Impact = Environment x Skills

Bangaly Kaba is a Reforge Partner and the former VP Product Growth at Instacart and Head of Growth at Instagram. During his time at Facebook, he managed a lot of Rotational Product Managers (RPM's). RPM's would do multiple 6-month stints in different parts of the org, then at the end of the rotation, they would choose a full-time placement.

At the end of their rotation with he would always have the same conversation:

• How are you going to choose your next rotation?

• How are you thinking about full-time placement after you finish your rotations?

After a number of these conversations, I realized many struggled with this and similar career decisions. To help solve this, he created a framework called: Impact = Environment x Skills

The framework states a few things:

1. Career progression is the result of the impact you create.

2. Impact is the product of your Environment and Skills.

3. Environment is the result of your Manager, Resources, Scope, Team, and Compensation

4. Skills break down into communication, influence, execution, and strategic thinking.

Bangaly says that evaluating each of these variables isn't about creating a spreadsheet that spits out the decision, but rather finding the most important variable so that you can focus on grappling with that piece.

Bangaly built out a step-by-step approach to using the framework. My three favorite points:

• "One trap is thinking you just need to work on yourself in order to grow your career. But you are only one part of the equation. There is a whole other part of the equation, which is your environment. Your environment either limits or amplifies your own abilities. T***he variables of your environment are just as important as the variables of you***."

• "It is the product of these variables, not the sum. At the highest level, if your skills are great but your environment is wrong, then you aren't set up for success. Or if your environment is great, but you don't have the skills to create impact, then you are also not set up for success. Looking at these variables as a sum misrepresents your true ability to create impact and drive outcomes."

• "The most important advice I ever received was from Madhu Muthukumar, ex-Dir Product at Facebook and now Head of Product at Robinhood. He said "Invest as much time in storytelling as you do in execution." Great execution with poor communication limits your impact over time. You could be doing great work, but with out great communication then it won't receive the attention that it deserves.You need to embrace that communication is more influential than the other skill variables."