Latest news with #IshaanAgarwal
Forbes
21-07-2025
- Business
- Forbes
PM's Guide To Running Meetings That Don't Make People Want To Quit
Ishaan Agarwal, Senior Product Manager at Square. Let's talk about meetings. Actually, let's talk about why everyone hates them. You know the feeling. That calendar notification pops up and your soul dies a little. Another hour of your life is about to vanish into the corporate void. The thing is, as product managers, we're often the ones sending those soul-crushing invites. We're the meeting makers. But here's the uncomfortable truth. Meetings aren't inherently evil. Bad meetings are evil. And most meetings are really, really bad. Microsoft researchers found that ineffective meetings are the number one productivity killer in modern workplaces. When people quit jobs, they don't usually cite "too many meetings" as the reason. But dig deeper into exit interviews about "lack of work-life balance" or "inability to get work done," and guess what you'll find? Meetings. Always meetings. Start With Why (No, Really) Every meeting needs a purpose. Not a vague purpose like "discuss Q4 roadmap." A real purpose. What decision needs to be made? What problem needs to be solved? If you can't articulate this in one sentence, cancel the meeting. Here's a simple test. Before scheduling, ask yourself: "What will be different after this meeting?" If the answer is "Everyone will be informed about X," send an email. If the answer is "We'll feel good about alignment," please don't. But if the answer is "We'll have decided between option A and option B," now you're talking. Product managers love to schedule "sync meetings." Stop it. Synchronous time is expensive. A one-hour meeting with six people isn't a one-hour meeting. It's six hours of human potential. Treat it that way. The Guest List Matters More Than You Think Who really needs to be there? I mean, really, not who might have feelings about not being invited or who traditionally attends these things. Who actually needs to be in the room for the decision to happen? There's this weird corporate thing where meeting invites become status symbols. So, here's what you do. You create two lists. Required attendees who need to be there for the meeting to achieve its purpose and optional attendees who might find it useful but aren't essential. Then, tell the optional folks they're truly optional. Write it in the invite: "You're optional for this one. I'll send detailed notes after." Watch what happens. Half won't show up. And the ones who do actually want to be there. Write It Down First You've heard about Amazon's memo culture. Most companies try this and fail spectacularly. They write the memo, then still have the meeting where everyone discusses what they just read. That's missing the point. Writing forces clarity. When you have to put your thoughts into complete sentences, you realize half of them don't make sense. So, write stuff down before the meeting, but not six pages. Write maybe six paragraphs: what's being decided and the context, options and trade-offs. Send it 24 hours before. Give people time to think. Run It Like You Respect People's Time Start on time. If the meeting starts at 2:00, you start talking at 2:00. Not 2:03 when Steve finally joins. The people who showed up on time? They matter. End early. Never end late. If you scheduled 30 minutes and you're done in 20, give people 10 minutes back. They'll love you for it. If you need more time than scheduled, tough. You failed at planning. Keep a parking lot. Someone starts going down a rabbit hole about technical implementation when you're trying to decide on pricing? Parking lot. Write it down, promise to address it later and move on. The Follow-Through That Everyone Forgets The meeting ends. Decisions were made. Actions were assigned. Then, nothing happens. Why? Because nobody wrote anything down. Or they wrote it down but didn't share it. Within two hours of the meeting ending, send a summary, not a transcript. Include what was decided, who's doing what and by when—three paragraphs max. Then, follow up. That action item Jim took? Check on it, but not in a micromanaging way. Ask in a "Hey, need any help?" way. Most action items die from forgetfulness, not malice. The Nuclear Option Sometimes, you end up in meeting hell—back-to-backs all day with no time to think. When this happens, you need the nuclear option. Cancel everything for a week. Send a note: "Meeting reset. If your meeting is critical, please reschedule with a clear agenda and outcome." Half the meetings won't come back. The ones that do? They come back better with a clearer purpose and a smaller group. It's like spring cleaning for your calendar. The Reality Check Meetings aren't going away. We need to align, decide and create together. But we don't need to do it badly. The next time you're about to send that meeting invite, pause. Ask yourself if this is really the best way to achieve what you're trying to achieve. If it is, make it count. Because here's the thing about being a product manager. You're not just building products. You're building culture. Every terrible meeting you run—that's the culture you're building. Every efficient, purposeful, respectful meeting—that's culture, too. Choose wisely. Your team's sanity depends on it. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
Digital Trends
07-05-2025
- Business
- Digital Trends
Complexity's adversary: how Ishaan Agarwal is building tools that disappear
