You’re a great Product Manager.

You know you’ll be an even better Product Leader. But...

Why is it so hard to make the leap from PM → Product Leader?

Hard Truth #1:
Opportunities for advancement in product management are scarce. Product teams are typically smaller, and when leadership roles open, the competition is fierce. You need to be primed and ready for when your chance comes.

Hard Truth #2:
The skills that make you a stellar PM won't necessarily make you a stellar Product Leader. Leading 100 people isn't the same as leading 10; it requires a significant evolution of your skill set.

So, what skills do you need? How do you acquire them?

That's where I come in!

I’ve been building products for over 25 years, and have grown from leading a small team of 5 to leading a 300+ org at a top-tier company. I became a Product Leader by navigating the very same obstacles facing you today.  

My mission is to help great PMs like yourself transform into outstanding Product Leaders.

You can do it! There are immediate steps you can take starting today to set yourself on this path.

Follow me here on LinkedIn to discover how.


- - - - -
🔥 If you *really* want to fast-track your career, visit: amplifypm.com/transform

Roshan Gupta

I have been a PM at Meta and a Group PM at Google, and if you think I had it all figured out. I would disagree.

What experience really gives you is not certainty.
It gives you scar tissue.

You learn some things late.
Often after you’ve shipped the wrong thing, said yes too many times, or lost trust you had to earn back.

Looking back over my career, these are the product-building principles I wish I had internalized earlier.

Not because I didn’t know them. But because I didn’t practice them consistently.

1. Outcomes over output.
I spent years celebrating launches before I learned to celebrate impact.

2. Fall in love with the problem, not the solution.
Most early mistakes came from defending ideas instead of understanding pain.

3. The art of “no” defines your strategy.
Every yes I regretted was a painful, future no I could have avoided.

4. Data informs. Intuition guides.
Data matters, but don’t ignore intuition. Intuition is rooted in data acquired over years.

5. Manage stakeholders, don’t appease them.
You don’t need their approval. You need their respect. Deliver value, not “yes”.

6. Empower with “why,” not “how.”
Micromanagement feels productive. It quietly kills velocity.

7. Perfect is the enemy of shipped.
Speed of learning beats elegance in almost every real system.

8. Your team is your best product.
You can fix a roadmap. You can’t outrun a broken team dynamic.

None of this is taught cleanly.

You absorb it slowly
- Through tension
- Through missed promotions
- Through meetings that don’t land

This is what senior PM growth actually looks like.

Making mistakes. Learning. Honing your judgement.

If you are earlier in your PM journey, save this.
If you are a senior, you probably recognized yourself in at least two of these.

Share this if you found it relatable.

P.S. If you are a PM who’s struggling to be heard and noticed, I have designed the live “Persuading People: The PM's Edge in the Age of AI” cohort to help you learn how to communicate decisions so clearly that leadership trusts your judgment, and your team follows you.

More than 100 PMs have used it to accelerate their growth. 

Register now if you're ready to be seen as the leader you are: https://lnkd.in/d7STtuG8

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PST (Maven)

Master the persuasion system I used to secure 9-digit budgets & Fortune 50 partnerships: amplifypm.com/maven

One-Off - 2026-01-29

amplifypm

Follow me to go from PM → Product Leader 🪜 | Founder of AmplifyPM (ex-Google, Meta, Yahoo, startups) | I grew from leading a team of 5 to leading a 300+ org. I'll show you how to do the same.

A Product Manager (IC4) at Meta can make around $242K.
A Senior PM (IC5) can make $449K+.
A Staff PM (IC6) can make $622K+.

If you want to close that gap, stop thinking the next level is “more scope.”
It’s a different skill.

At IC4, you get rewarded for being dependable. You keep the train moving.
At IC5 and IC6, you get rewarded for making other people confident in your judgment.

That is what changes comp and promotions.

Here is the practical difference.

When a roadmap review gets tense, IC4 PMs try to be thorough. They add context, show charts, and explain the process.

IC5 PMs do something else. They frame the decision first, then the details.

They walk into the room already knowing:
→ What decision needs to be made.
→ What the tradeoffs are.
→ What they recommend.
→ What they are willing to give up to get it.

IC6 PMs go one step further. They don’t just answer the question. They simplify the entire debate so it does not keep coming back.
They turn a one-time decision into a reusable principle.

If you want to excel and move up faster, practice these three habits.
Start meetings with the decision, not the backstory.

Replace “here is the data” with “here is what the data means and what I recommend.”

After every big call, write down the tradeoff you made so leadership can retell your reasoning when you are not in the room.

That’s how you become the PM people trust with bigger bets.

And that’s what you are paid for.

P.S. I have designed the live Persuasive Storytelling for PMs course to help you learn how to communicate decisions so clearly that leadership trusts your judgment.

More than 100 PMs have used it to accelerate their growth. Early-bird enrollment is open for a short window. Register here and save 33%: https://lnkd.in/d7STtuG8

At Google, Meta, and Yahoo, I have worked with enough PMs to notice something interesting.

High-performing PMs don’t stand out because they do radically different work.
Most of them are doing roughly the same things as everyone else.

What separates them shows up in quieter moments.

