Three key principles for a clear, results-based approach to Product Management career pathing and promotion are objectivity, transparency, and support. While this article is written first for the person, setting up the PM career and promotion path (product executive or otherwise), Product Managers can also reference these topics to help grow their organizations and careers.

Feed your PMs and build a strong Product Management team with a strong career pathing and promotion system. If you’re a PM not getting the career support you need, or a PM leader who hasn’t proactively set up clear career pathing (and may be letting down your finest people), this article is for you. Product Managers want career support and PM leaders can offer this support with the right proactive setup. Does your team have a clear, well thought approach or has Product Management leveling and pathing evolved organically, but inconsistently over time? Is your approach proactive and fair, or reactive based on PM negotiating and positioning? Or perhaps the inverse situation, when managers keep PMs at their levels as long as they can get away with it? Unfortunately many Product Management teams don’t invest in a proactive career system eventually disappointing, and even pushing out their PMs.Ĭareer pathing considers roles (titles, responsibilities, and compensation) and how that path will grow over time. Their hunger for career growth needs a great department career pathing and promotion system, or else PMs can get restless, feel undervalued, and look to find a new home and mentor that can feed their career growth. In my experience, PMs are amongst the most driven and career ambitious individuals across any function. PMs thrive on this organizational impact and are often growth-oriented in their personal development. What ends making the biggest difference is how we deal with new knowledge and pick up new skills.The Product Manager, who helps drive strategy, execution, and user science in a digital product company, has a high leverage role - PMs regularly work through at least ten other people across engineering, design, data, marketing, and user research. So, while we can improve our abilities, they are still considered natural and inbuilt rather than learned behaviors.Ībility, though important, isn’t the key factor when it comes to learning and growing as a product manager. The main differentiator is that abilities are innate. There is a very fine line, but a line nonetheless, between abilities and skills. It is the ability to apply our knowledge.įor a product manager, this includes: - Skills like communication, prioritization, negotiation, leadership - Ability to use design, analytics, and project management tools - Conducting user research - Relationship and team management skills - Story writing, feature definition - Effective collaboration 3. Skill is the capability of performing a task that we develop through practice, training, or experience. Skills are the application of the theoretical knowledge that we acquire. It could be information that you acquire from books, magazines, online videos, college classes, blogs, etc.įor a product manager, this includes: - Learning about the latest technology trends like machine learning, IoT, etc - Becoming well versed in user experience research - Design knowledge and understanding - Knowledge of analytics and A/B testing - Familiarity with economics - Domain and market knowledge - Grasp of business fundamentals 2. It is considered the theoretical understanding of a concept or a subject. Knowledge can be considered as any information that we acquire. Learning = ( Knowledge * Skills ) + Ability 1.

When thinking about growing as a product manager, you can view learning as a combination of three key areas:

As a product manager, your growth ends up being so much determined by your love of learning. What ends up being one of the essential necessities as a product manager is one’s curiosity and desire to learn. One is expected to constantly pick up information in these areas and use their learnings to help solve complex problems. As a product leader, you are wearing multiple hats - design, engineering, legal, sales, marketing, and so much more. Once you end up as a product manager, your growth and success rely on many different factors. So whether you majored in computer science, industrial design, English, or political science, product management is a role that you can jump into. Product Management isn’t something you find as a major in your school, and most product managers end up in their role from a variety of disciplines. It is one of the least defined roles in an organization. The activities and work that one does as a product manager are constantly in flux. Product Management is a weird discipline.

Growth product manager