be able to write something convincingly. And it might be like proactively writing up something that you feel your executive team cares about. Send it directly to them, send it to your manager to forward on, but again, lean into your strengths, where if you’re not great verbally or in person on the spot, just figure out another way, record a Loom and send it to people.

Hannah Clark: I have to mention, I was speaking to an executive coach just yesterday who mentioned that a lot of the time her experience as an executive was that the answer to the issues that the executives are trying to solve often is in the company somewhere. It’s just with someone who doesn’t have a lot of voice or influence.

And I thought that was a really powerful takeaway, that if you’re feeling that you don’t have the answers or that you’re not at the level of influence in order to present that solution, you might have actually more power than you think, but you just need to communicate it to the correct people. I wanted to throw that one in.

Let’s talk a little bit about leading by example. A really great way to absorb best practices is by hearing about them in action. So Melika, can you share a story of someone you’ve worked with who really made a positive impression on you? What was their role and what was the impact that they made?

Melika Hope: There’s always the same person that comes to mind when this comes up. I don’t know if he’s watching right now. He’s a former direct report of mine that I would love to snag back at some point in our careers. And he was given feedback that he needed to work on that executive communication, that gravitas, like executive presence.

He was also very humble about it, which always the best people to coach as a manager are folks that come in with a sense of a healthy sense of ego and understanding their strengths, but also a lot of humility. So he was given the feedback that he needed to work on that. And so he started a YouTube channel to work on his presentation skills and work on his communication skills.

And he has the top ranked YouTube channel in home automation now, like he like generates an income off of it and I just love that success story of someone that like leaned in so hard to the feedback that he was given and then obviously turned it into a strength and found a unique voice that clearly resonated with people.

I think that’s such like a special way to leverage feedback in a positive way.

Hannah Clark: What an amazing 180.

Ken, do you have any similar kind of stories?

Ken Romano: I have a question first. Send me his LinkedIn so I can poach him if you don’t mind. Besides that, I think about one of my colleagues when I was at the AP, there was the newsroom side and the business side.

And traditionally, if you work in journalism, you know that going decades back, it’s like church and state sort of thing. And I think what we saw is a lot of people trying to bridge the gap. And I had a partner that was one of our managing editors, and she would always want to collaborate with us on figuring out what are the business and the technology things we need to do in order to make the journalism shine.

She’s very selfless in that regard. But the other thing that I loved, and again, why I like hiring journalists, is that she just had this storytelling brain that I don’t have. I’m very left brained. She came to a little bit more right brained, where it was not a proposal on building X, Y, and Z. It was telling the big story about why this would be impactful for the company.

Why it would get people excited, and it was always this constant reminder, she’s always in the back of my mind when I’m presenting something is just what is the narrative as opposed to just what are we going to do and what are we going to accomplish?

Hannah Clark: Yeah, storytelling is one of those. I think it’s an unsung talent.

We’ll talk a little bit about the job market right now. A little bit of a downer. So we’re in a very competitive job market right now, as we all are all too aware. And it seems like product managers could just never really be too qualified when applying for new roles. It’s a, yeah it’s hard out here.

So Melika, when hiring individual contributors, what are some of the key qualifications and skills, whether hard skills or soft skills that you look for? And I don’t just mean on the resume. It can also be things that come through on the interview process.

Melika Hope: Good, because that’s where I’ll focus, I think, more on the interview process and nothing has changed to me as far as what I look for when I hire.

And that is, is it someone that is close to their customer, focused on their customer, can articulate a customer problem effectively, and the solutions that they drove to provide value to that customer. And can they quantify that? So like we just talked about storytelling and effective communication. I honestly think there’s no greater skill than effective communication.

Verbal communication, obviously written is important as well, but from a product manager and from a product leader. And I’m honestly surprised at how hard it can be to find folks that are able to articulate that narrative to me when it, to me, it’s the most important thing that we do. So, just that like connectedness to that customer and the ability to let that shine through is always what stands out to me in a product interview.

Hannah Clark: How about for yourself, Ken?