→ In how they frame a decision when the data is incomplete.
→ In how they say no without creating friction.
→ In how they help a room move forward instead of getting stuck debating details.

You rarely notice it at first. It just feels easier to work with them.

Meetings end with clarity.
Teams leave knowing what matters.
Leadership trusts that if something changes, this PM will adapt without drama.

And the opposite is also true.

When a PM struggles, it’s almost never because they lack effort, intelligence, or frameworks. It’s because their thinking does not travel well.

People hear the work, but not the judgment behind it. 
They see activity, but not direction.

Over time, that gap compounds.

→ The PM who can make tradeoffs legible earns trust faster.
→ The PM who can connect data to meaning gets more room to operate.
→ The PM who owns outcomes without over-explaining becomes the one leaders lean on.

Those are not flashy skills. But they are the ones that quietly shape careers.

P.S. If you are a PM who wants to build those skills deliberately, Persuasive Storytelling for PMs is designed around exactly this shift.

Over 100 PMs have already used it to grow their influence, trust, and trajectory. 

Early-bird enrollment is open for a short window. 
Register here and save 33%: https://lnkd.in/d7STtuG8

Google

Yahoo

When you present to senior stakeholders, the first 20 seconds matter more than the next 20 slides.

The biggest mistake I see PMs make: they assume their audience will pay attention.

That their audience cares as much as they do.
They’re wrong.

That's not how it works. 

You must learn to make people WANT to hear you.

Next time – instead of starting with slides, background, or the solution – I’d start like this:

“Right now, 18% of users who start this flow drop off before step three. If we do nothing, that’s a $12M annual loss.”

Then I’d stop talking.

Because now I have something far more valuable than airtime.
I have attention.

Only after that would I explain:

→ Why this problem exists
→ What we’ve tried so far
→ What decision I’m asking for

Most PMs do the opposite.

They start with: “Let me walk you through some background…”

By the time they reach the actual problem, the room is already gone.
And once attention is gone, you don’t get it back with more slides.

You get interrupted.
You get pulled into edge cases.
You end up defending details that don’t matter.
The meeting turns into a debate instead of a decision.

That’s why the first 20 seconds matter more than the next 20 slides.

Senior stakeholders don’t need the full download.

They need a sharp frame:
What’s at stake?
Why now?
What do you need from them?

Do that well, and the rest of your story becomes easier to land.

Repost this if it resonated.

P.S. I have designed the live “Persuading People: The PM's Edge in the Age of AI” cohort to help you learn how to communicate decisions so clearly that leadership trusts your judgment so you get seen and rewarded.

More than 100 PMs have already used it to accelerate their growth. Register now: https://lnkd.in/d7STtuG8

Bumped into this thread today, and it took me straight back to my time at Google when I turned a $20M budget into $120M.

A Staff PM admits they spend 20% of their time on strategy and 80% on storytelling.
Because strategy without narrative doesn’t move people.

For a long time, I believed the same thing many PMs do: “If the thinking is solid, the data will speak for itself.”

So I showed up with decks, perfect charts, clean assumptions, and a clear logic.

My proposals got approved. But they rarely got momentum.
This is exactly what this thread talks about, and it’s a painful kind of approval.
You get the “sure, sounds fine” approval.
Not the “this is the priority” approval.

The thread nails why. The Staff PM:

→ Walked into exec reviews with 20 slides of immaculate charts.
→ The VP looked at their phone.
→ The initiative technically passed, but it wasn’t championed.

Then they watched a peer pitch a weaker idea with fewer charts.
But the peer told a story.

→ A specific user in distress.
→ A villain, the current broken process.
→ A hero, the proposed change.
→ A cost of doing nothing.

Execs leaned in. They got double the funding.

That’s the difference between being correct and being compelling.

Being correct gets you approval.

Being compelling gets you attention.

Data proves, but story persuades.

And at senior levels, persuasion IS the job.

If you want your work to move faster, get prioritized, and get real backing, the lever is rarely another chart. It’s narrative structure.

P.S. When stakeholders understand your narrative, they trust your judgment even if they disagree. This is the kind of storytelling PMs build inside “Persuading People: The PM’s Edge in the Age of AI”.

If you want a repeatable system to turn feedback into alignment to get seen and rewarded as the leader you are register here: https://lnkd.in/dB7xfrvr

If I wanted to grow my career as a Product Manager in 2026, I would stop blindly following most of the advice that gets recycled on LinkedIn.

Because a lot of the loudest PM advice comes from people who have barely done the job.

→ They have never been the ones trying to get engineering time when every team is understaffed.

→ They have never had to kill a feature users loved because the data quietly said it was the wrong bet.

→ They have never stood in front of skeptical stakeholders defending a roadmap that was already starting to crack.

→ They have never owned a launch that didn’t go the way the deck promised.

Yet they sell frameworks. Playbooks. “Proven systems”.
And the irony is they're teaching a job they just started learning themselves.

I see it constantly.
People who have never been PMs, but aspire to be one.
People who are one year into their first PM role.

They package theory as experience.

And PMs eat it up because we are desperate for guidance in a role that's different at every company.

