This week, Product Faculty hosted Melih Özbekoğlu, fmr Head of Product at Letgo, for a particular #AskMeAnything session. Melih talks us by means of a very powerful abilities for PMs to develop, shifting from particular person contributor (IC) to supervisor, and the distinction in Product Administration between a big and small firm.
Meet Melih
Melih Özbekoğlu is an skilled Product Administration skilled with a robust technical background. He helps firms ship merchandise that individuals love to make use of on the intersection between UX, enterprise, and know-how, with an analytical and inclusive strategy.
As a Head of Product at OLX Autos, Melih is now main a staff of Product Managers to make sure buyer excellence throughout totally different enterprise strains. He focuses on Development, consumer onboarding and pricing elements of OLX Autos platform, which is working a multi-billion greenback automotive transaction enterprise in a number of markets all world wide together with Turkey, Indonesia, India, Mexico and Latin America.
Earlier than the merge of Letgo staff to OLX Autos group, he labored at Letgo for 3 years the place he started as a Senior PM earlier than being promoted to Head of Product, main a staff inside the Automotive tribe. Previous to becoming a member of Letgo, Melih labored at totally different ranges (Head of Product, Senior Product Supervisor, Product Supervisor) in C2C, B2C and SaaS B2B firms. In whole, Melih has over ten years of expertise within the Product Administration world.
What abilities (comfortable skills-hard abilities) do you assume are most necessary for an individual getting ready to develop into a PM?
An excellent query. For my part:
- First is to have an analytical mindset. The extent of proficiency might change, however you undoubtedly have a sure stage of ability on understanding knowledge.
- One other necessary one is to be nice at communication. Both written or verbal. You don’t must develop into an extrovert, you might be good at written communication too.
- And perhaps a very powerful one: a PM must be curious. PMs ought to always search for methods to have higher merchandise and enhance themselves.
What modified throughout your transition between totally different Product Supervisor roles (PM, senior, head, and so forth.)? What was the very best factor about transitioning to roles with broader tasks? And did you miss one thing from extra IC roles?
The largest change is in regards to the stage of affect that you may have on downside fixing. If you go into an administration position, you progress right into a supporter position, slightly than fixing issues by yourself. You have to empower the Product Managers in your staff, you shouldn’t be micromanaging them. However you want to ensure that they’re doing the best factor.
Smartest thing about transitioning roles is to have a much bigger influence. Sure, you do much less fingers on stuff, however you have got extra influence on the corporate’s and customers lives. I nonetheless generally get my fingers soiled and do IC stuff. However basically, I can say having discussions with engineers and designers to discover a resolution is the very best factor as an IC from my viewpoint.
How did issues change within the Product Division after Letgo bought acquired? How do you lead the staff at OLX vs. at Letgo? Any key variations you seen that PM’s ought to concentrate on going from a small to giant org or going by means of an acquisition?
The largest change is the dimensions of the staff. And with the rising dimension, communication turns into the largest problem. In a smaller org, you have got simpler entry to your friends, management, knowledge and so forth. However in a much bigger one, you want to present extra effort to get alignment, to unravel dependencies between groups or to simply persuade somebody. The PMs going by means of this transition needs to be able to over talk every thing. That’s greatest change that I noticed thus far.
Any remaining recommendation?
There are a few issues I can say:
- Don’t overlook that there’s no resolution that matches each org. Don’t follow just one framework or philosophy. Perceive the necessity, circumstances and act accordingly.
- You’re not the boss of every thing, however you’re the individual that would have affect on every thing. Take heed to folks, develop into a facilitator.
- Keep curious, don’t cease studying.