Ken Romano: I would plus one all of that. On top of it, I would say I definitely look for a hint of selflessness and collaboration. A product manager is usually not going to be the person that is the hero or is using a million I statements about everything that they did. The product manager is the person that’s bringing it all together, getting people excited and then driving the result, but not without being able to really collaborate across the team, have a low ego, have low empathy, particularly if you’re working in, I’ve gone back and forth between like really large organizations and small ones.

And particularly when you’re working in a large organization, I think there’s, this tendency to believe Oh, I’ve got to be cutthroat and I’ve got to just get ahead. But there is a certain beauty in kind of bringing people along and knowing when to lead and when to follow. And so I usually look for those sorts of things.

Hannah Clark: Wow. Interesting. Oh, it’s very nuanced humility.

So how about when it comes to promoting people? So it’s a little bit different when we’re, we talked a little bit about things that we look for in people who are maybe exhibiting signs so that they’re ready for the next step. But when we’re promoting someone to into their first people leadership role, what are we looking for when considering who might be a good candidate to lead others?

So I’ll start with Ken on this one.

Ken Romano: This might be an unpopular opinion, but I’m a believer in that people leaders should still continue doing at least some of the day to day. I think it’s important that people leaders are still talking to customers, that a people leader might still have, a feature or two that they develop because I don’t want the people leaders to be so far removed that they’re only managing people and management is important.

I say only in quotes. But so for me, I really look for someone that I know is going to be able to balance that they will still be able to contribute individually. But then on top of that, have the time and the patience and the passion to manage a team, because I think people management is not for everybody.

And I think it is very easy to get burned out because you have the people leadership when it comes to the day to day job. But at the same time, any people manager will tell you, you are also a part time therapist because we are all full human beings outside of our day to day and we bring that humanity into our day to day.

It’s one of those things you almost want to make sure that people know what they’re signing up for.

Hannah Clark: Interesting.

Melika, how about yourself? What do you look for in leaders?

Melika Hope: That’s a huge plus one can like I’ve given a talk at a couple of conferences about making the leap from like I see it a people manager and I definitely talk about that piece that like it’s not for everyone.

Companies need to find ways and a lot of them have in the new landscape but find ways to recognize folks for strong performance if they’re not the right people for people leadership because it can be a drag like absolutely. But what I look for a lot of the time is like, are you leading? Because no one I would never promote anyone to people leadership if I’m not already seeing them adopt a leadership mentality, and especially as product managers, there’s so many opportunities to show that leadership, like how does your engineering team speak about you?

How do your peers speak about you? I think it shines through really clearly when someone is operating like a leader. They’re being decisive. They’re making decisions. They paint a vision for what they’re trying to do and they bring folks along with that vision, that gives me a really strong indication that they would be able to do the same thing and inspire that same type of growth in folks that they’re directly managing.

So leadership or influencing without authority or all of those pieces, I think are the big ones that I look for.

Hannah Clark: I have to plus one both of you guys as well, because I have just really subscribed to the idea that leadership in general is such a unique skill set. It doesn’t mean that you’re just very good at what you were doing as an IC, it means you have this specific, it’s a whole other competency that I don’t think that we focus much enough on what we’re talking about. The day to day as an IC and what those kinds of leadership traits really look like.

Actually, speaking of which, does anyone have any specific examples, maybe like an anecdote that they want to throw out of where they’ve seen something like that in action where an IC has really shown or done something specifically that really caught your eye that’s, that is leadership to me?

Ken Romano: Actually, I’ve got someone on my team right now that is fantastic at knowing exactly what she’s got to accomplish to hit her KRs and goals. But then has this bird’s eye view of that team over there could probably use my help, because I know what I’m good at.

I know I’m a really good project manager, in addition to being a product manager. And I know that I could probably help out a little bit. So let me just offer my help, not take over the project, but say, Hey, I think I can help you out with this in my spare time. And so I think that is the sort of thing Almost even before you get into people management, like Melika was saying, was just exhibiting leadership and saying, Hey, I think I can help you.

Well, do you want to accept my help?

