Many product managers fall into the role by accident. Most come from a varied background and you’re never too old or too young to start on a product management career. There will come a time though when you reflect on how far you have come in your career and whether you feel you are continuing to progress at a pace that is aligned with your aspirations.
Just as with any career, it is not unusual for product managers to move from individual contributor positions to leadership positions. In the interceding period and in various roles, the nature of your responsibilities are likely to evolve and you will be periodically thrown bones of responsibility and accountability that are fresh and new for you and perhaps even a little frightening!
In the end, though, I believe that we’re all responsible for our own career progression and personal development. Although organizations will talk up a story of engaging with you and providing you with all the opportunities and resources to grow in your career; the final decision to stagnate, pivot or grow rests with you, the individual. Only you can be the true master of your own destiny.
With all that said, here are my thoughts on some things you need to consider.
Product management is a curiously new career choice. unlike historically prevalent and traditional business roles, product management doesn’t necessarily have clear indications on what you need to do, to advance in a division, organization or career overall. Part of this lack of clarity lies in the fact that a Product Manager designation can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people and organizations.
Read my piece on, “what is a product manager?” for some clues on the types of product managers out there and where you might be.
Clement Kao suggests that you think of your Product Manager position in the same way that you think of a Product Roadmap. It is an interesting construct and worth a read.
My view is that the consummate Product Manager is the go-to person that guides the entire organization on the scope-of-functionality, market-positioning, proposition-value, business-benefit and experience associated with one or more products in an organization.
You can read more on the distinguishing traits of these five characteristics in my individual posts about them.
In this role, Product Managers have to leverage a combination of skills to ensure that the products remain relevant and compelling to the market for which they are intended.
The first of these skills is one related to empathy. If you haven’t done the job yourself, of your audience or key user community, then you need to find out what they do in their jobs, the challenges that they have, and how what you offer as a product addresses their needs. This ability to put yourself in the shoes of your customers or audience is a very important aspect because this helps to frame the general direction that the product should be targeting its capabilities at. In engagement with audiences for example, how much do you listen to respond as opposed to listening to learn?
The second skill is one wherein you are able to optimally work with constraints. There are typically three constraints that you need to be aware of, these are foundational, resource or method based constraints.
Foundational constraints are those that are binding for everyone, such as the laws of physics and say 24 hours in a single day. So straightaway here, you can think about how you manage your time effectively. Resource constraints are tied to the number of developers or designers or engineers or machines or dollars that you have at your disposal to produce products. This speaks to the importance of prioritization. The final constraint type, “method constraint” is tied to things like technical debt, technical architecture or decisions that you have made around how you organize, decide and execute your product management plans.
The rounding elements to all of this empathy and work within constraints is underscored by your own mentality, ethics and emotional commitment.
The mentality in this context speaks to how you view your role relative to the wider audiences that you would typically interact with. If you are a shrinking violet or suffer from an extreme case of impostorism then your likelihood of progressing is most probably going to be impaired by your fears. There has to be an element of ballsiness to Product Management without being too obnoxious but certainly about being a lot more definitive, confident and categorical. If for example, you don’t know something, make an educated guess, state that it is a guess and then commit to actually getting a more solid answer and follow through on that commitment.
My view is that the topic of ethics is one that is not necessarily taught well in academia or business for that matter. A dictionary definition will say that for most, ethics are the standards of “good and bad” behaviours defined by the community and social norms. So here, you can consider respect for the rule of law, intellectual property, social justice, equality and avoidance of corruption. If your peers and those that deal with you,l view you as leading by example and holding a high ethic, in work and conduct then this makes you approachable, trustworthy and respected.
Emotional commitment, speaks to how you deal with your peers, your colleagues and direct reports. Are you inviting, embracing and open to dialog? Further, do you believe in your role and your business and above all, the product that you are responsible for? An inability to demonstrate emotional commitment will convey either the impression that you are simply going through the motions of being responsible and ownership as opposed to working with your stakeholders and interested parties to understand their perspective and communicate progress, tactical and strategic direction of the product in meeting their needs and expectations. Communication is the greatest part of this aspect because your inability to articulate can hold you back from being understood and in turn your product being understood.
There is no silver bullet to developing your empathy, mentality, ethics and emotional commitment. A lot of this is about soft skills development but there are some things that you can develop through more technical skill development.
Honing your skills around time management, prioritization, requirements definition, use case development, proposition elaboration and presentations will all help with rounding out your competency.
As suggested by Kao, there is a continuum here that you need to keep in mind. You may start out relatively uncertain or unsure about something but as you progress in your familiarity with the job at hand your levels of confidence and outward demeanor should be reflected in the levels of engagement that you have with stakeholders and interested parties.
Kao references a neat spreadsheet that he has compiled against a matrix of skills and evolutionary product management positions. Some of these may be familiar to you in your organization, some may be redundant, depending on the complexity of the Product Management function. Either way, the progressions are logical and useful for you to consider in your own journey.
About the author
Clinton Jones has experience in international enterprise technology and business process on four continents and has a focus on integrated enterprise business technologies, business change and business transformation. Clinton also serves as a technical consultant on technology and quality management as it relates to data and process management and governance. In past roles, Clinton has worked for Fortune 500 companies and non-profits across the globe.