This week, Product College hosted Melih Özbekoğlu, fmr Head of Product at Letgo, for a particular #AskMeAnything session. Melih talks us by crucial expertise for PMs to develop, transferring 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 method.

As a Head of Product at OLX Autos, Melih is now main a workforce of Product Managers to make sure buyer excellence throughout completely 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 around the globe together with Turkey, Indonesia, India, Mexico and Latin America.

Earlier than the merge of Letgo workforce 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 workforce inside the Automobile tribe. Previous to becoming a member of Letgo, Melih labored at completely different ranges (Head of Product, Senior Product Supervisor, Product Supervisor) in C2C, B2C and SaaS B2B firms. In complete, Melih has over ten years of expertise within the Product Administration world.

What expertise (smooth skills-hard expertise) do you assume are most essential for an individual getting ready to change into a PM?

An excellent query. For my part:

First is to have an analytical mindset. The extent of proficiency could change, however you undoubtedly have a sure degree of talent on understanding information.
One other essential one is to be nice at communication. Both written or verbal. You don’t need to change into an extrovert, you will be good at written communication too.
And perhaps crucial one: a PM needs to be curious. PMs ought to continuously search for methods to have higher merchandise and enhance themselves.

What modified throughout your transition between completely different Product Supervisor roles (PM, senior, head, and so on.)? What was one of the best factor about transitioning to roles with broader tasks? And did you miss one thing from extra IC roles?

group of people in an office looking gathered, seated and standing, around the same laptop screen

The largest change is concerning the degree of affect you can have on drawback fixing. While you go into an administration function, you progress right into a supporter function, quite than fixing issues by yourself. It’s essential to empower the Product Managers in your workforce, you shouldn’t be micromanaging them. However it’s essential make certain that they’re doing the best factor.

Smartest thing about transitioning roles is to have a much bigger influence. Sure, you do much less arms on stuff, however you have got extra influence on the corporate’s and customers lives. I nonetheless generally get my arms soiled and do IC stuff. However typically, I can say having discussions with engineers and designers to discover a resolution is one of the best factor as an IC from my standpoint.

How did issues change within the Product Division after Letgo obtained acquired? How do you lead the workforce at OLX vs. at Letgo? Any key variations you observed that PM’s ought to pay attention to going from a small to massive org or going by an acquisition?

The largest change is the dimensions of the workforce. And with the growing measurement, communication turns into the largest problem. In a smaller org, you have got simpler entry to your friends, management, information and so on. However in a much bigger one, it’s essential present extra effort to get alignment, to unravel dependencies between groups or to only persuade somebody. The PMs going by this transition must be able to over talk the whole lot. That’s greatest change that I noticed thus far.

Any last recommendation?

There are a few issues I can say:

Don’t neglect that there’s no resolution that matches each org. Don’t stick with just one framework or philosophy. Perceive the necessity, circumstances and act accordingly.
You’re not the boss of the whole lot, however you’re the person who would have affect on the whole lot. Hearken to individuals, change into a facilitator.
Keep curious, don’t cease studying.