5 rules that will unlock your Product Management career

Nikhyl: Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of The Skip podcast. This one's really, a step back, there's been so much content that I've kind of shared over the last six months on the podcast and the previous years, and then this year on the newsletter that I sometimes feel like it's hard to kind of make head or tail out of all of it. It's hard to organize it and it's all sort of around this notion of career and product management, and combining the two. And so what I wanted to do is use this episode to sort of pull together kind of five rules. That I think can unlock your PM career and rules is a strong word.

It may not be rules per se, but it's sort of five insights that I've kind of gathered from a lot of the different episodes and in the show notes, I'll do my best to kind of connect some of these notes with prior content that I have, so that way you can kind of use it as almost a decoder ring for some of the things that I've been sharing over the past few years.

I should also mention that this episode is a slightly longer version of what I recorded with Product School. The wonderful people over there asked me to pull together a presentation on this topic of unlocking your career. And I thought it would be a good opportunity for me to just spend a few extra minutes here.

So if you've come to me from Product School, this is a bit of an overlap. So let's dig in. Let me start by providing an overview of these five lessons.

The first is to product manage your career like a product. The second is ensure each transition is career additive. Third is whom you know will matter as much as what you know. The fourth is find a strength area and try to build a superpower in it. And the fifth is to just bet on yourself. And so all five of these, I'm going to walk you through in a bit of detail here.

Let me start with rule number one, product manage your career, like a product. I think most of you that are product managers have this skill that you've been developing for years and perhaps decades, and sometimes you don't turn it on yourself and look at your career, through those expertise. So what I mean by that is when you create a product, you often start with a vision. Then you work through a strategy, then you end up creating tactics and that ultimately gives you releases, version one, version two, version three, and so on.

And in some ways your career is like that. Your goal is not to think through whether you should stay versus go. Your goal is to think about whether the next career move is in service of something bigger, something broader. This vision for your career is like your vision for your product, and by being too short term focused, oftentimes you'll make the right decisions in the short, but not the ones in the long.

Just like if you were to ship a feature that perhaps might be important for today's customer, but maybe less important for tomorrow's customer. And the scale and the breadth of the product that you want to create is really what you're trying to chew on.

And so I call the podcast and my content The Skip, because think about not just the next move, but the move after that. Not just your boss, but your boss's boss and what role he or she plays. This is the unlock of being long-term focused as opposed to short-term focused. In some ways, we've also talked about products going through this journey of phase one, this drunken walk, product market fit, and then secondly, Phase two is when you get to growth and perhaps hypergrowth.

And then phase three is when you've got to scale and you think about products that have very different needs during this journey. And in some way, the discipline of product management is totally different in the early stage, the mid stage and late stage. Well, I would argue that the exact same thing happens in career.

In early career, you're in this mode of learning as much as you can, experimenting, trying to find strength areas, which we'll talk about here in a second. But in phase two, you want to double down find those areas of strength. Find those areas to specialize, move into leadership. These are your power years of earning, this sort of mid phase of career.

Perhaps it's for most people, 10, 15 years after they get started. Maybe if you're a very fast performer, it's a little earlier than that, and then you have 10, 12, 15 years where maybe your impact will be the greatest, your income will be the greatest. And then if you're fortunate enough to get to a late stage of career where you may be in a position where you're motivated differently, maybe you're motivated to give back, maybe you're motivated to advise or to take on a non-traditional role where you're in a position to be less operational and you're able to spend more time balancing career and other interests of your [00:05:00] own.

Well, again, all three of these phases are very different, so so what you want to avoid is prematurely trying to lead too quickly before you have an expertise and learned how to build something. Or be perhaps in a position to lead for so long, but increasingly becoming weaker as a leader because you have less energy and less excitement and you want to move into this next phase. So make sure that as you're in each of these phases, you're clear on what you're trying to achieve and what you're trying to accomplish.

Now, the last point here is that a lot of times the way we make our products better is by getting data, looking at the research, seeing what customers have to say.

Getting different points of view, this feedback, this understanding of where the product is going, how it's actually landing with customer. Is the bedrock for how we make better product decisions, right? In some ways it's the exact same thing with career. You need to have a tremendous amount of feedback, and all of you were probably telling me that, hey, I don't get a lot of feedback in my current role.

Well, again, you don't want to trust your manager or your company to provide you that feedback. You need to build the self-awareness and the tools to ensure you're pulling as much signal as possible. You're actively checking on that feedback and actually saying, hey, how did this land with you? Is this working the way that you expected?

Asking friends and potentially partners and other folks to give you feedback proactively, because the value of that is that when you have that self-awareness of actually absorbing what they're saying and the skills to pull this feedback, it's just like in product.

