Upleveling your PM career w/ Shobhit Chugh - CEO of Intentional Product Manager

In this episode, Shobhit Chugh, former Google PM and founder of Intentional Product Manager, shares practical strategies for moving beyond execution and becoming a standout product leader—even when you don’t have formal authority or a supportive manager.

🔑 Key Takeaways

1. Don’t Mistake Productivity for Progress

• Just being busy doesn’t mean you’re growing.

• Like Amazon’s press release approach, define what you want to be known for before the next review cycle.

• Align your work to that vision and offload or eliminate tasks that don’t serve it.

2. Influence > Delegation

• Product managers can’t “delegate” in the traditional sense.

• Find teammates who want to own tasks you shouldn’t be doing—for their own growth.

• Example: Shobhit handed off API spec writing to an engineer aiming to become a PM.

3. Make the Strategic Urgent

• Block time doesn’t protect strategic work—deadlines do.

• Make public commitments (e.g., “I’ll present this strategy next Thursday”) to create urgency and accountability.

4. Think in Terms of Leverage

• Focus on high-leverage activities like:
• Continuous customer research (not just during discovery phases).
• Repeated communication of long-term vision.
• Building visibility with stakeholders and leadership.

5. Avoid Common Mindset Traps

• Don’t assume company red tape is immovable—often it’s just unchallenged hearsay.

• Overwhelm is emotional, not factual. Audit your time and challenge false constraints.

6. Develop an “Angle of Mastery”

• Instead of a generic “10-year B2B PM,” position yourself based on specific problems you consistently solve.

• Example: One client branded themselves as the “friction eliminator” in complex B2B platforms.

7. Build Your Brand

• In a competitive market, being the “obvious hire” is essential.

• Build visibility on platforms like LinkedIn. Share your thinking, frameworks, and customer insights.

Join Shobhit on your journey to product leadership at Intentional Product Manager