Main takeaways: - Start from the perfect-world solution, work your way back to incremental progress - You work for your cross-functional partners, not the other way around - Simplicity > accuracy (especially for engineers!)

1. www.productschool.com
7 Tips: PM Pitfalls to Avoid by Google
Product Lead

2. Join 40,000+
Product Managers on
Free Resources
Discover great job
opportunities
Job Portal
prdct.school/PSJobPortalprdct.school/events-slack

3. CERTIFICATES
Your Product Management Certificate Path
Product Leadership
Certificate™
Full Stack Product
Management Certificate™
Product Management
Certificate™
20 HOURS40 HOURS40 HOURS

4. Corporate
Training
Level up your team’s Product
Management skills

5. Israel Shalom
T O N I G H T ’ S S P E A K E R

6. I’M Israel 👋
6
🎓
M.Sc
CS
👮♂️
Cpt @
IDF
⚙️
Eng @
Google
😱
PM @
Cloud
🤩
PM @
Google
One
🤩
PM @
Airbnb

7. Disclaimers
These are my opinions, not my employer’s
These are tips that would work for my past self, ymmv
There’s more than one way to be a good product manager

8. Let’s get to it!

9. 7 Things I would tell my past self
1. Build your bank accounts 🏦 All of the responsibility + none of the
authority = you’re calling in favors all
day
● Meet and greet everyone without
agenda
● Shoot for small wins for your
team
● Start with “how can I help”
● Aggressively empathize
● Check your balance through 1:1s
● Create space for push back
● Apologize when chasing
● Be nice!

10. 7 Things I would tell my past self
1. Build your bank accounts 🏦
2. Create space for everyone 👾
You cannot ship PRDs. You need all
your counterparts to get anywhere.
● Phrase PRDs as user problems
and actions -- and not verbal
mock descriptions
● Avoid PM mocks, unless explicitly
cleared with UX
● Don’t speculate complexity with
eng
● Don’t tell PgM to set meetings
● Talk up the cathedral

11. 7 Things I would tell my past self
1. Build your bank accounts 🏦
2. Create space for everyone 👾
3. Use your magic wand ♂️
You want to build MVP, but you really
need to be selling the v10
● Describe a utopian vision vividly
● Use it to get exec buy-in
● Use it to get cross-team buy-in
● Use it to get working team buy-in
● Design sprints are super helpful

12. 7 Things I would tell my past self
1. Build your bank accounts 🏦
2. Create space for everyone 👾
3. Use your magic wand ♂️
4. Nobody cares about your doc ♂️
“Je vous écris une longue lettre parce
que je n'ai pas le temps d'en écrire une
courte”
● Your doc should be good for a
short read.
● Learn the art of 1-pagers
● Learn how to write a good deck
● Break down to multiple digestible
docs: uber PRD, then PRD for
each milestone
● Create and evolve templates

13. 7 Things I would tell my past self
1. Build your bank accounts 🏦
2. Create space for everyone 👾
3. Use your magic wand ♂️
4. Nobody cares about your doc ♂️
5. Execution is king 👑
Vision w/o execution is hallucination
● Vision is great to align on a north
star, excite people, get things
moving
● Execute quickly -- consensus
disappears
● If necessary, sacrifice some vision
for execution
● Don’t let perfect be the enemy of
good
● Embarrassed by first version?

14. 7 Things I would tell my past self
1. Build your bank accounts 🏦
2. Create space for everyone 👾
3. Use your magic wand ♂️
4. Nobody cares about your doc ♂️
5. Execution is king 👑
6. Ask Why
“So there I was, shaving that yak…”
● Learn what mission, vision,
strategy, roadmap, objectives are
● Figure out your north-star metric
● Objectives track outcomes, not
outputs
● Clear narrative between every
single task to how it’s helping

15. 7 Things I would tell my past self
1. Build your bank accounts 🏦
2. Create space for everyone 👾
3. Use your magic wand ♂️
4. Nobody cares about your doc ♂️
5. Execution is king 👑
6. Ask Why
7. Sharpen your saw
Treat your craft with respect
● Find mentor(s)
● Read books
● Spend time on reflection
● Seek productivity improvements
● Employ good habits

16. Bonus: Recommended Literature
16
Blogs/podcasts:
● Stratechery **
● Farnam Street *
● How I Built This
● Masters of Scale
● 99 Percent Invisible
● The Knowledge Project *
Books
● Inspired, Marty Cagan **
● Getting Things Done, David Allen *
● Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath
● Deep Work, Cal Newport
● The Design of Everyday Things, Don Norman
Docs:
● Good PM Bad PM (Ben Horowitz)
● Difficult people in SW projects

17. thanks!
17

18. www.productschool.com
Part-time Product Management Training Courses
and
Corporate Training