Welcome to the Product Leader's Journey newsletter which covers three topics for B2B product leaders: #Product, #Career and #Leadership. The topic for this edition is #Career.
Zoom Out. Move Up.
Reading time: 4 min
Early in my career as a Product Manager, I believed that if I had a strong work ethic, did high quality work, built strong relationships inside the company, a promotion to the role of a Senior Product Manager would be mainly a matter of time.
After all, I know the company well. The company knows me well.
Work should get noticed. Promotions should be straightforward, right?
But they aren't. Why is that?
When a manager recommends an employee for promotion, they are placing a bet on the employee. A very public bet.
Think about this from their perspective.
A recommendation for promotion is more than a simple endorsement. The manager is putting their judgement and credibility at stake. Not just with their leadership, but in front of the entire team and organization.
As savvy readers know, this holds true for promotions at all levels.
Later in my career as a product leader, I was aware of this dynamic, having led teams myself. I had another perspective on this recently in a chat with Natalia Baryshnikova, GM at Atlassian (Season 1 Episode 6 of Product Leader's Journey). She said:
What do you need to do to be a sure bet, beyond all the good work you're already doing?
You must demonstrate that you understand what it means to operate and succeed at that next level. Begin with the end in mind.
Every next level of your life will demand a different you.
- Leonardo Di Caprio
Each role is like a planetary orbit. You are moving very well in your current orbit. But in order to shift to the next orbit you need to have escape velocity. How do you build that?
Broaden your context. Zoom out.
There are five different contexts where you have to zoom out to see the bigger picture:
- Product
- Customer/Market
- Business
- People
- Operating Scope
See the table below for what it means to zoom out in each context, when going from:
- Early career PM to a Senior PM
- Senior PM to a Director PM
- Director PM to Head of Products (This is the senior most product management leader. Depending on the size of the business unit and company, the titles can vary from VP to Chief Product Officer).
Download this table in PDF form
This has evolved from my work with many hundreds of product managers and product leaders over the years conducting workshops on product leadership and 1:1 conversations.
What can you do starting tomorrow?
No matter what level you are at, no matter what orbit you are in right now, find at least one thing in each context that you can start to zoom out on.
Also understand what else is expected in the next orbit in your company specifically.
Each environment is different. Know yours.
So change your lenses. Zoom out.
You will start to see more things, and see things differently.
Make it easy for your manager to bring you up in a conversation with their manager.
All the best!
Image source: Pitchnhire dot com