Melika Hope: Two of my PMs right now are doing this. And I think something that always stands up to me is am I like, Oh, I should start doing that. Am I impressed by it? Something they’re doing or giving me a new thought? One of my PMs told me she takes half an hour every single week and meets with someone new in the organization, just to have a coffee and to build a relationship.

Now that can be difficult because folks obviously their time is really valuable, but I was like, wow. And so through that, she has formed so many connections. And so there’ll be a lot of the time when we are trying to solve a specific problem. And, oh, I know that person over there mentioned they’re heading in that direction strategically next week.

Or so she understands that we work for a, an organization that’s really relationship based. And that building those relationships will give her an advantage and will give our team, like more importantly, our team will have an advantage. And she’s just jumping in with two feet to like taking advantage of that where she can.

Hannah Clark: Okay, this is an amazing segue because right now I’d love to talk about silos. This is like an issue that we have, just about every organization struggles with siloing and especially now that we’ve moved to a largely remote work culture.

I’ll start with Ken. In your view, how do silos develop and why are they so hard to dismantle when, once they become established, even though so many of us agree that they’re an issue?

Ken Romano: Yeah, I mean, if I had my Kind of magic wand sort of thing to just change organizational culture. It would be to make goaling a lot more cross functional. I think even if you have a mature goaling organization, it’s probably still breaking down to, well, the sales team is going to do this and the product team is going to deliver that.

And the customer success team is going to do this. Most effective projects I’ve seen in my career is when it’s a really small group of people, four or five people from across the company that are going to say, you know what, we are all collectively going to go towards this goal. You got to hit a sales thing and all these things.

But if we just agree, like this is the North star, let’s do everything we can to work together and drive that forward. I see it often breaking down where that’s the intention. But it always comes back to each department still needing to just focus on whatever their major KPI is. I think how to break it down is what I would recommend to anybody is just find those little opportunities.

Melika was saying, there’s so much that you could do kind of relationship building with your peers. And my CEO would probably hate me for saying this, but it’s almost one of those things where you say Hey, our executive leadership team wants us to do this, but I think we should have our own little skunk works thing.

Cause this really is the right thing. And like we were talking about a little bit earlier, the knowledge is within the company. And if you feel really passionate that you want to break down the silo, you want to go a little bit against the grain with the way the company does things, just give it a shot.

Worst thing is you fail. The best thing is you succeed and then you look great because you came off with an out of the box idea.

Hannah Clark: Yeah. Again, to Melika’s point, I think that showing that initiative to break down lines between departments by forming human relationships and just talking to people about what they’re going through day to day.

That’s so powerful. But have you noticed that, what’s your take on siloing from your own experience? Have you seen it to be more of a plus, like like the worst thing except all the other ones? Or is it has it been something that you’ve seen effectively break down in your career?

Ken Romano: I think for me, if I go back to my AP experience, there was definitely silo between kind of the news side and the business side, and that was a little bit institutional, a little bit cultural, and it just chipped away. And you’re right, a lot of it was relationship building. And it was there were still these institutional barriers, but one on one relationships, and then two on two, and then three on three, people just started, you found your kind of like minded people.

And so I think those things, it can be harder in a large organizations, but also sometimes easier because you can fly under the radar a little bit, or you can just decide who the people are that you really want to forge those relationships with.

Hannah Clark: Yeah. To bring it back to Melika, I really liked that example that’s really sticking in my mind here.

Have you seen any other kinds of examples of folks taking initiative to break down silos or even initiatives from like the executive level that have helped to create more of a collaborative atmosphere throughout the organization?

Melika Hope: I mean, I don’t know so much as initiatives as behaviors, and I think a lot of people struggle with being that connector.

It can be really intimidating to say Oh, set up time with someone from another team with no agenda. I don’t even like doing that. But I do think the most important piece to breaking down those silos is understanding what is important to the team you’re trying to break into. Is it influence?

Is it a certain outcome that they’re trying to deliver, etc. And going to them with a, maybe not a solution, but a contribution towards that piece and like establishing a shared objective together. So if I can’t get a summons calendar, I need to send that person something to prove why they need a meeting with me, why I will be helpful to them.

