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Issue #34 | 1/21/2025
From the Editor
Hey fam!
Quick one this week—because if AI can crack a 50-year-old math problem, you can read this in under 3 minutes.
Here's what's inside:
The automation trap most delivery teams are falling into (and the one question that tells you if you're optimizing yourself out of relevance)
Why the Adyen Project Ops role pays $120K to manage complexity, not timelines—and what that tells you about strategic positioning
How Reckitt's revenue team used AI to do what most PMs should be doing (but aren't): surfacing insights execs would pay consultants $500/hour to find
Let's go!
Phedra Arthur Iruke
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Job Board
🦸 Hero Role of the Week
380+ jobs pulled. One caught my eye (mostly b/c my sister works there 🙂)
Project Operations Manager @ Adyen | Toronto
Adyen processes payments for Meta, Uber, H&M, Microsoft. When you're rolling out a POS system or card issuing program, you're not just hitting deadlines—you're enabling revenue. Your project delays cost real money. Your smooth rollouts unlock growth.
The "nice to have" section tells you everything: payments experience is a bonus, not required. They want someone who can manage complexity, build relationships across time zones, and translate technical capabilities into business value. That's the shift from executor to strategist.
Why this role is actually strategic:
You're advising clients on product fit for their business needs (consultative, not transactional)
You're delivering client feedback to product teams (you influence roadmap)
You're building "scalable business as usual processes" (you're designing systems, not just running them)
No spoilers. Go find it. Filter on jobs posted in the last 7 days and hit Apply Now.
👉 Browse this week's top roles 👇
New roles added daily.
Professional Development
💡 Micro-Tip of the Week
How to run a blameless postmortem
Ask 'what' and 'how', never 'who'.
The system failed, not a person.
Industry News
A few things from Big Tech & business leaders that you can steal in 10 minutes
Touch grass often
Reckitt’s bold ambition: Harnessing AI to redefine revenue growth management
Source: McKinsey Insights
When Reckitt, a global leader in home and consumer health care, set out to transform the way it managed revenue growth, the company knew it had to think big. Facing margin pressures, inflationary head...
Read more → Here
Community Wisdom: Managing fragmented AI usage across teams, avoiding generic UX when building with AI, tracking funnel metrics at the pre-PMF stage, thoughts on Anthropic’s Cowork, and more
Source: Lenny's Newsletter
Read more → Here
Dina Powell McCormick Joins Meta as President and Vice Chairman
Source: Met
Dina will be a member of Meta’s management team, helping guide the company’s overall strategy and execution.
Read more → Here
The Future of Shopping? AI + Actual Humans.
AI has changed how consumers shop, but people still drive decisions. Levanta’s research shows affiliate and creator content continues to influence conversions, plus it now shapes the product recommendations AI delivers. Affiliate marketing isn’t being replaced by AI, it’s being amplified.
In case you missed it
Community Pulse
This week in PM land, the community is fired up about Process & Productivity, AI & Automation, and Leadership Challenges.
Hot discussion: What an unprocessed photo looks like (Hacker News) sparked 399 comments.
Other trending conversations:
Ask HN] [Ask HN: Is it still worth pursuing a software startup? (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46654726)
Dev.to] [The Real Cost of Loving What You Do: The Uncomfortable Truth About Developer Burnout (https://dev.to/georgekobaidze/the-real-cost-of-loving-what-you-do-the-uncomfortable-truth-about-developer-burnout-43n6)
ProjectManager.com] [Production Engineering: Roles, Tools and Technology (https://www.projectmanager.com/blog/production-engineering)
What's on YOUR mind this week? Hit reply and tell me.
Energy
🎤 Phedra's Take
This week's theme: Process & Productivity
Here's my take: Everyone's automating the wrong things. Teams are using AI to write faster emails and generate meeting summaries—basically optimizing the work that shouldn't exist in the first place. Meanwhile, the actual strategic work (analyzing trade-offs, connecting dots across teams, translating business needs into technical constraints) is still manual.
What I've learned: The delivery professionals getting promoted aren't the ones automating their status updates. They're the ones using automation to surface insights their executives didn't know to ask for. One PM I know built a simple script that flags when engineering velocity drops 20%+ week-over-week and auto-generates a list of potential blockers from Jira comments. Her VP now asks her opinion on resourcing decisions. That's strategic positioning.
Your move this week: Pick one recurring manual task and ask: "If I automate this, does it make me more replaceable or more strategic?" If it's the former, automate it anyway and use the time to do something your VP would pay a consultant $500/hour to analyze.
That’s it for this week.
Keep showing up, keep cheering each other on.
How I can help?
The Delivery Career Decoder is the first comprehensive career transformation system designed specifically for delivery professionals, program managers, and technical operations experts who are ready to break through the "execution ceiling" and step into strategic leadership roles. This is a proven methodology that leverages your unique strengths as a delivery professional while systematically building the strategic positioning, executive presence, and communication skills that open doors to VP, Director, and C-suite opportunities.
The Business of Delivery Team
P.S.
You got this!