We asked Anand, our very own Product Manager, how is it going with the new normal and here’s what he has to say.
How has your life@Zeta been so far? We would love to know a few things that went well for you in your journey with us.
Zeta feels like my most natural habitat. As a Product Manager, you look for a place where your ambition and philosophy of building products is matched with opportunity and alignment. And for me Zeta has been that place. The way I look at it — Zeta is a place for the hungry and the ambitious, who want to build something special. And everyone at Zeta shares that common denominator which makes it such a great place to work.
The best part about Zeta so far has been the diversity of opportunities and challenges I have been able to take on. It tests every fibre of yourself, and allows you to be the best version of yourself. I have seen myself grow as a Product Manager, and as a professional in the last year and a half.
To wit, Zeta is a place of opportunity. The only currency at Zeta is excellence, ambition and hard work, if you bring those to the table, there are no limits to what you can do here.
Let’s talk a little bit about this new normal we’re all in: Can you tell us how you are investing in yourself to bring about a transformational change in the way you work while working from home?
The last few months have been a phase of trial and error, making mistakes and quickly learning from them. But I think there are 4 things that I have learnt and have tried to practice to adapt to the new normal:
1. Not blurring lines between work and home:
As tempting as it is to get up 10 min before your first meeting at office and not turning video on, discipline is key. Get up everyday and be ready for work — Dress well (you’ll feel instantly better when you do so) and have a regular work-routine. Have a dedicated spot where you work everyday — it helps you switch on and off easily.
2. Schedule, plan and measure:
“What is measured, is controlled.” Spend time in scheduling your work — both personal work and office work. It is quite easy to get carried away with work (you work long hours partly because you’re less efficient).
3. Mental health is key:
Nobody can be successful if they are not mentally healthy. There are three tipping-points for mental health, which you should be mindful of and manage — Hurry, Worry and Curry.
Hurry — Stay planned and budget time well. Hurrying through things and putting pressure on yourself burns you out quickly. Investing time in planning is the best and simplest way to mitigate this.
Worry — Mental stress, anxiety (both on the office front and on the pandemic front) is not easy to deal with. Take ample precautions and control the variables that you can influence. Allow the uncontrollable variables to play out and react appropriately. The art of the zen. :)
Curry — Eat right. We’re all indoors and couch-potatoes more than usual. And in the middle of a raging pandemic where immunity is the only respite, watch what you eat. Eat well, eat healthy and do not hesitate to learn a new skill and cook for yourself. The health benefits alone will ensure that you ride through this phase well.
4. Discipline:
Do the little things right. Turn on your video during your meetings. Do your best to start and end your day at a specific time. Try and have a sit-down meal (with friends/family) at least once a day. It is the little things that you do well now that offer compounded returns later.
Do you believe in the philosophy of “Mastering the art of continuous improvement” (the 1% rule) if yes, tell us all about it, we would love to know.
I had a friend (an incredibly smart, talented and hardworking person) in B School who had the following desktop wallpaper:
And I remember that I scoffed at him back then because I thought he was burning himself out by putting too much pressure on himself — not enjoying the experience. But he truly espoused this value and is today, a shining example of what you can achieve if you have your eye on those incremental gains.
Not to say I wasn’t a believer (why wouldn’t you publicly admit to believing in cool things like continuous improvement?), but I just didn’t have the stomach for it. But in Zeta, I found a home that forced me to challenge myself everyday. You are presented with opportunities that mandate you to be a better version of yourself. So among a lot of things, I am grateful to Zeta for making me a believer in continuous improvement.
This sounds rather vague in theory, but here is what I think are excellent starting points for incremental improvement:
1. Not repeating the same mistakes:
Do make mistakes. Make many of them — that’s how you learn. But ensure you learn from them and not make them again — that is incremental improvement.
2. Do more of what works:
If you know that doing something works for you, do it more. It can be something at work — writing better documents/writing cleaner code. It can be on the personal front — exercising more/eating better. Whatever it is, if you have seen the benefits once, you must regularize and inculcate it slowly and gradually. The natural corollary to that would be to do less of what doesn’t work.