I'm not calling anyone out, but I cannot watch as PMs fall for everything they see online and then blame themselves when it doesn't work.

You can never learn Product management from templates.

You can learn it from:
→ Shipping features that flop
→ Making trade-offs that upset everyone
→ Building trust with engineers who don't report to you
→ Saying no to your CEO's pet projects

Before you follow PM advice on LinkedIn, ask one question:
Have they done the job?
And have they done it long enough?

If not, keep scrolling.

Today, I’m going to give away a big part of what actually helped me grow as a PM at Meta, and then GPM at Google, so read this carefully.

Like every PM earlier in my career, I thought growth was about getting better at the craft.

→ Better PRDs
→ Cleaner metrics
→ More structured thinking

And to be fair, that’s what gets you promoted the first few times.

But at some point, that stopped being the bottleneck.

When I moved into more senior PM roles, including at Meta and later at Google, I noticed something uncomfortable.

→ My work was solid.
→ The thinking was sound.
→ The analysis held up.

Yet some initiatives moved fast and got real backing, while others stalled despite being “approved”.

No one said anything explicitly. There was no negative feedback.
Just a quiet difference in energy.

Over time, I realized what was missing.

I wasn’t failing at product.
I was failing to carry the thinking through the room.

I was explaining instead of leading.
Answering instead of framing.
Providing context instead of anchoring decisions.

In senior rooms, that distinction matters more than people admit.

People aren’t just listening to what you’re saying.
They’re paying attention to what happens after you speak.

→ Do you drift into the background when challenged, or do you come back to the core trade-off?
→ Do your answers tighten the narrative, or scatter it?
→ Does the room feel clearer after you speak, or more complicated?

That’s when I learned something that sounds obvious but took years to internalize.

👉🏽 There’s a difference between getting your message out and getting your message across.

Getting it out means the words were spoken.
Getting it across means the room moved.

That shift didn’t happen overnight for me.
It came from sitting in enough rooms, missing enough signals, and slowly realizing why some conversations moved the room, and others didn’t.

If you’re a PM who feels like your work is good but your impact isn’t compounding the way it should, this might be the gap you’re feeling, too.

Not a lack of ability. A lack of narrative.
And once you see that, you can’t unsee it.

This is the work I focus on now – helping PMs turn solid thinking into clear, persuasive narratives that actually move people.

If you want to build that skill intentionally, register for my live class “Persuading People: The PM’s Edge in the Age of AI”.

An exclusive system that helps PMs get seen and rewarded. 

Register here: https://lnkd.in/dB7xfrvr

The PM job is really 2 jobs. And I bet you’re only doing 1 of them.


1. Operator - keep things moving.
2. Strategist - choose what matters.

Most PMs only schedule time for the first.
So the second gets squeezed into “when things slow down.”

And that’s why so many PMs feel like they’re shipping a lot, but influencing less.

Because when strategy is constantly interrupted, you don’t just lose time.
You lose the thread.

The narrative that answers:

→ What are we solving?
→ Why now?
→ What are we NOT doing?
→ What does success look like?
→ What tradeoff are we willing to own?

Without that story, the org defaults to:

→ Opinions over priorities
→ Loudest stakeholder over clearest direction
→ “Quick wins” over meaningful bets

This is why I don’t think the next PM superpower is another framework. It’s storytelling.

Not presentation skills or being charismatic.
The real skill is turning messy inputs into a clear, repeatable narrative that:

→ Gets buy-in when you’re not in the room
→ Protects the roadmap from constant re-litigation
→ Gives your team confidence in the why, not just the what

And yes, storytelling is also how you protect mindspace.

Because when the story is clear, you stop re-explaining decisions 20 times a week and focus on what matters the most.

PMs who leverage storytelling get noticed, rewarded, and promoted fast, and I've seen that happening at Google and Meta.

P.S. I have designed the live Persuasive Storytelling for PMs course to help you learn how to communicate decisions so clearly that leadership trusts your judgment.

More than 100 PMs have used it to accelerate their growth. Early-bird discount ends today, register now and save 33%: https://lnkd.in/d7STtuG8

Today I want to admit something I avoided for a long time. For many years, I was a “good PM”...

..But not an influential one.

Like most PMs, I lived in Line 1 and Line 2, because they feel safe.

Line 1: To report
Weekly updates. Status decks. “Quick sync?” calls.
I was responsive, available, and always “on top of things.”

Line 2: To collect frameworks
I could name every prioritization model.
I had templates for discovery, strategy, roadmaps, OKRs, you name it.

And yet, something kept happening.

→ My roadmap would get questioned every time.
→ Decisions would get reopened again.
→ Stakeholders would “align” in meetings, then push back in Slack.

I thought I needed more data, slides, and frameworks.
What I actually needed was something simpler.

A story people could believe.

Because here’s what no one tells you:

In most companies, you don’t win with the best idea.
You win with the idea that can be understood, repeated, and defended when you’re not in the room.

That’s when it clicked for me.

There are four lines PMs stand in:

1. To report - easy to be busy, hard to create movement
2. To collect frameworks - feels like growth, often becomes hiding
3. To prioritize - where tradeoffs begin
4. To persuade - where careers accelerate

The shift for me happened the day I stopped sending “updates", and started sending a narrative.

