Principal PM- what they do in a day’s work
tl;dr: Putting structure into ambiguity - this what energizes me! Do it a lot daily as a Principal PM
Things I do on an average day
- Identifying knows and unknowns so that others can act on the unknowns
- Taking on a task when the others involved do not think it is their responsibility
- Guiding on enhancements are important to start now vs do “someday”
- Nudging to see test plans and documentation to ensure it exists
- Storytelling about your customers to partner teams
- Pitching a project to a potential partner when my strong gut sense tells me that we aren’t aligned, to do the right thing and set a stage from my end.
- Directly asking uncomfortable questions about stuff that help me understand whether motivations and incentives between us are aligned
- Representing the gaps in a positive light, with action plans
- Suggesting ways to navigate org for productive use of time and optimize for visibility and impact
- Interviewing and making hiring recommendations
- Congratulating on a job well done
- Identifying unknowns to work with subject matter experts to solve
- Asking for updates on similar projects so that you can start from a better point and replicate the structure for success
- Not having a clue about what the customer call will shape up to be, but showing up and doing my best to understand needs and priorities
- Being non critical in feedback to a doc in public but sharing detailed thoughts in private
Other things I secretly do
- Dozing off in a long boring afternoon meeting that turned out to be irrelevant
- Keep a straight face and not rolling eyes when someone up the chain brings opinion and self praise rather than data and objectivity
- Creating visibility for myself and my team
- Reaching out and setting up time to meet with someone who I can help ramp up on a project
- Grin and bear the irrelevant updates in a meeting to make people feel good about themselves so that you establish a good relationship for the future
- Ask for details in preparation for explaining it well outside the team
- Predict the power battle coming up and start off on the journey to keep enemies closer
- Start off a meeting on a bad note but try hard to recover
- 8am-4pm meetings non stop
- Ignore kids that ask” why are you not carrying me
- Staying up till midnight or 1am answering emails and checking things off my to-do list which don’t seem to look like meaningful work when I think back but are the hinges keeping the carriages running
- Judging people by real picture vs what they say to motivate their team
- Judging people by ability to answer questions vs lead the conversation
- Judging people by their humility despite expertise and by “chop wood, carry water” work
- Retrospecting on a v busy day, well spent time and how it is making me grow a bit every day