AMA: Meta Director Technical Program Management, Vasanth Arunachalam on PM 30/60/90 Day Plan

I worked at Microsoft for about a decade and then moved to Meta to take on a new role, a few years back. That was the most unsettling period of my professional life. I’ve gotten accustomed to a certain culture, way of work life, people, tools & processes etc at one company and the thought of having to do it all over again was intimidating. I decided to build a 30-60-90-day plan in my new role at Meta to provide clarity to my team (and to my manager, myself) about how I’m going to ramp up. Deborah Liu, currently CEO at Ancestry, who was at Meta at that time, pioneered a template that is widely used at Meta. She also wrote a blog post about it linking to the template which I highly encourage you all to read and leverage. Her framing resonated well with me and I’ll share my personal take on it. First 30 days of LEARNING: One of the common pitfalls that n00bs (aka new employees) do is rushing to prove their value. I took the time to understand the new company’s culture, vision, mission, top priorities. I took the time to know the people (teams, stakeholders, partners) and began to build trust. Understanding how you and your team fit into the bigger puzzle is important. The listening tour, sitting in customer feedback sessions or taking a bootcamp class (if your company offers one for your role) are great avenues of learning during this time. Have a clear understanding of what is expected of your role and publish the 30-60-90 day plan to provide transparency into how you’ll ramp up. 30 to 60 days of ALIGNING: Having an opinion is important for any strong leader. Based on my 30 days of learning, I began to form opinions about what is working well and what isn’t and validated my POVs. Aligned with key stakeholders on what a forward looking plan for your product or team might look like. You are also getting comfortable by getting hands on (if you are an IC) or making small decisions (if you are a leader), continuing to build trust. 60 to 90 days of EXECUTING: This is when the rubber hits the road and the time when you are about to lose your ‘n00b card’ (or honeymoon period). I clearly articulated the execution plan for the updated vision, roadmap and began to lead the team down that path. At this point, I’ve gained my team’s trust and I am one with the team. This is also the time I wrote my own performance goals for the next quarter or half and shared it out. Getting feedback continuously allowed me to adjust quickly. Taking on a challenging product feature or solving for a crisis situation has always allowed me to ramp up and gain expertise quickly. I recall Sheryl Sandberg saying once “Never waste a good crisis”.

The listening tour is what I love most while taking on a new role. I’m a social person and I love meeting people. What better than getting to know the people you are going to work closely with? I typically have a ledger that I carry with me into these 1:1 conversations with my cross functional team members and take notes diligently. This also helps me to organize those into themes. Towards the end of my 30-60-90 day ramp up, I do a share out of my perspective on what works, what doesnt and where we could do better. Here is how my 1:1 conversations during the listening tour are structured - * Introducing myself and getting to know them as an individual - How long have been here at the company? Where did they work prior? If they are comfortable, getting to know where they live, their family and what they enjoy doing in their personal life etc * What is working well (product, team)? * What is not working well (product, team)? * Where can I and my team help the most? * What is the best way to partner with your function and vice versa?

“Rushing to prove value” is one of the common pitfalls of starting in a new role. Having said that, you want to make steady and incremental progress in delivering value. See my response to the question "What's your best product management 30-60-90 day plan to make a big impact at a new company?" for the framework you can adopt for a 30-60-90 day ramp up plan. Here I’ll outline some quick wins you can aim for but I can’t stress enough on not coming across as ‘rushed’. * Relationship building with your team. Get to know them better as individuals, take the lead on setting up that recurring team lunch or happy hour, take the lead on driving that team stand up. * Owning an in-progress project and taking it over the finish line (driving a product launch, leading a SEV). * Sharing your perspective on product/customer pain points and what we could do to get better. * Unblocking teams where necessary on a day to day basis. * Documenting product flows, platform architecture or other business critical information as you ramp up. Often times when I wanted to ramp up, the lack of proper documentation is why it takes time. You could fix that for future team members.

I’ll apply the framework outlined above to this question and talk about setting up a Technical PM function for the first time. 30 days of LEARNING: I’ll start with a listening tour, meeting with all cross-functional leaders (Engineering, Data Science, Design, Marketing, Operations etc) and trying to understand where the Technical PMs can add value. I usually get a list of all the areas where help is needed. I ensure that the expectations from the team aligns with the Technical PM job profile and career expectations defined for that job profile. Next I get a deeper understanding of the following - 1) Overall org growth plans (hiring, site strategy etc) 2) Long term strategy for the Product/Platform along with current priorities 30 to 60 days of ALIGNING: Once I have consumed all the information, I typically create a plan to build the Technical PM function and scale out for the next 1 to 2 years. I’ll prioritize roles I’m going to fill based on where the Technical PMs can have the most impact in relation to the org priorities. I’ll ensure I have alignment with the cross functional leaders on that plan. I advocate for hiring strong leaders in advance and not waiting for the team to grow to a certain size. This is because - 1) Strong Product leads think big picture and know how to design orgs for the future 2) Coming in early gives them the opportunity to grow product expertise better. They get to be a part of the evolution of the product which is critical 3)They are good at hiring too. 60 to 90 days of EXECUTING: The next order of business is to partner with recruiting and kickoff hiring. I’d also recommend getting hands on as a leader, by taking ownership of a critical product or platform area before you staff your team. This provides the opportunity to understand the space and the challenges your team might face in their roles. Now is the time to also build some of the key processes to help your incoming team be successful. I’ve addressed some of these in my previous AMA

I’m assuming the question is about setting a ‘team’ vision/mission and one doesn’t exist yet. The mission statement is the “What” and the vision statement is an ambitious future state of what the world might look like when you accomplish your mission. A crisp vision/mission statement serves as a strong identity for your team and guides them during critical moments of decision making, gaining alignment, prioritizing resources etc. Here is a framework that I’ve leveraged in the past to arrive at a vision/mission statement for my teams, collaborating with our cross-functional partners. Have each person in the working group articulate the following in once sentence. * Understand our role * Why do we exist? * What is our purpose? * What principles drive our product building? * Understand our customers * What does research tell us? * What problems do they have? * How are we helping them? * Understand how the future looks like * What’ll happen if we didn’t exist? * What does success look like? Next, create the vision and mission statements based on common themes and ensure it aligns with the company’s vision & mission. These statements should typically be short, start with a verb, strive to be aspirational and endure the test of time. Once the working group of cross functional partners align, socialize with key stakeholders and the broader org. You might want to consider doing a branding splash (new logo, ordering swags) to get people excited about the new vision & mission.