A narrative that told:

→ Here’s what changed
→ Here’s the tension we can’t ignore
→ Here are the options (and the tradeoffs)
→ Here’s the decision I recommend
→ Here’s what I need from you

Suddenly, I wasn’t fighting for attention.

People were pulling clarity out of my message.

If you feel stuck right now - busy but not advancing - ask yourself:

Are you standing in the lines that keep you safe, or the line that makes you effective?

P.S. I have designed the live Persuasive Storytelling for PMs course to help you learn how to communicate decisions so clearly that leadership trusts your judgment.

More than 100 PMs have used it to accelerate their growth. Register now if you're ready to be seen as the leader you are: https://lnkd.in/d7STtuG8

I can usually tell in 30 seconds whether a PM will lose the room.


By how much they tried to fit on the first slide.

The slide is packed.
↳ Context paragraph at the top
↳ Two charts side by side
↳ A roadmap snapshot squeezed in
↳ Three footnotes “just in case.”
↳ And somewhere in the corner, a tiny line that says “Decision needed.”

The PM thinks they’re being thorough, even I thought the same when I started as a PM.

But senior stakeholders read something very different.
They read hesitation.

Because when a slide is doing everything, it usually means the PM hasn’t yet decided what matters most.

At senior levels, slides are not about conveying information. They are about conveying judgment.

Judgment shows up in:
→ What you choose to leave out.
→ What you choose to highlight.
→ What you repeat.
→ And what you are asking the room to decide right now.

Most PMs overload slides because they are trying to protect themselves.
→ From questions
→ From pushback
→ From being wrong

Ironically, that does the opposite.

→ Crowded slides invite interruptions.
→ They pull the conversation into details.
→ They turn a decision meeting into a debate.

Clear slides signal confidence.
They say, “I’ve thought this through, and this is the part that matters.”

I have a simple mantra that fixes a lot of this.
"When in doubt, leave it out."

Not because details are unimportant. But because timing is.
And clarity is not a design skill. It’s a leadership skill.

P.S. If you want your ideas to land and your decisions to stick, persuasive storytelling is the lever to build. More than 100 PMs have joined my live cohort - Persuading People: The PM's Edge in the Age of AI- to master storytelling to get seen and rewarded. 

Register here if you are ready: https://lnkd.in/dB7xfrvr

The fastest way PMs lose credibility is trying to act on every piece of feedback.

Here’s what it looks like in real life.
- Monday: you present a crisp PRD.
- By Friday: it becomes a “kitchen sink” doc.

Because everyone left feedback.

1. Design: “Can we make it more delightful?”
2. Eng: “We can’t support this edge case this quarter.”
3. Sales: “A customer asked for this last week, can we add it?”
4. And the worst one: “I don’t know… it just doesn’t feel right.”

So you do what many PMs do to be seen as “easy to work with”.

You accept all of it.

→ You add two screens.
→ You expand scope “just a bit”.
→ You rewrite the narrative to please each person.

And then in the next review, something painful happens:
People don’t argue about the product. They question your judgment.

“What are we actually shipping?”
“Why are we solving this now?”
“Didn’t we decide last week?”

That’s the credibility leak.
Not because you listened. Because you stopped being the decision owner.

When I was a PM, what changed for me was treating feedback like a decision input.

Every time I got feedback, I asked myself:

👉🏽 Is it clear and specific?
If someone says “this is confusing”,
I ask: “Which part exactly? What did you expect to happen instead?”
If they can’t answer, I don’t change anything yet.

👉🏽 Is it backed by evidence?
If Sales says “customers want X”,
I ask: “How many accounts? Is it churn risk or nice-to-have?”
If it’s one loud request, it goes to discovery, not the sprint.

👉🏽 Does it further our objectives?
If someone says, “This would be nice to have”,
I ask: “Which OKR does this move, and how will we know?”
If it doesn’t map to a goal we agreed on, I politely disregard.

👉🏽 Is it feasible?
If someone says, “We should do this now”,
I ask: “What would we drop to make that true?”
If the trade-off isn’t worth it, I park it to protect focus.

Then I communicate one of three calls, explicitly:

1. Do it: it aligns with evidence and objectives.
2. Park it: good idea, but the timing is wrong.
3. Kill it: it’s preference, not evidence.

The leadership move is not saying YES louder.
It’s being able to say, calmly: “I heard you. Here’s what we’re doing, and here’s why”.
That’s what senior PM credibility looks like.

Share this if you agree.

P.S. When stakeholders understand your narrative, they trust your judgment even if they disagree. This is the kind of storytelling PMs learn inside Persuading People: The PM's Edge in the Age of AI.

If you want to communicate like a senior PM in high-stakes rooms, register here: https://lnkd.in/dB7xfrvr

Give me 15 seconds, and I will tell you what storytelling for PMs actually is, and why it is quietly deciding who gets promoted, and who stays stuck.

Most PMs I speak to still think storytelling means slides, polish, or sounding confident in a room.

Yes, how you deliver your message matters.
But that’s not what holds people back.

Delivering your message ≠ getting your message across.