And so always having that type of attitude, I find effective. Like I think executives, I don’t know, often cop out of the silo conversation and they expect folks to solve for these problems on their own. And I think continuing to push your leaders and their leaders when appropriate and within reason to assist with breaking down those silos and where you can, they can effectively use their influence to help is really important.

Don’t feel like you’re on your own. Those folks exist too. Make your job easier. They should exist for that. And so I encourage you to push people where you really need it.

Hannah Clark: Great advice.

So let’s move on to competing priorities. I think this is another hot button issue in product management. So I think it’s competing priorities are just part and parcel of life in this field. So Melika, what are some of the ways that you’ve personally approached prioritization that you think have helped you progress in your career?

Melika Hope: I think when it comes to like product priorities, I always like to say I don’t set the priorities.

The customer sets the priorities. And so if you’re really as connected to the customer, as I mentioned earlier, it shouldn’t be. I mean, it’s still hard, but that should be the lens you look at things from. But personally, so the first year I was into it, I was like really fairly young in my PM career. I had a great manager that year and he had a system where he expected us at any point in time to have all our priorities written down, but the top three to be like at any point, if he said, what’s your top three priorities to have them at the tip of your tongue.

And because this is a time where we had a ton of folks competing to get us to do things. And he said, anytime someone approaches you with something they want you to do, share your top three priorities with them and say, why should your task replace one of my top three priorities? Most of the time they will say, Oh, you’re right.

It shouldn’t. And then you take it away. But if they say, yeah, it should replace one of these, then I say, great, my manager is going to hop over, the three of us are going to have a conversation. And we’re going to establish whether or not your opinion is going to be implemented. And it was such an effective tool.

And even though now I don’t do, I’m not like calling my manager into a room to help establish that, but just Having three things at all time that are non negotiable, and it could change every day if it has to, but using that as a tool, so you’re not saying no, you’re just saying it’s not one of my top three priorities, maybe it will become one day, and it just helps me every day I think about what are my top three for today, what are my top three for this week, and it really helps me have a clarity on like how to spend my time.

And it’s a tool that I’ve used every day since he taught me that.

Hannah Clark: That’s a super useful tactic. I think that we can use no matter where we are at the org chart. I really like that contribution. Coming back to just prioritization tactics, Ken, what have you found to be really useful in your career progression?

Ken Romano: I could not agree more with what Melika said, that’s a fantastic way. I’ll take a slightly different angle since you had that one covered. One is I really like to think about the balance between long term and short term projects, and again, from the customer perspective, if you’re working on this giant release, you don’t want the customer have to wait three, five, six months for the next thing.

So I always encourage our teams to just have these like little chip away projects that will not distract them from the big thing, but will allow us to keep putting more things in front of the users. The other thing that really that is has been important for me, and I learned this from an engineer I worked with years ago, is to just really give a lot of kind of respect over to your engineering colleagues on things that they say are just 100 percent necessary in terms of infrastructure, stability, security, all of those sorts of things.

So whenever we’re going through roadmapping, I’ll always go to my counterpart on the engineering team and just basically say, okay, you tell me what has to happen in the next six months. And then we carve that time out. That’s his and his teams and the product team isn’t going to touch that. He’s never taken advantage of it before.

If he does, we’ll have to have a little talk about it. But essentially, it’s okay, I need these 50 hours in order to upgrade our security, upgrade our cloud services, whatever it might be. And then I know we have all of the rest of that time to go towards more functional things.

Hannah Clark: All right. Interesting tactic for timeboxing.

Let’s move on a little bit to something a little bit more broad. But I think it’s going to be of a lot of interest to folks who are tuning in. So Ken, what do you wish more individual contributors knew to do more of? And what do you wish that they would do less of?

Ken Romano: I’ll bring it back full circle and go towards the beginning of the conversation, which is just tell me your point of view.

We’re a hundred percent remote company, which has good days and bad days, but I think there are, once you find your kind of communication style, my CEO and I will regularly just shoot either voice memos or Looms back and forth to each other, over the course of a week to try to keep things a little bit async.