Table of Contents Table of Contents The Foundation for Thinking Differently The Facebook Laboratory Microsoft's Small Business Revelation The Metrics That Actually Matter Square and the Restaurant Renaissance The Ultimate Product Philosophy In an industry obsessed with feature bloat, Ishaan Agarwal stands apart. While most product managers race to add capabilities, Agarwal has built his career on a counterintuitive principle: reduction. 'The best products I've worked on are the ones that rigorously removed obstacles rather than adding capabilities,' says Agarwal, whose product management career spans Microsoft, Brex, and now Square. Recommended Videos The Foundation for Thinking Differently This counterintuitive approach didn't materialize from thin air. Agarwal's unusual educational path — completing both bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science at Brown University in just four years — reflects an early talent for efficiency. But the technical foundation alone doesn't explain his product philosophy. 'Computer science taught me how things work,' he says, 'but my economics and design courses taught me why they need to be built in the first place.' This interdisciplinary background, including advanced industrial design classes at the Rhode Island School of Design, cultivated a perspective that can not only architect complex systems but also understand the humans who must navigate them. His time in Brown's Human-Computer Interaction lab cemented this approach. Under Professor Jeff Huang, Agarwal spent two years analyzing how people actually use technology, not how companies think they should. Those research findings would later inform his professional mission: to create technology so intuitive it essentially disappears. The Facebook Laboratory Many product managers gradually transition into the role from other positions. Agarwal took a more direct route, creating a unique learning opportunity during his summer internship at Facebook (now Meta). 'During my first week, I asked if I could shadow the product team while fulfilling my engineering duties,' he recalls. This innovative arrangement created a valuable laboratory condition—observing product strategy development by day, implementing those ideas in code by night. The experience revealed an important insight about the product development process. 'In product meetings, teams would align on an elegant vision,' Agarwal says. 'Then as implementation progressed, that vision would naturally evolve to accommodate technical considerations, system architecture, and delivery timelines.' Rather than seeing this as a challenge, Agarwal recognized an opportunity—to serve as an effective translator between product aspirations and technical realities. This became his professional mission: building bridges between what users need and what technology can deliver. Microsoft's Small Business Revelation The real testing ground for Agarwal's simplification philosophy came at Microsoft, where he joined the team behind the Microsoft 365 Admin Center. For the uninitiated, this is the control panel where businesses manage their Office, Teams, Outlook, and other Microsoft subscriptions — a critical piece of infrastructure. Originally designed for corporate IT departments, the Admin Center had evolved into a sprawling interface that made perfect sense to its creators but baffled many of its small business users who lacked a technical background but nonetheless needed to manage their digital tools. 'The team interviewed bakers, florists, neighborhood accountants — people who just wanted to add a new employee to Teams or check when their subscription renewed — getting completely lost,' Agarwal explains. 'They didn't care about tenant management or advanced security policies. They just needed to accomplish basic tasks without a computer science degree.' Agarwal's team faced the classic product manager's dilemma: how to serve wildly different user segments with the same product. Their solution was elegant — they created a simplified view that dramatically reduced functionality but made common tasks immediately obvious. 'The answer was building two products in one,' he says. 'Power users could still access every conceivable option, but most small businesses could now accomplish most of their needs through an interface with simple options in human language rather than technical jargon.' The metrics validated his approach dramatically. Net Promoter Score for small business users increased dramatically, and monthly active users grew to millions within a year. Most tellingly, support calls decreased — the surest sign that a product is doing its job without human intervention. The Metrics That Actually Matter This leads to Agarwal's more provocative perspective — that most product teams optimize for the wrong metrics altogether. 'The industry obsesses over engagement — time spent, clicks, interactions,' he says. 'But for utility software, those metrics indicate failure. If someone needs to spend 20 minutes figuring out how to add a user to their account, that's high engagement but terrible design.' Instead, Agarwal advocates for what he calls 'disappearance metrics' — measurements of how quickly and invisibly software accomplishes its purpose. How few clicks did a task require? How quickly did users complete their objective? Did they need documentation? Square and the Restaurant Renaissance This philosophy has found its most complete expression in Agarwal's current role at Square, where he leads product initiatives for food and beverage technologies. Few industries better exemplify the tension between complex operations and time-starved operators than food service. 'When the software is built right, the technology almost disappears,' he says. 'Chefs can focus on their craft rather than deciphering complicated interfaces or hunting for information. That's the ultimate success — building tools so intuitive they become practically invisible.' The Ultimate Product Philosophy This brings us to Agarwal's fundamental thesis: that great technology should eventually make itself invisible. 'Great utility software should be like electricity,' he argues. 'You don't think about the complex infrastructure delivering power to your outlet. You just plug in your device and it works. Software should aim for that same invisibility.' This perspective challenges the conventional wisdom of the tech industry, where feature expansion and increasing complexity are often seen as inevitable. Agarwal believes the software industry is witnessing the early stages of a pendulum swing back toward radical simplicity. 'The tech industry is approaching a saturation point with digital complexity,' he suggests. 'Every minute someone spends wrestling with needlessly complex software is a minute stolen from their actual purpose — running their business, serving their customers, or creating something meaningful,' he says. 'That's time they never get back.' As technology accelerates, perhaps the most valuable product leaders won't be those who build the most impressive features, but those who, like Agarwal, dedicate themselves to making technology disappear — leaving behind only the solution, never the complexity. Digital Trends partners with external contributors. All contributor content is reviewed by the Digital Trends editorial staff.