What actually breaks PM careers is this moment: you have the data, the work is solid, but different people walk away with different interpretations of what you just said.

→ Engineering hears effort.
→ Leadership hears risk.
→ Design hears ambiguity.
→ And somehow none of them hear a clear decision.

That’s where storytelling shows up, even if you never call it that.

Real storytelling for PMs is the ability to take one messy situation and explain it in a way that resonates differently for each audience, without changing the core truth.

→ To engineering, it makes tradeoffs feel intentional instead of reactive.
→ To leadership, it clarifies what matters now and what does not.
→ To design, it gives direction instead of noise.
→ To the team, it creates momentum instead of churn.

When PMs struggle, it’s rarely because they lack insight.
It’s because their thinking comes out tangled, fragmented, or one-size-fits-all.

You can feel it in meetings.
Long explanations.
Too much context.
People tuning out.

The PMs who grow fastest help people understand why a path makes sense, to THEM.

That is the quiet skill behind executive presence, trust, and promotions.
It is not about telling stories. It is about making your thinking legible to other humans.

And once people can follow your thinking, once you convince them to care, they start backing your decisions.

That’s when your career starts to move.

P.S. If you want to get better at making your thinking land so you get seen as the leader you are, Persuasive Storytelling for PMs is built for exactly that. More than 100 PMs have already used it to grow their career, and comp.

Early-bird enrollment is open for a short window. Register here and save 33%: https://lnkd.in/d7STtuG8

Stop thinking AI is going to 10x your PM career.

If you think using ChatGPT to write better PRDs or analyze data faster is your competitive advantage, you’re missing the point.

AI is making execution cheap.
It’s making “good content” a commodity.

In a world where every PM has the same tools to generate output, the value of output drops to zero.

So what actually matters?
The one thing AI cannot do.

Persuasion.

AI can generate a strategy document in seconds.
But it cannot look a skeptical VP in the eye and make them BELIEVE in it.

It can summarize a meeting.
But it cannot read the room, sense the hesitation, and pivot the narrative to save a deal.

We are entering an era where “doing the work” is the baseline.
”Selling the work” is the differentiator.

If you want to survive the AI shift, you don't need to get better at prompting.
You need to get better at influencing.

It’s not about being charismatic.
It’s not about being louder.
It’s about making your message irresistible to your audience.

This is the exact skill set I teach in my upcoming Maven cohort.

You’ll walk away with the persuasion system I used at Google to secure 9-digit budgets and land Fortune 50 partnerships.

🚨 Early enrollment is open right now (33% off).
🚨 This is the ONLY time the course is discounted.

If you’re tired of doing great work that never quite lands –
this is how you change that.

👉 Enroll here: https://lnkd.in/d7STtuG8

Hurry – early enrollment closes soon.

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When I went from leading small teams to helping lead a 300+ org at Google, one pattern kept showing up in promotion conversations.

The PMs who got promoted weren’t always the smartest in the room.
They weren’t even always the highest-output.

They were the ones who stopped being known as “reliable” and started being known as the person who could move the organization.

Because “You’re a reliable PM” is just a compliment.
It means you ship, you unblock, you keep things stable, you handle stakeholders, and you make chaos look manageable.

The problem is what that label signals upstairs.

Reliable often gets interpreted as: “I trust them to execute what we already decided.”

Promotion tends to go to: “I trust them to shape what we decide next.”

That’s the shift no one explains clearly, and it’s why PMs feel confused when they’re doing great work and still hearing vague feedback about “leadership” and “strategy.”

At higher levels, your work is judged less by how well you run your lane and more by how much you reduce everyone else’s confusion.

That shows up in very specific behaviors:

→ You don’t just share updates; you bring a decision with options, tradeoffs, and a recommendation
→ You don’t just manage stakeholders; you align incentives before they turn into escalations
→ You don’t just deliver roadmaps; you create a narrative people repeat when you’re not in the room

If you become the org’s safety net, you will get more responsibility.
But it’s often responsibility that keeps you anchored in execution.

To go to the next level, you need reliability plus leverage.

P.S. If you’ve been labeled “reliable” and feel stuck, I’m hosting a free Maven Lightning Lesson on how PM promotion expectations change as you move into leadership.

More than 1,000 PMs are already attending. Register here for free: https://lnkd.in/eVckANk9

The skills that made me a great PM held me back as a leader. (And until I fixed it, my career was on hold.)

Here’s what changes when you scale:

→ As a PM, you solve problems.
↳ As a leader, you build problem-solvers.

→ As a PM, you own the roadmap.
↳ As a leader, you own the narrative.

→ As a PM, you manage details.
↳ As a leader, you manage risk.

The transition isn’t about doing more of what made you successful.
It’s about letting go of what got you here.

When I led 10 people, I could be in every meeting, review every spec, and influence every decision. That felt like leadership.
When I started leading a 100+ people org, that same approach nearly broke me.

Because you become the bottleneck, without realizing it.
Decisions slow down. Escalations go up. Your calendar fills, but progress gets weirdly sluggish.

The shift that changed everything for me was simple:

I stopped being the answer. I became the frame.

Instead of “here’s what we should do,”
I moved to:
→ “What are we optimizing for?”
→ “What tradeoff are we accepting?”
→ “Who owns this decision?”