And if you're trying to build product without any sense of how it's landing with others. You're probably going to make a lot of mistakes, and I fear that in career where we want to be able to improve. We want feedback, but we're not getting enough signal, and then we're just continuing on hoping it'll work itself out, or trusting others to ensure that. So rule number one, product manage your career, like you product manage your products.

Rule number two, ensure each transition is career additive is somewhat similar in the sense that it's very predicated on thinking long term, but thinking through the lens of who your next employer will be and what you're trying to say to them. And that employer might be another manager at your current company or another project, or it could be a completely different job or it could be a different phase of what you're trying to do next, but regardless, we're always thinking through, is what I'm doing today going to make sense for the future and is it going to set me up? And the biggest mistake I see that people come to me and are very much like, hey, I'd like to have a career chat.

I want to talk about what it takes for me to get promoted, and I've always said, well, sure. Promotion is a sign of advancement and a sign of mastery of what the company values. And so that is career additive, no doubt. But what you don't want to do is be so tightly held on the scope of your role.

Hey, I was a level seven. I was a manager of this project. That in and of itself is just the starting point. The real question is what story can you tell? What did you build? What did you face in terms of adversity? What did you end up coming up with to solve said adversity? How did you bring your team together? What element and role did you play personally?

The story is what people are going to want to know. They're not necessarily going to want to know just like what happened that you were in the room for. They want to know what part of the movie you played, not just that you saw the movie and understood it, and they certainly don't want to know just that you were a Level X at this company, because it won't translate necessarily to their new opportunity, the challenges that you then face. So this is [00:09:00] the key of making sure that you are thinking about your story today and ensuring that it's a strong story, ensuring that it that will set you up well into the future.

As a side note, if you were given two choices, someone who had a substantive responsibility, but they had had that responsibility for some time and had it taken them some time to get there, and then you were to go back and look at someone. Who, for example, had grown quickly year after year, who went from learning to developing a skill to practicing that skill, to mastering that skill.

And that skill might be translating a skill into an environment or actually building an actual expertise. The person who is adaptable, who's moving quickly through career is almost certainly going to be the person you choose. And all too often we don't tell the story of, look at how fast that I've been able to figure things out.

Instead we get too fixated on, here's what I know today and here's what the company has acknowledged. Because again, the new environment, the next project, they're all going to be how quickly can you solve today's problem that is probably slightly different than anything you've seen before and provide value.

And so. the growth rate is actually more important than the absolute value of yours, scope and the title, and the level of leader that you are today at your company. 

And then lastly, one big caveat that a lot of people, particularly those in consumer they will say, I'm very drawn to focus on products that I can practically use myself.

Products that I can tell my friends about products and companies that I can be proud to be associated with, or missions are doing something very important for the world. And my viewpoint is absolutely strive for that. But recognize that behind the scenes, those companies and those products might not be career additive.

They might be enjoyable on maybe during the interview and you might get excited about, boy, I'm going to go join this great company. I use their products every day. Oh, I use their products too. I can't wait for you to be involved with them. And then you get there and turns out that nobody wants to hear what you have to say, or turns out that your manager is not particularly good, or the culture is terrible and it's very demeaning.

It's not a place where you can be your true self. It's not a place where your efforts are actually acknowledged. Well, if you had a trade off a company that had the world's most boring product, a product that takes you 20 minutes to explain to your mother because they don't have any understanding of what you're doing, but you love the fact that your coworkers are very motivated to do a good job that you're seen by the company. Your manager is actually helping you advance and that cares about you, and ultimately, your best work is being presented, but it's not the most important thing for the world. Recognize careers are long. This is a chapter in the book, perhaps even a few pages in the chapter in the book.

And that if you're going to have 10, 12 jobs and you're going to work for 30, 40 years, it actually is more important for you to get ahead. And to learn and to be seen, and to do your best work than it is for you to have bragging rights on the name or the product or it's personal connection. Sure. If it's a consumer product and you're a consumer crafter, it helps you.

To know the product in and out and to understand it, but it's just as important for you to take a product that you don't personally use and be able to drive value out of that too. Because in some ways it's almost like it forces you to look at the data and be more clinical and principled on how things work.And so rule number two is make sure each of these moves and the investments you make are career additive.

Okay. Rule number three, whom you know. Will matter as much as what you know. So this is a topic that I haven't spoken about as much on The Skip, but it's very much played out in my own career. In phase one of career. You were very focused on building core skills, and so you know, it's very easy to think through, like are you competent in the discipline that you've chosen to focus on.

