Product Manager tries 'Influence without Authority' at home; Sleeps on the Couch
At 7 AM, stretching his stiff body on the balcony of his Salarpuria Greenedge flat, the newly married Product Manager seemed visibly frustrated. The neighbor, a Human Resource professional, observed in silence while sipping morning tea. After a few minutes, unable to hold himself back, HR asked the PM if he was okay. In doing so, bringing an air of discomfort to the otherwise blissful Bangalore morning.
A month back, the PM on the joining date stood up the same HR. There was a no-show. A regret email stated that the in-demand PM had to move to another city and couldn't join the early-stage startup.
The HR manager facing hiring challenges moved to Salarpuria Greenedge in the hopes of filling the open positions, at least in the vicinity of how the Greenedge sales folks have been closing new customers. The legend has it that offers are made and accepted in this society during evening strolls, while swimming, playing badminton, and enjoying a sauna (during precedented times).
The PM now worked at Chhola, the sister concern of the food-tech startup Bhatoore valued at 6 billion Rocketship emojis 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 . In the very few weeks of working there, the PM had acquired new skills. Like blocking his own calendar to make himself look busy, coming to meetings late, saying no to people more often, eating on the Zoom calls, feigning confidence, never accepting mistakes, blaming it on the developer, blaming it on the sales team, blaming it on the tech stack, blame it on the marketer or blaming it on his Keto coach.
Alas! Coming back to the morning conversation.
The PM paused stretching and looked HR in the eye as if it was HR who was wrong in expecting he would join. Without any remorse, he narrated the backstory of his stiff back and the painful morning stretch.
The night before he was reading Shreyas Maushi's Twitter thread. As Shreyas's super follower on Twitter, he religiously follows everything Shreyas says. A super follow entails you apply every shred of advice in the thread every-fucking-where. It is like using the thread to sew your life back to rocketship emojis 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀.
He went on "last night I was lying on the couch scrolling through Twitter and suddenly this thread popped up on the screen. It talked about influence without authority. I had goosebumps, man."
"I straight-ahead to talk to my wife", he continued "and told her to change the grocery buying roadmap. I demanded change. I nudged her to adopt the changes for a better living experience in the house. Told her to change maid timings, to increase productivity. You know small changes big impact. I explained to her the RICE framework for ordering rice. I was ready to change her worldview through first-principles."
"Then? What happened?" The HR person asked intently.
"7 things happened. And one did not. No 3will blow your mind - I slept on the couch, you idiot." the PM replied.