And I’ve encouraged people on my team that I work with to do that as well of just what’s on your mind right now. Take yourself out of the day to day. I’m working on this specific feature and just tell me where you think we should be in three to six months. That’s probably the question I will ask. I sees most often in order to push the boundaries a little bit is we’ll be talking about something and I’ll say, okay, just toss aside.

What you’re working on right now, what should the product look like in six months? If you don’t have a point of view right now, take a couple of days, go for a long walk at lunch or something and go in front of a whiteboard and just think about the direction you want to take it in. I would say that’s probably the thing I would love to see more of.

The thing to see less of is, I don’t know offhand.

Melika Hope: What I would love to see more of solving your own problems. And I don’t mean that as a manager, we’re not here to help you solve your problems because we absolutely are. But delivering direct feedback to the individual directly instead of to your manager and hoping that they will solve the situation or just like getting your hands dirty.

Oh, there’s no reason why you couldn’t reach out to that person and ask that question or why you couldn’t try to find that information. Those are some of the leadership traits that we talked about, but those are also just strong IC traits and they helped me see you as someone that can operate independently, which is what every manager is looking for.

As far as what I wish they would do less of, I hate to say it, but complaining. Maybe that sounds harsh, but we talked at the beginning of the conversation that managers often act as therapists, and we absolutely do. Absolutely, I do use my manager sometimes as someone to vent to and talk to you about the challenges that I’m going through, and it can be really cathartic, but once it becomes complaining and you become known as a complainer, that really makes your manager less excited about helping you and about helping you solve your problems like absolutely come to me with a problem, but also come to me with these are the types of things that I’ve done to try to solve it.

And don’t come to me just with a complaint unless it’s something that you’re actually interested in solving and taking some steps towards. It’s really taxing on the manager if they are seen as like that being their role to just receive complaints.

Hannah Clark: I agree with this and I think that there’s such a, there’s a bit of a difference between bringing an issue to your manager and complaining about an issue.

Because if you’re complaining about an issue, you’re really just dumping it on them. You’re just saying this is something that I’m struggling with and now it’s your problem. Whereas like coming to the table with, I have this concern that’s based on X, Y factors, but here are some things that I think we could change to address that.

It’s like a world of difference. There’s at least there’s an intent to collaborate rather than just pass the buck.

Melika Hope: If it’s just a matter of keeping us informed, because I do tell folks It can be like no action required just letting you know this happened that I don’t consider a complaint that is doing what you’re supposed to do.

So I just want to call that out that’s not what I’m talking about either.

Ken Romano: So I’m setting the context up front like I’ve done that before listen, I just need to vent for 60 seconds. Can I do that please? You don’t have to do anything about it or the hey, this is a heads up don’t do anything but I might come to you in three weeks and say, now I need your help to do something.

Hannah Clark: Ken, did you think of something you want people to do less of?

Ken Romano: No, just plus one on complaining.

Hannah Clark: Okay, we all agree. Complaining is a no bueno.

We’re nearing our Q&A period. So I just wanted to take a few moments to thank everybody for joining us today. Melika, Ken, thank you so much for making some time to be on this panel. This has already been such a great conversation.

We’ll start with what are the best resources you found to stay up to date on the latest trends in technology, as well as trends in product management and what’s going on in the field? If either of you have one that comes to mind, please feel free to shout it out.

Ken Romano: First is I’ve found a lot of value in Lenny’s newsletter. Which I think is like a great general resource, the newsletter and Slack group. And then it’s probably on, on you to find what I’m finding is there are a lot of really niche newsletters. There are newsletters and podcasts about AI specifically in media.

There’s probably ones around data security or things like that. So I don’t know those off the top of my head, but they just exist. You can find a lot of LinkedIn contributors that are posting a lot of things. So I would say just search Spotify and search LinkedIn and try to find some of the content creators.

Hannah Clark: Yeah. Yeah. Ken and I were connected through Lenny’s community, so I plus one on Lenny’s. Melika, do you have any go to resources?