Product management, can you ship stuff? Do you have opinion? Can you bring a team along? All those good things. But I think that when you get further in career in sort of act 2 and act 3, what you start realizing is a lot of it comes down to quote unquote luck. And a lot of it comes down to being in the right place at the right time.

Maybe being tapped on the shoulder for an opportunity that you weren't in market to find, or maybe it's a reverse. You found something and then you grab someone from the past and pull them forward. And what that does is it sort of speaks to how many people you know and how connected are you in an authentic way.

The biggest regret I hear from folks all the time, Is they'll tell me, hey, you know what? I left this company and I wish I had gotten to know more people. People say this all the time in college is one of my big regrets in my college years is, hey, I wish I had known more folks in college.

And I think that the same thing applies to companies because there's wonderful people that you work with. There's customers, there's peers, folks that work maybe for you, maybe the people that are above you, people that are interns, new hires, other functions. All of these folks are all working hard, but in many ways, some of them are at the top of their career or they're in those prime moments.

They have superpowers. And for you to be in a position to get to know them in an authentic way is huge. Now, I'm not here to tell you that you should network. What I'm not trying to get you to do is be inauthentic. The few of you out there are going to hear this and be like, oh yeah, I network all the time.

I spend all my time connecting with folks on LinkedIn and being known to folks and my perspective is, that's valuable to some extent. What you really want to do is have relationships with people, authentic relationships, and so my, my technique here is to say, well, for those of you that find this unnatural, find 30 minutes a week.

Pick one person a week. Or maybe someone that you've already spent time with to really have a, a deeper conversation. Get to know them and their career ambition. See if there are ways that you can help them. And people will be like, oh, you know, I'm early in my career. I don't think I can help anyone. no you'd be surprised you're working on a project.

They don't probably have as much context. Maybe you can walk 'em through it. Maybe it's an intern who's a little earlier in their career. Or someone new to the company who may be more senior, but you have the interest and time to walk 'em through things that they may not know or just a chance to listen and understand, hey, how have you kind of went through these career transitions on your own?

Or how have you been able to build this expertise that I see in you? Folks will want to connect with you if you're genuinely authentic and you have very specific questions. If instead you come to them and says, hey, I would like to be known to you, so that downstream, when an opportunity comes up, you might pick me.

People sense that they know that you're networking, they know you're not really interested in them, you're interested in the concept of them, and that will backfire. And so what I'm really looking for is the most authentic way for you to meet folks. And for those of you that are, you know, introverted, Which is the vast majority of folks that are in this industry, recognize that 30 minutes a week is not a lot of ask, especially if it's one-on-one, and especially if it's authentic and meaningful and you have some reason to have a conversation or some value that you can add.

And after that conversation, you'll know if it's doesn't feel right, don't invest. If it is something that you have a good conversation and you know you're finding yourself acknowledging it, try to find ways to continue that forward. Just continue to get to know folks. See how you can be of help, because 5 years, 10 years, if you do that once a week, you know, 40, 50 conversations over the course of a year.

That is a lot of luck to be able to present to the world. A lot of opportunities will come because, hey, there is someone I met a few years ago at my previous job, I've gotten to know them. They're great. Or maybe you transfer to that team and you already have a leg up because you know some of the folks there, or vice versa.

You are going to go to a new opportunity and you need to establish a team. Or you think, who do I know who I would recommend for this opportunity for my friend's company? Oh, I do know someone. Oh, that pays back.

This is a very important part of career advancement, is the connection with others. Because this is not a single player game. This is a multiplayer game, and you need a board of directors and friends and colleagues to pull you forward, not just you, your manager, and it's this technique that will help expand that group of folks that are eligible and help you move forward. So rule number three, whom you know will matter as much as what you know.

Rule number four is find a strength area and try to build a superpower around it. So what I'm suggesting is to avoid spreading yourself too thin.

When you start your career, there's going to be a hundred things that you don't know that you want to know, and there's going to be skills that you want to acquire, and they're going to be broad. And just recognize that very few people are good at everything. And in fact, those that specialize and have a pretty good sense of where they spike are going to be much more effective in the job than those that are good at a lot of things, but not great at any one thing.

Because when you're building a team, you want to build strengths in different parts and then the team comes together and in its whole we'll be able to move things forward. And I've spoken a bit about this in the podcast episode on the superpowers and how there are sort of six superpowers in product management, and the ones that I suggest here, product crafting, growth, domain, market, organization, team. I go into a bit of depth on that episode.

And I think that learning how to specialize relatively early, this is what's going to pull you forward because companies are going to look at you, projects are going to look at you and say, we need an expert here.

