When I tell product leaders to think of themselves as a product, sometimes they give me a confused look. I get that we’re people not products which are bought and sold. But when I say everything is a product, even you, I mean it to help product folks realize that they already have all the tools they need to skyrocket their careers. I believe the steps to launch and advance a successful product, can be applied to a software suite or a person’s own career trajectory.
Let’s take a step back to how I came to this conclusion. I’ve spent nearly twenty years working in product at tech companies in the US, and served as an advisor for companies around the globe. Time and again I’ve seen talented product leaders make missteps in their own careers, including myself. There are variations of course, but the main problem I’ve seen boils down to this: people don’t leverage their strengths as product managers to advance towards their own career goals.
To make my point, I’m going to draw parallels to the activities product managers are already familiar with and discuss how those actions can be applied to their career. As a coach, I love to help other product leaders develop their individual growth trajectories with this product mindset. If you like what you’re reading and want to schedule some time to chat, you can reach out to me here.
Setting the Product Vision = Where Do You See Yourself in Five Years?
Whenever I teach about Product Strategy, I emphasize the importance of starting with a vision. Product Strategy is a system of goals and related choices that work together to accomplish the mission and vision of the organization (-Melissa Perri). The mission and vision represent where you are going, and the strategy is the framework that guides decisions to get there together.
Similarly, you should have a vision for where you want to go which guides your own specific near term goals and choices.
Some people have an established path but many of us aren’t clear about what we desire as an outcome, only that we want a change. When establishing a vision for yourself, you must ask similar questions that you would when setting one for a product. How do you want the future to look different? Which customers (in this case company types or stages) do you want to serve? What are the values you want to be embodied in the vision? What is your role in enabling that future state?
Answering these questions will help build a path forward that will align with both your career and personal goals. You’ve potentially heard of the famous V2MOM’s that Salesforce uses when setting strategic directions for products, but you may not be aware that every employee also has their own personal V2MOM which summarizes their vision and goals for the future as well.
Your personal vision should be three to five years out, and it will provide guardrails for what interim goals you will establish.
Understanding the Current State = Where are you NOW?
When you use Google Maps to get somewhere, you need to set your starting point as well as your destination.The same goes for setting your vision; you can’t achieve your desired goal without knowing where you are RIGHT NOW. Likewise, once there is a clear vision for the product, the product manager steps back and evaluates the current state. We ask things like: What customer segments are happy or churning? Where are deals being won and lost? Which features of the product have high adoption or are ignored? What are the most common complaints from customers and prospects?
If YOU are the product, those questions would be transformed into: What do my peers and managers appreciate about my work? Where have I been successful or failed? What skills do I have that are shining through or are underutilized? What experience am I lacking that impacts my ability to advance my career?
A big part of assessing the current state is doing research. The steps are familiar: check out your competitors, do an honest assessment of capabilities, identify the missing pieces in the core product or the whole offer, talk to stakeholders and customers. Assessing YOUR current state and capability gaps may involve looking at the people who currently have your next dream job and see what roles they had prior to getting there. It will definitely require talking to people who hire and collaborate with people in that future role.
Developing empathy for stakeholder needs helps you develop a product that’s more likely to resonate with your market. When thinking of yourself as the product, that means talking to other team leads, executive leadership, and your peers to develop a better understanding about their roles and what they expect of a product leader. This 360 feedback loop will help you know which actions you can take to get them excited about you being promoted to a higher position.
Now that you understand the current state, you can figure out the gaps to fill which will help you accomplish your goals.
Setting a Strategy = Where will you focus?
You have a vision of where you want to go and understand where you are now. It’s time to assess the obstacles in the way and create a plan to overcome them.
Review the capability gaps, prioritize which of them are most important to solve, and then figure out what you need to improve to get to an improved state. While this is standard when working on a product, this might feel more challenging when thinking about your career. Remember that any growth strategy includes who you will serve and how you plan to serve them. The strongest strategies use competitive advantages to grow in ways others cannot.
Therefore, think about what are YOUR unique selling propositions that only you can bring to an organization. Focus on how you can leverage those skills and experiences to launch yourself into the next step. Joao Moita describes how he utilized Teresa Torres’s Continuous Habits Opportunity Solution Tree for evaluating your own career in this awesome post.
Executing the Strategy : What should you do next?
There is no big red button that says “LAUNCH”. The process of getting towards launch is an iterative one. If you’re going to be presenting to senior leadership about why you should be promoted, think LEAN. Talk to stakeholders, get feedback in loops while building the story of why you deserve this. Tweak your message, reduce risk of wasting time on the wrong focus areas, build your own confidence, and win advocates within the company. Help people see how your accomplishments and progress make you uniquely suited for new responsibilities.
The development of empathy that I mentioned earlier goes both ways here. Share with your peers that you’re looking to advance in your career and that you are actively looking for ways to improve. If they are quality leaders themselves, they should respond positively to your openness. Beyond the feedback you receive through a 360 process, you will also gain support within your organization for the next step.
Years ago, I had a coaching client who was pitching their CEO that they should be CPO instead of SVP of product. With that clear goal in mind, we assessed the barriers ahead which included that their company had never had a CPO and that the CEO wasn’t really sure what the value of that role would be in their organization. Together, we worked to develop a deck that showed what a CPO does, what they currently were doing, and the minimal gaps between the two.
Before presenting the deck, my client networked with some board members, the CRO, and Head of Support to get them on board with this new role and them being the person to fill it. They worked to get their feedback on what they would appreciate in a CPO and we incorporated that into the presentation. When it came time to share with the CEO the PowerPoint, the idea of promoting the individual to CPO had been socialized and supported by many key contacts and it was approved without hesitation.
You don’t have to work with a coach to do this. You can work within your existing network, both within your company and elsewhere, to get the feedback you need to best position yourself.
Monitor Progress = When will you know you’re done?
As you know, a product launch is never the last step. Once a product or feature is out there in the world, we always monitor whether it is reaching the intended targets. For a product, we have telemetry to provide data around our success metrics. For your career, this means both having honest follow-up conversations with leadership… and yourself. This process is iterative and should be revisited regularly.
Are you accomplishing the goals you set for yourself? Are your peers satisfied with your performance in the new role? What more do they wish you were doing? Do those things fit within your vision for your career growth?
By now you’ve established a pattern of communicating around the organization, keep doing that. Check in with the people you spoke to along the way to ensure that the problems you’d discussed helping them solve are still the right problems to work on. Talk to your higher ups about interim goals (some people like the 30–60–90 day timeframe), and communicate your progress. Reach out to those who helped you along the way to say thanks.
One thing which I can’t emphasize enough, is keeping track of your accomplishments. The only guarantee is that things will change, in life, in business, everywhere. Find ways to highlight your achievements in your new role so everyone knows you deserve to be there and potentially be given more responsibility. This shouldn’t be the last time you advocate for yourself, nor your last promotion. Maintaining a list of your successes will provide you the confidence to self-promote and always be growing.
Now, Get to Work!
My hope in laying out the above is that product leaders realize that they already have the tools they need to manage their own professional trajectory. You’re already doing many of these actions EVERYDAY. Think about the ways you can apply the tools you have, and get started on your vision. You don’t have to work with a coach, maybe there are people in your office or broader network that you can ask for help. If you want to set up some time to chat, ask questions and see if we’d be a good fit to work together, reach out to me here. And remember, you’re not the first person, nor are you the last person who will go wants a promotion… the difference is in the actions you take to reach your goals.