How do you plan your week in the new normal? How are you balancing ‘work life harmony’?
I’ve only found one way to manage this — plan and prioritise. I spend the first 2 hours every Monday on weekly planning. I always only plan for 70% of my week and leave 30% open for ad-hoc work. This sets me up quite well for the week — it helps me set realistic goals and achieve closure at the end of the week. That feeling is important! I’ve learnt the lesson of prioritisation the hard way — it is impossible to do everything asked of you right away. So it’s important that you know what is important and what can wait.
On the harmonising front, transparency is key. I have a little note that I stick on my door when I’m in a meeting — I’m not to be disturbed. And it helps when I let the family know when I am available during the day — helps plan daily work better. There is no substitute to having 1 or 2 sit-down meals a day with family everyday — I always have a lunch block on my calendar.
Do not, at any cost, compromise on your hobbies. The more you stay disciplined about work, the better you’re able to manage your leisure. The honest truth is that everyone is in the same boat. It’s just as hard for everyone to find that balance — you just have to keep looking.
What are some of the challenges you faced while WFH and how have you coped with it and worked around to overcome them?
I’ve been lucky in the sense that I’ve invested in creating an efficient workspace at home a few years ago. So in terms of infrastructure, there wasn’t much that hurt me. My father and wife are both working from home, with call schedules that essentially meant dealing with a lot of background cross-talk.
The real challenges are of two types:
Drawing the line to end a day — The first month passed and I didn’t even realise when I was working and when I wasn’t. I think a sense of closure is important to draw that line between work and home, and setting daily targets (and ticking them off) helped.
Maintaining posture — This is severely under-rated. A good chair with good back support is essential for long work hours. There is no fun in blowing your back and nursing through a sore back. A good chair is a fantastic investment. One that paid off well for me. Of course, it helped a lot that Zeta allowed me to carry my office chair home.
We heard you say — ‘Always understand the absolute minimum that’s required to make something successful’ in one of your sessions. We found this very insightful, could you give us an example of something you worked on that required the absolute minimum to make that project a success.
One of the cornerstones of my product philosophy is to keep things simple. There will always be the obvious temptation to build something sophisticated and grandiose — but I’ve found that “customer obsession” is not always about solving every problem of the customer. Investing time in simplifying and deconstructing the problem space, and defining a clean problem statement helps identify problems that are worth solving immediately.
An associated dimension of the “keep things simple” approach is to identify “minimum change, maximum value” opportunities for customers. Products, especially live products, have inertia. It stands to reason that successful products leverage this inertia very well. So when enhancing products, leverage that inertia. Know your customer and the problem space well enough that you know the very minimum that is needed to deliver maximum value. In fact, you may end up delivering greater value much more quickly.
Truth be told, this is actually a lesson I got to learn from Ramki very early in my days at Zeta. It was one of those “Aha” moments where I ended up wondering why I haven’t been doing that all along. By far, that has been among the most important things I’ve learnt at Zeta.
What excites you the most about being a Product Manager?
I became a Product Manager by accident — I just enjoyed wearing multiple hats and solving interesting problems. And that apparently broadly fits into the Product Management bucket.
To be honest, being a Product Manager does two things — By design, it puts you at the fulcrum of what is happening — across engineering, marketing, sales, business, finance, legal.. What have you. No two days are alike — One day, you’d be in a meeting with some very accomplished people, and the next, you’d be on the ground getting your hands dirty, trying to solve individual customer problems. The breadth of what you get to do as a Product Manager is immensely satisfying.
What is exciting, however, is how your work has a direct bearing on the future of the company. I love sports analogies, so let me make one more. One of the reasons I absolutely love Rahul Dravid is because he knew which balls (problems) he wouldn’t solve and let it go to the keeper. Product Management is a lot of that — It is not just about solving every problem there is. Good Product Management is about knowing which problems to solve, and when. And figuring out those problems that you will NOT solve. I cannot think of another role that allows me to operate with the kind of breadth and depth that a Product Management role offers.