And if you're not world class, if you're not in the top 1 or 2% in the industry, that's okay. Your goal is to find an area that you spike in and then make sure you're not deficient in any other major area. Make sure that when it comes to growth, it's not such a foreign concept, that once you have a [00:20:00] project going, you don't know what to do with it. Or make sure that you have a working knowledge of how an large organization can solve a problem. And it's not that you scale out of a role because once it starts to go and you have multiple teams involved, you struggle, right? So you want to make sure that you're strong in one but not weak in any. That's the goal.

Now this is especially important in today's market where the size of team that you've managed in the past or that you've been part of is less important than the story you tell about what you've built. And often the things that you've built and the adversity you've overcome is related to some of these skill areas.

So if you have strong skill in one of these areas, you can tell a much stronger story. And it's not just a simple cookie cutter of, because I had more people or more responsibility, I must be further in career. Strength comes in lots of these arenas, and the good news is that, there are fewer management roles available, but you can still develop these superpowers or these strength areas. Okay. So the last thing I'd say on this whole arena is that your development areas also have something to do with your superpowers.

I think this is such an interesting and important concept that the last few podcast episodes are actually devoted to it. Recognize that once you have an area that you are very strong in, you will not only want to ensure that the other skill areas are present. But that there isn't some blind spot that your strength is creating, which then makes it harder for you to career advance. This is the shadows that the superpowers create, as I've touched on this concept, it's been a huge unlock for a lot of people that I coach. Okay, so rule number four, find a strength area and build a superpower on it, especially if you seek an elite career.

Okay. Rule number five, and last, but certainly not least, is to bet on yourself. What do I mean by that? What I find is that more and more people, put too much stock in their company and their manager to pull them forward in career.

If I do well in this job, my manager will promote me. If the promotion comes through, it will mean more to the industry. It will mean that the company will favor me going forward. And then when I was to leave the manager and the company would've done the right thing for me and pulled me forward in career.

And I will get a better role in a better company. That might happen, but you can't guarantee it because your manager is motivated differently than you are. Your manager has a series of constraints that he or she has to work under. Oftentimes their coaching and their guidance is based on the experience they had.

With their manager or they had in getting to their leadership position. But what if you're different? What if they had a bad manager? What if their route is much more circuitous or perhaps maybe far more direct than you want? Most managers, particularly managers that are managing more early in career, folks, are not particularly skilled.

They don't have a lot of experience, and so what ends up happening is, the manager is going to do what they can to pull you forward, but they operate under a series of constraints and knowledge that's different from what you might need.

Similarly, the company is looking for a certain set of skills and values that is important to that particular product line, that culture, that mission, that business. Again, this is a chapter in the book, so your goal is to make sure that you take responsibility yourself. Recognize that you're advocating for yourself, but that your manager of the business and the company aren't necessarily going to be pulling you forward naturally.

And that just because you're succeeding at work, from a promotion, from a leveling point of view, doesn't guarantee that you're advancing your career and in the same way, just because you aren't getting promoted or you're dealing with a lot of struggle and you have to put a lot of grit into the organization, it also doesn't mean that you're holding your career back. It might be the case that you're building a ton of skill that may not be acknowledged by the current company, given its constraints or your current manager, but it might be dramatically valued by your next employer because of what you learned, what you overcome, and what ambiguity and anxieties and challenges that you've had to basically work through.

So instead of focusing on promotion ladders or scope and responsibility, think about those superpowers. Think about the stories that you can tell. Think about how to ensure that you're getting feedback when it probably isn't enough today. Pull that feedback forward, build the soft skills, which are so much more important as you become a leader.

It's less about the hard skills and more about the soft skills. It's more about the people whom you know, the board of directors that are helping pull you forward. The mentors, those folks are going to be far more important because those folks can travel with you from company to company, to job to job.

They are the ones you want to develop a relationship with and you want to invest in. It's that perspective that ensures that you're not just conflating manager, company, and career together. Once you take control, you'll be less susceptible to a good day or a bad day, or a project that comes your way or a promotion that doesn't. It's your career long term that I hope that you invest in.

So having said all this, let me wrap up. I hope that by these five rules, you are not only just betting on yourself. You are finding strength areas. You are building connections with important folks who you can take with you over multiple jobs. You are ensuring that you are making decisions, not in the short term, but in the long term, and then each decision is career additive.

Ultimately, if you follow these five rules, You will think long term, you will have a healthy career. You'll be less likely to be set back by a decision and you'll always keep your eye on ensuring that you're optimizing and maximizing the most important product that you have in your professional life which is your career. Lastly, just make sure that you, tell your friends about the podcast, especially those that are looking to get ahead in career, and we'll see you next time. Thank you.