Sudeep's User Guide
A guide to help you understand my working style
What is this guide?
The purpose of this guide is to make it easy for us to work together. 😊
I hope this guide will help you understand my working style and enable us to work effectively together, without extra second-guessing.
Disclaimer: It’s a WIP guide, that will keep evolving.
About me
I’m Sudeep, currently the Head of Product at Fyle. I’m based out of Bangalore, India.
Previously, I worked as a Product Leader at Signeasy, an eSignature platform, focused on US SMB market.
I consider myself a generalist with a strong analytical skill set, owing to my early experience as a Data Analyst. This helps me keep the big picture in mind, and frame the right questions.
I graduated from IIT Guwahati in 2014.
Working style
Bringing whole self to work: I like to be my whole self at work and give it my 100%. My effectiveness gets drastically reduced if I’m not able to fully be myself at work. For me, it’s more about the people I work with than the work itself.
Leadership style: I’m not a fan of micro-management. Instead, we will set the goals together, and I expect you to stick to the agreed scope and timeline. You have the freedom of means to achieve the goals. I will help you resolve challenges, say no to distractions, bring clarity and be more productive.
Problem statements: When coming to me with a problem, I insist that you also come up with a few possible solutions and your own recommendation after weighing the tradeoffs. This will give you the chance to think deeply about the problem statement and help us learn from each other’s perspective.
Being data-driven: I am a big fan of leveraging data to make effective decisions and discovering new insights. Whenever possible, try to validate assumptions with data. Remember: asking the right questions is more important than how the data is obtained or represented.
Review and feedback: I like to go depth-first, rather than broad-first. This means I will ask you questions to gain a thorough clarity on how a certain process, system, etc. works before we move on from the topic.
Decision making: Product Management is more art than science. There will be many subjective calls to be taken. I frequently refer to the types of decisions as Type 1 and Type 2. Type 1 is anything that requires deliberation, significant effort, and is irreversible. E.g.: launching a new integration. Type 2 decisions require less effort and are reversible. E.g.: changing copy on webapp. I expect you to bring the topic up for discussion with the right parties for Type 1 decisions, and make a decision on your own and inform for Type 2.
Urgency of bad news: Share any bad news immediately. Never hesitate to share bad or negative updates or news. I would appreciate if you share it as soon as it happens.
Meeting durations: I dislike it when meetings go over time, because it means that the expected duration wasn’t thought through. I respect your time and I expect you to do the same.
Curiosity: I’m naturally curious and like to understand how things work. I’m always interested in learning about new tools, systems, etc.
Being scrappy: I’m a fan of scrappy approaches to achieve the objective faster. Think Zapier, Google Sheets, scripts, etc. I’m always ready to get hands-on with tools.
Things I do that may annoy you
In the spirit of transparency and openness, I’m listing some of my flaws below. The reason I put them here is to inform you that these are MY faults/quirks, not yours. I intend to consciously make an effort to improve here over the long term.
I sometimes take attention to detail to the extreme. I might focus on seemingly minute details during certain discussions (formatting, language, structure, etc). It is OK to call out if you feel we’re getting distracted from the main agenda.
My feedback may sometimes come across as too blunt. Please understand how I tend to give feedback (section below). I may sometimes express the challenge more than the care aspect. It is OK to ask me where I’m coming from, in such cases.
Feedback
Receiving: I love to receive feedback - both positive and negative. I typically seek feedback from all my team members and peers regularly.
While you can approach me with any feedback, I would appreciate specific and constructive feedback where you also share suggestions or insights on how I can improve.
Giving: I commit to providing:
direct feedback that
comes from a place of care.
This way, the feedback becomes a gateway to open communication and trust. I am inspired by the book Radical Candor on this philosophy.
With either of these 2 elements missing, the feedback does more harm than good →
1:1s
My preferred 1:1 format:
Current initiative status
What’s coming up next week
Any blockers, or areas where you need my help
Any learnings from the past week
I’m open to personalise this structure based on your feedback.
Working hours
Start around 10am IST, deep work during 1st half, till 2pm.
I prefer to schedule recurring meetings in the 2nd half of the day - 2pm onwards.
Communication
I prefer discussions in public channels. What gets discussed may be beneficial to others as well.
I might miss Slack messages addressed to a common alias. Please tag me directly for anything that needs my attention.
For meetings, the agenda and any relevant documents should be added to the invite. This helps ensure I can pre-read the material. That way, the meeting can be run effectively, where the most relevant details are discussed.