Those three questions did more than any framework.

They built judgment in the org.
They made decisions travel without me.
They kept me out of the weeds without losing control of direction.

The hardest part was trusting others to make decisions I used to make myself.
But that’s exactly what separates Good PMs from Great Leaders.

P.S. If you’re stepping into a bigger scope and feeling this shift, register for my live cohort "Persuading People: The PM’s Edge in the Age of AI". 

I help PMs turn solid thinking into clear, persuasive narratives that actually move people, so they get seen as the leader they already are.

Register here: https://lnkd.in/dB7xfrvr

I’ve been seeing a lot of PMs add “AI PM” to their LinkedIn headline lately. I get it. No one wants to feel left behind.

But the moment someone asks, “So how are you actually an AI PM?” – most answers fall apart.

Not because the PM is incompetent. Because they don’t have a story.

They give tool lists.
They mention ChatGPT.
They say “I’m exploring AI.”

And the listener is still thinking: ok, but what did AI change in your product work?

That’s the gap.

“AI PM” isn’t a label. It’s meant to be a narrative.

If you can’t clearly explain:
→ what AI made possible
→ what tradeoff you accepted
→ what you measured differently
→ what new risks you introduced

Then the headline looks like trend-chasing.

The PMs who stand out do one thing well.

They can tell a tight story like this:

→ Here was the user problem.
→ Here’s why traditional approaches broke.
→ Here’s why AI was the right bet.
→ Here’s what new risks showed up (quality, latency, hallucinations, privacy).
→ Here’s how we shipped safely.
→ Here’s how we measured success using AI.

Same PM. Same work. But now it lands.

Recruiters don’t reward labels. They reward substance.
And a clear narrative is what gets you ahead in your career.

P.S. If you want to be the PM who can explain your work with confidence and win trust fast, persuasive storytelling is the skill that gets you there. That’s exactly what we practice inside Persuading People: The PM’s Edge in the Age of AI.

More than 120 PMs have already learned the art of telling stories to lead in their career. Enrollment for the next cohort closes soon! If you are ready, register here: https://lnkd.in/dB7xfrvr

If you’re a PM who feels stuck, this is for you.

You’re doing good work.
Your projects ship.
Your stakeholders trust you.

And yet...nothing changes.

No bigger scope.
No stronger signal.
No clear path into leadership.

That’s the most frustrating part:
You’re working hard – but you don’t actually know what to change.

Most PMs assume the answer is:
→ More execution
→ More ownership
→ More hours

But that’s why so many talented PMs plateau.

The leap from Senior PM to Product Leader isn’t about doing more.

It’s about operating differently.

I just wrapped a free Maven Lightning Lesson where I broke down:

→ What actually changes as you move up the PM ladder

→ Why the skills that got you here stop working

→ The 5 concrete shifts leaders expect – but rarely explain

Good news – the full recording is now available 🔥

If you’ve ever wondered:
“Why am I not being seen as a leader yet?”
or
“What am I missing that others seem to get?”

You can get clarity in under 30 minutes.

Watch the free recording here:
👉 https://lnkd.in/eVckANk9

Stop guessing and start operating at the next level.

graphical user interface, application, website

One week only → 33% off 🔥
This is the ONLY time I ever discount tuition.

Early enrollment for my next live “Persuading People: The PM's Edge in the Age of AI” Maven cohort (Feb 2) is now open.

Take this course if you want to become known as the PM who:

→ Rallies a room around a clear narrative
→ Persuades senior leaders when the stakes are high
→ Shapes strategy through influence – not just good ideas

This week is the only time I ever discount tuition – to reward those who commit early.

And to make this a no-brainer:

→ If your plans change, you can move to a later cohort at the same locked-in rate.
→ If you don’t see results, I offer a 100% tuition-back guarantee. After running multiple cohorts, I *know* the transformation this class delivers.

In other words: high upside, zero risk.

👉🏽 Enroll now to save 33% off tuition: https://lnkd.in/d7STtuG8

. . .
P.S. Once early enrollment closes, I won’t be offering this discount again.

Over 2300+ PMs have signed up for my free Maven Lightning Lesson. 

If you feel like you’re doing great work but keep getting passed up for leadership positions…

I’m here to tell you that you’re not imagining things, and you’re not alone.

The rules change, and no one ever tells you how. I will.

Don’t miss out – RSVP for free! Even if you can’t attend live, you’ll get the recording afterwards.

I’ve heard EVERY excuse in the book for why a PM isn’t getting promoted.

See if any of these sound familiar:

→ “Promotions feel random.”

→ “I don’t have the right relationships.”

→ “One person’s feedback held me back.”

→ “My results are strong, but my scope is too small.”

→ “I’ve done everything right, but the system is rigged.”

→ “I’m in the wrong company – there’s no growth here.”

→ “I’m not the self-promoting type. I just focus on my work.”

→ “My peer got promoted, and I’m clearly better than them.”

→ “I’m overworked – I don’t even have time to think about this.”

→ “I’ve been in this role for X years. It should’ve happened by now.”

If you’ve used one of these excuses –
you’re not broken.
I’ve said many of them myself.