Melika Hope: Nope. I try to avoid work content outside of work. I do occasionally read Lenny’s. I actually get a lot more out like I’m less fussed about trends that could be changing and all of that and more about where can I find real life experiences that can be inspirational or, I had a manager at Twitter who would give me books to read that could be describing scenarios that are completely outside of technology, but maybe had a lesson that he thought I needed to learn at the time, be it about leadership or something else like that.

So I’m not a huge one on reading or consuming a lot of like product specific stuff. I think we do enough of that at work.

Hannah Clark: Honestly, that’s a good stance. And I am a big proponent of learning through discussion. I think that in person events or times when you can just talk to people directly, it’s just personally, I get the most out of those kinds of conversations, like right now.

We have a question from Irina. What’s your take on the role of AI in helping and hurting product managers? That’s a hot one too. Melika, do you want to start with that one?

Melika Hope: Yeah, I mean, I, if anything, I think its role has been outstated. I don’t want to understate the impact it’s having on our society and the way a lot of things are going.

But I do think because it’s become such a buzzword and such a hot topic, what you see is a lot of organizations and folks trying to incorporate AI for AI’s sake and not thinking strategically about when it could be most useful. So I would, if you’re thinking about what your perspective on AI should be or how you should think about it, I would really push yourself on how to be super strategic about that point of view and where it could really make a true impact, not where it could just get thrown in and potentially just cause churn or more work.

It can have huge environmental impacts, and I don’t think it’s something that we need to use lightly unless there’s a true case for it providing more value. That’s really how I think about it. That may not be a popular opinion in this space right now, but that’s my point of view.

Ken Romano: I’m seeing a lot of discussion about using AI tools for prototyping.

I’m like, oh, now a PM can create a website, a prototype, a PRD without ever having a designer, without ever having a developer. And on one hand, for someone like me, who’s a little bit more left brained, couldn’t design his way out of a paper bag, it’s helpful for me to just be able to put together a prototype.

I think the scary part for me is now assuming that just product and technology is now easy and there is such a big gap between I’m going to create a prototype and I’m going to have a fully functioning, scalable product that I can have a user, a real users on, and that’s the kind of chasm in between that, that I’m most worried about.

Hannah Clark: We just published a podcast episode with Greg Petroff about this topic. Like he was just recently the CDO at Cisco. And we were talking about how there’s some kind of echoes of this AI era that we saw happen with the Dot-com bubble and also I believe also with the onset of social media in which this like this new technology emerges, no one really understands it or who knows how to use it adequately.

And then there’s this panic around it. How do we use it correctly? Is what is it threatening? What is it enabling? And then that kind of settles into just, we start to learn how these tools will fit into our day to day. So my take on it right now is we have to be looking at where does it excel and expand our capacity, but what is it also bad at?

What is it not really? a good outlet for and what should we limit our reliance on that technology for? So yeah, I think right now we’re in that exploration space where we’re sort of trying to figure out like what exactly is that balance and how far do we want to push it and where does it fit into the ecosystem?

This question is for Ken from Collins. He mentioned that he has an affinity for hiring journalists as a PM. What’s your advice for folks with no PM background but might have program management experience that are interested in product management roles?

Ken Romano: The best thing I could say there is that product, in air quotes, has such an amorphous role.

There’s product managers that look like program managers, and there’s product managers that look like engineers, there’s product managers that look like marketers, and so, I would say don’t necessarily think that you need to change what you’re already doing. One opportunity might be learn more about product management.

The other opportunity might be find the organizations where program management is very similar to product management.

Hannah Clark: And then I’ve got one from Ludwig. How do you recommend building your personal brand as a product professional without coming across as either I alone built this or I was along for the ride?

Melika Hope: I mean, I think there’s definitely a happy medium of, as someone that interviews people, folks frequently, this is something that I always ask about what specifically was your role? So I think you can really articulate I had this role in this project. If all of your examples are things you were just along for the ride for, I think that one will be a lot trickier.

