Shania Rasheed Nalagath

I would say being up-to-date with the market trends and being updated with what your customer pain points are - those two are some of the key things that drive success in any leadership role in this AI world. But it's not just about having soft skills anymore. Being able to actually get your hands dirty and be a builder is something that's also required, because our roles are evolving. The amount of time I had spent earlier on making documents and thinking of ideas, brainstorming - agents help us improve quite a lot. Incorporating AI in your day-to-day work has helped me improve my productivity significantly. In general, I would say my success comes from keeping up with the market and starting to be a builder, not just a traditional PM.

One of my mentors told me something that really stuck with me: if you are feeling too comfortable there, that means you need to change. It's not just about the title or going up the ladder - if you're happy there, that's great. But if you start feeling like you're not getting intellectually stimulated, when it starts feeling like a rut and you've gone into your comfort zone, then that means you have to change. We generally resist that a lot because we're in our comfort zone - we know the people, we know the org, we know the company. It's a big decision to make that change, and especially as women, we go through so much of this imposter syndrome. So it's really hard to do that jump, and a lot of people don't prefer to do that, or at least get nervous, including me. But if you're feeling too comfortable somewhere, that's even more reason why you have to make that change. Otherwise, the learning will come only after that.

I would say you have to start polishing your AI skills and becoming a builder. You cannot just be a PM where you're just shipping products - you have to know the product, you should have product sense, you should know system design. You need the key skills to be able to handle the stakeholders and the management, the influencing without authority, those kinds of skills, because that an agent cannot do, that AI cannot do. There is still the human-led aspect, the human involvement when you have to get alignment between big leaders, between C-suites. An agent cannot sit and do that, at least not yet. It's going to take a while. So polishing those skills, being able to be a builder, and understanding the entire stack end-to-end is something that will take us forward or keep us relevant, because roles are evolving. The line between a designer, product manager, and a developer is reducing.

One of the biggest challenges is influencing without authority. Another major challenge is that because everyone, everywhere is all about AI, and we are one of the pioneers of AI at Microsoft, being able to keep up with the market trend and make sure that our product incorporates that as a PM has been challenging. We try to make sure that we play catch-up there, aligning with what the customers want versus where the industry is heading, and dealing with the constant change in strategy. Because it's so fluid right now - every 2-3 months, you'll see something new about AI. Making sure that we are up to date, our product is up to date, and we as the leaders are up to date about it, and ensuring we incorporate and align with what the customers want and the customer requirements - that has been a pretty big challenge in the current market.

I think integrity and being ethical are most important to me. Personally, I am very aggressive with my growth, but I do not like doing things or playing when it is in any unethical way, or something that does not resonate with me. Whether it's an initiative, or the way I handle or manage any of my tasks from day to day, or conversations with the partners, or how the relationship building happens within the org or within the company - for me personally, the integrity part and the ethics is what drives me a lot. Because unless it resonates with me, I'm not somebody who can go ahead or push myself to do that.