These excuses aren’t the reason you’re stuck.
They’re the symptom.

The real issue is this:
As you move up, the rules change – and no one explains the new game.

The skills that made you a strong PM will NOT get you promoted into leadership.

The leap from Senior PM to Product Leader requires a completely different operating system.

That’s exactly what I’m teaching in 3 days.

- - - - - -
💬 Move Up the PM Career Ladder, FAST!
📅 Tuesday, January 27
⏱ 30 minutes
💸 Free (recording included)

I’ll break down:
• What actually changes as you move up
• Why great PMs plateau
• 5 concrete techniques you can apply immediately to start operating like a Product Leader
- - - - - -

This is the last call.

Even if you can't attend live, register to get access to the recording.

If you’ve been stuck, frustrated, or quietly wondering “what am I missing?” – this session is for you.

👉 Register free: https://lnkd.in/eVckANk9

There is a specific trap that kills PM careers.

It happens to the best of us.

You are good at your job. You ship features. You manage the backlog. You keep engineering happy. Management loves you. But they don’t promote you.

They keep you exactly where you are.

Why? Because they trust you to execute, but they don’t trust you to lead.

Execution is about managing certainty. Leadership is about managing ambiguity.

To break free from this trap, you have to stop reporting on “here’s what we’re doing” and start selling “here’s where we’re going.”

That requires one specific skill: Persuasion.

It’s the ability to walk into a room of conflicting opinions and walk out with a unified direction. It is the only skill that matters for the jump from Senior PM to Director/VP.

I am teaching this exact skill set starting Monday, Feb 2nd.

This isn't about "presenting better". It’s about learning how to: → Explain your thinking when the answer isn’t obvious → Frame trade-offs so leaders trust your judgment → Turn messy inputs into decisions people align behind

⚠️ Enrollment closes in 72 hours.

Don't let another Monday go by stuck in the execution trap.

👉 Enroll here: https://lnkd.in/gWc7t4sc

P.S. Careers don’t stall because of lack of talent. They stall because of delayed decisions. If you're telling yourself "now isn't the perfect time," remember: next Monday will look exactly like this Monday unless you do something different. The only real risk is staying where you are.

I believe the best products don't just solve problems, they anticipate needs and create moments that make people say, "wow, that just works."

My journey into product management wasn't traditional. I started writing code, building apps for India's GST revolution. But I kept finding myself more excited about the "why" than the "how" - why users struggled, why certain features resonated, why some products became indispensable while others collected digital dust.

That fascination never left. It followed me through scaling payment systems at Razorpay, building AI-powered learning platforms at upGrad, and now to ETS, where I'm helping shape assessment experiences across borders and cultures.

What drives me? The intersection of three things:
- Technology that feels like magic but works like clockwork
- Deep empathy for user struggles and aspirations  
- Data-informed decisions that don't lose sight of human stories

My approach to product is a lot like my approach to CrossFit and cooking: start with fundamentals, iterate relentlessly, measure what matters, and never forget that the goal is progress, not perfection. Both taught me that consistency compounds, small improvements add up, and the best results come from respecting the process.

I'm passionate about AI-powered products, EdTech innovation, and the art of making complex systems simple. Always happy to connect with fellow product enthusiasts, founders building something meaningful, or anyone who wants to swap stories about product challenges over coffee (or debate the best post-workout meal).

Let's connect! 🚀

---
*All views and opinions shared here are my own and do not reflect those of my employer.*

Rishav Gupta

7 Types of Product Managers I have worked with:

1. The Data Paralytic
Has 15 dashboards but still can't make a decision

2. The Stakeholder Expert
Somehow gets everyone to agree (You never see them do it, but it works)

3. The Roadmap Rewriter
Changes priorities every Monday (Calls it "staying agile")

4. The Feature Hoarder
Adds to backlog, never ships (2,847 tickets and counting)

5. The Meeting Assassin
Solves in Slack what others need 6 meetings for

6. The Vision Seller
Can sell anything to anyone (Even features that don't exist yet)

7. The Pessimist Prophet
Predicts every disaster (Always right, never appreciated)

8. The Ship-at-all-costs
"We'll fix it in v2" (There is no v2)

Great products aren't built by one type of PM.

They are built by teams that know when to research, when to ship, and when to just make the call.

The best teams have a mix of all these types.

Which one are you?

Tag a PM who fits one of these types perfectly! 

#ProductManagement #PMLife #ProductStrategy

The “Why” behind the “How” | Product @ ETS

Nobody teaches you how to recover after shipping something terrible.

But you will ship something terrible. Guaranteed.

Here's the playbook that actually works:

Hour 1: Acknowledge it publicly, internally first
Don't: “Users are still learning it”
Do: “This didn't work. We're investigating why”

Day 1: Kill it or fix it. Pick one. Fast.
Keeping broken things live while you "gather more data" destroys trust faster than the bad feature itself.

Week 1: Share what you learned
The post-mortem isn't for leadership. It's for the team.
What did we miss? What did we learn?

This is where you build credibility.

The mistake most PMs make: They try to defend the bad decision.

“Well the data supported...”
”In theory it should have...”
”Users just need time to...”

