Maximizing Your Impact

A lot of us have been doing things wrong. During my observations throughout my career, I have learned that people’s impact has little to no correlation with how much time they’re spending working.

So if your goal is to have more impact moving through your career while working less, three main things can enable people to do that. 

The first is your reputation. The Product Managers that have more impact are the ones who are known as someone worth talking to when a critical issue comes along.  They don’t need to go to so many different meetings. People reach out to them when the time is right. 

Secondly, they have built a network within the organization, such that they pull the right people to get things done.  

Finally, these people are secure in their worth, and they can delegate things even if nobody reports to them.

This observation doesn’t mean you don’t have to put in the extra hours. When you first start your career, you will need to put in many hours to build up your reputation. But over the long term, you need to take a stance to change things and make your contribution not so directly correlated with the number of hours you work.

TRANSCRIPTION:

Hey, everyone. Hope you're doing well.

So I'm on this call today to talk about a very, very important observation that I've had with product managers. And I wanted to bring it to light because a lot of you, a lot of us, in fact ,are just doing things wrong. We're doing a bit too much.

So here's my observation. So I've been tracking a lot of PMs who are clients, not clients, friends, my own career, and there is an interesting thing that I've observed, which is how well the PM's doing, the amount of impact that they're having, and just how happy their team, their boss, is with them, has almost no correlation with how much time they're spending working.

Let me say that again. The amount of impact they're having, how quickly they're moving through their career, and just how happy their bosses, all this stuff, has close to zero impact, zero correlation with how long they're working.

Now you might say, Hey, Shobhit, that's crazy. We PMs, we have so much to do. We're responsible for so many things. How can I have more impact? How can I achieve more? How can I move through my career more while working less? So I'm going to talk about three things that enable people to do that. And then I want you to take an action at the end.

So the first thing that enables people to really have the impact without spending a whole bunch of time doing stuff is their reputation. It's their brand and their reputation. The PMs who have gotten known as someone who's worth consulting, who's worth talking to when important issue comes along. They don't need to go to a bunch of different meetings. People go reach out to them when the time is right, when it's necessary to pull them in.

And so they're not wasting all this time in a bunch of meetings, trying to keep up, trying to get people to involve them. They're just getting involved when it's necessary. And so that's the number one thing. Their brand and reputation helps them along.

The second thing that happens is they've built a sense of network and relationship within the organization, such that they know the right people to pull in to get things done. They don't have to do this themselves. In fact, the more you work, you might be fairly insecure. So you might try to do more yourself so that you can get more credit. And that ultimately just means you're working harder without having the impact or getting people to succeed.

And the third thing that enables these people to achieve so much more while working less is their sense of security, their sense of a mindset that they know that they are worth something. They're worth a lot. They make a huge difference. So that just means they don't need to go each and every single task on their own. They can start to trust other people. They can delegate things, even if nobody reports to them.

So those are the three things that are enabling people, enabling these product managers, to achieve so much more while working less. There's almost no correlation. Their sense of brand and reputation, their network and relationships, and their own knowledge and firm determination of their self worth. And, look, it's played out throughout my career over and over again. The times where I've been working the hardest, it's probably the time that I sucked the most.

Now, does that mean that I never need to put in the extra hours? No, absolutely not, especially if you think of when you're starting a new job, you are probably putting in the extra hours because you're still building all these things up. You're still building your network, your brand, your reputation. You're gaining confidence to make sure you're doing well in that job, or when something major changes, you're reacting to that. I understand there's spikes, but long sustained effort where you're working like crazy, that has nothing to do with the impact that you're going to have. So let me just make that crystal clear and break that myth that a lot of people have on you got to be crazy hard working to be an amazing PM.

Now, what I want you to do is to really think about where you are in your career. And if you are not in a place where you feel you're having that major impact right now as a product manager and where you feel that you're in the right organization, the right setup, where things are just going great for you, you owe it to yourself to set up a breakthrough session with me.

What you need to go to is go to ShobhitChugh.com/apply and find that one hour that we will spend together working through your career, working through and figuring out really where is it that you're lacking? Where are things breaking down? And if you determine that, yeah, we're a great fit to working together, I'll show you exactly how we can work together to help you get to that next level.

But here's what I wanted to say with all sincerity. Too many people are spending way too much of the precious time that we have on this earth and they're wasting it away. They are working at a job where they're not excited by it or they haven't yet owned their self worth. They haven't yet built up the skill skillsets to be an amazing product manager. They haven't invested in self evaluation or in building that network.

And if you're in that state, look, what's just going to happen is things keep getting worse. They don't get better with time automatically. To change something, you have to take a stance. You have to change something. Change is not going to happen on your own.

So, you can do the change yourself. You can make it really hard, or you can make it much simpler by seeking out the right mentor to help you make that change. So go to ShobhitChugh.com/apply, set up that breakthrough call now. Don't let a single day go by. We'll talk, and there's ways we can work together. I'll totally show you how. Otherwise, even if you don't decide to do that, you would find that, for most people, that's been one of the best 45 to 60 minutes they spent working on their career because they never had that time to actually reflect or understand what's going on, to really dig deep and figured out step by step what they need do to get ahead.

That's all I got today. Hope you have a wonderful day, evening, morning, wherever you are in this world. I'm taking a quick breakout, just walking around here. It's actually really hot and I need to get back home soon because I'm kind of kind of tired here, and I will speak to you very, very soon. Ciao.