But like, even if you were not the main driver, there were probably components that you were driving. So, I drove the visual experience for such and such thing that so and so other person strategized on, or I contributed to this team and led this small component of it. I think it’s really important to be true to that role, both from an honesty perspective and folks will often see your public profiles and you want to be able to like really accurately represent like how those things went.

Yeah I think just like finding that balance and really being proud of and showcasing the things that you specifically did and then over time those pieces should ideally grow in responsibility and impact and showing that growth as well.

Hannah Clark: Actually just on this topic because I think building a personal professional brand is It’s one of those things, it’s a sticky topic because people don’t like talking about themselves, or sometimes they really like talking about themselves.

Do you guys have any recommendations for personal brand building? Each of you have a little bit of that, so.

Melika Hope: Be as authentic as possible. Do not try to have someone else’s brand, and lean into the pieces that really represent you, be they things that might be a little spicy or things that, you’re super proud of. Like not, I mean, I guess in, in tech and I work for a music company now saying I listened to Megan Thee Stallion may not be like a taboo thing, but it was like 10 years ago.

And I have a lot of strong opinions about diversity and like other topics that 15 years ago when I was getting my start in product may not have been as popular or may have seemed a bit risky, but that did help me establish a unique brand because it was super authentic. And the mistake I see a lot of folks making is thinking they need to fit into some typical tech mold that is not true to them and that will never serve you effectively.

Ken Romano: Yeah. For me, it’s been trying to figure out, I think I had a lot of imposter syndrome and for a while I was trying to sound smarter than I was. And so yeah, the authenticity of, Hey, here’s what I worked on and I didn’t send a rocket to Mars, but it was still pretty cool and here’s what I learned from it.

And just being comfortable with what I’m able to accomplish, what my team is able to accomplish, bringing in a little bit of personality into, from my interests outside of work.

Melika Hope: To that end, I think like acknowledging what you’re not as good at. If I talk to companies now, I’ll often say I am not a technical person.

I don’t have a technical background. So if that’s what you’re looking for, I am not your woman. Here’s what I am awesome at though. And that ensures you’re getting opportunities that are authentic to your person as well. But I think it helps people trust you if you can acknowledge like both sides.

Hannah Clark: I love this conversation and I do want to chime in a couple, two cents that I think is valuable from my experience doing the podcast.

Starting out with that, I knew that I was going to be talking to people who are so much more advanced in their careers and new things that I didn’t know. And there’s a lot of pressure initially. Maybe self imposed that I thought I was going to have to sort of meet them where they’re at, but to Ken’s earlier point, there’s a lot of power in curiosity and understanding that you don’t have to be the expert in every field and you don’t have to match everybody’s energy for where they’re at in their career.

There’s a lot of power in relationship building potential and just knowing where your skill set ends and asking questions and exercising humility and being open to sharing that vulnerability and learning from it.

Sasha asks, are you still creating roadmaps? I feel like there’s maybe some more nuance to that. I don’t know if she means if you’re still creating roadmaps at this stage in your career, or if organizations are still using that tactic. Maybe she’s at one that doesn’t.

Melika Hope: My organization is absolutely creating roadmaps. Like my PMs are creating roadmaps. They may not look the same that they did when I was ICing, but I do not personally maintain any roadmaps, but my PMs absolutely do.

Ken Romano: Yeah, similar, I would say lately we spend, because things change so quickly, we probably spend a little bit more time refining like strategic pillars, which is where I spend a lot of my time on. We’re going to solve these problems and why. And then the roadmaps tend to be a lot more fluid.

Hannah Clark: Thank you guys for fitting that one in.

And that concludes our session today. Thank you guys so much for the questions. That was a great conversation. A lot of nuggets to pull out of that one that I think will be helpful for everybody no matter where you’re at in your career. And of course, another big thank you to our panelists for volunteering their time today.

Melika and Ken, you guys have been so awesome. Great chats.

Melika Hope: Thanks, everyone.

Ken Romano: Thank you.

Hannah Clark: Thanks for listening in. For more great insights, how-to guides and tool reviews, subscribe to our newsletter at theproductmanager.com/subscribe. You can hear more conversations like this by subscribing to The CPO Club, wherever you get your podcasts.