No.

The team knows it's bad.
Users know it's bad.
You know it's bad.

Own it. Fast.

Here's the counterintuitive part:
PMs who admit failure quickly build more trust than PMs who never fail.

Because everyone knows everyone fails.
The question is: Do you pretend or do you learn?

Your credibility isn't built on being right.
It's built on what you do when you're wrong.

My recommendation: Keep a “failure log.”

Every significant miss.
What you expected vs what happened.
What you learned.

Review it quarterly.

You'll spot patterns in your judgment.
You'll calibrate your confidence better.
You'll stop repeating the same mistakes.

Most importantly: You'll stop being afraid of being wrong.

Because you'll have proof that failure isn't fatal.

#ProductManagement #Failure #Learning #Leadership #PMLife

Your best engineers don't respect you.

And they're right not to.

Here's what they see:

You've never written production code.
You don't understand the technical debt you're creating.
You promise timelines they know are impossible.
You change requirements mid-sprint because a customer complained.

Then you talk about “partnership” and “collaboration.”

From their perspective? You're the person making their job harder while taking credit when things ship.

The brutal truth most PMs won't admit:

"Influence without authority" only works if you're bringing real value. Without it, you're just someone with opinions about other people's work.

The engineers who respect you aren't respecting your product skills.
They're respecting that you:

- Actually understand technical constraints
- Fight off stupid requests from sales
- Protect them from context-switching chaos
- Admit when you don't know something

Your fancy frameworks don't matter.
Your prioritization matrix doesn't impress them.
Your user research doesn't change their opinion of you.

What matters: Do you make their job easier or harder?

Most PMs make it harder and wonder why engineers are “difficult.”

So ask yourself: What did I do this week that made my engineers' jobs easier?

If you can't answer that in 10 seconds, that's your problem right there.

The PMs who get defensive reading this? You're exactly who this is for.

The ones nodding along? You already know what to do.

#ProductManagement #Engineering #HardTruths #TechLeadership #PMLife

Every organization has a “pace layer” problem.

And most PMs are optimizing the wrong layer.

Here's what actually happens:

Layer 1 (Fast): Features, experiments, UI changes
Layer 2 (Medium): Positioning, pricing, core workflows
Layer 3 (Slow): Architecture, business model, platform decisions

Most PMs spend 90% of their time on Layer 1.

Because it feels productive.
Because you can show progress weekly.
Because stakeholders can visualize it.

Meanwhile, Layer 3 decisions made 2 years ago are slowly strangling your product.

The database architecture that can't scale.
The pricing model that prevents enterprise expansion.
The platform choice that limits what you can build.

But nobody wants to touch Layer 3 because:

- It's expensive
- It's risky
- It won't show results this quarter
- You can't demo it

So organizations manufacture urgency around Layer 1.

“We need to ship this feature NOW.”
”Competitors are moving faster.”
”This customer needs it urgently.”

The urgency isn't real. It's organizational avoidance of hard, slow problems.

A counterintuitive approach:

Allocate your cognitive energy inversely to what your organization prioritizes.

If everyone's obsessing over Layer 1, you should be thinking about Layer 3.

Not to block Layer 1 work.
But to ensure Layer 1 decisions don't make Layer 3 problems worse.

The questions that matter:

“If we build this feature request, does it lock us into this architecture for another year?”
”Does this pricing exception make enterprise expansion impossible?”
”Are we optimizing this quarter at the expense of next year's options?”

Most product failures aren't from picking the wrong features.
They're from accumulating slow-moving constraints that eventually paralyze you.

What would you fix at Layer 3 if you had the time and mandate to do it?

#ProductManagement #Strategy #TechnicalDebt #SystemsThinking

Most PM negotiations are lost because you speak first after proposing something.

Learn to shut up.

The pattern:

You: “We think this feature will take 6 weeks”
[3 seconds of silence]
You: “But we could maybe do it in 4 if we cut some scope...”

You just negotiated against yourself.

The power move:

You: “We think this feature will take 6 weeks”
[Silence]
[More silence]
[Uncomfortable silence]
Them: “Could we do anything to speed it up?”
You: “Sure, we could reduce scope here and here...”

See the difference?

First scenario: You volunteer the compromise
Second scenario: They ask for the compromise

Psychologically, people value what they ask for more than what's offered.

The technique works everywhere:

- Pricing: “This will cost $50K” [silence] vs. “This will cost $50K... or we could do a smaller version for $30K”
- Timeline: “Ready in Q3” [silence] vs. “Ready in Q3... although we might be able to rush something in Q2”
- Scope: “This includes A, B, C” [silence] vs. “This includes A, B, C... but we could drop C if needed”

Most PMs are so uncomfortable with tension they fill silence with concessions.

The best PMs let others fill the silence with questions.
Then answer those questions.

The rule: After stating your position, count to 10 before speaking again.

It feels eternal.
It's usually 3 seconds.
And it changes the entire negotiation dynamic.

Try it in your next planning meeting.
The silence will feel awkward.
The results won't.

What's a negotiation where you spoke first and regretted it?

#ProductManagement #Negotiation #PMSkills #Leadership #PMLife

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