Issue #31: How to be strategic in your career development as a Product Manager.

On why having a strategic approach to career growth is important and why it does not automatically mean wanting to become a CPO

Hola friends! 👋

This week’s thoughts and feelings include:

1. Are you strategic about your career growth?

2. (FAKs or Folks.Ask.Kax)

3. 5 things to help you this week

This week, I’m still sending my newsletter from Portugal! 🇵🇹 With this view in front of me. I am 50% inspired and 50% mush. Writing always feels so much more romantic when I’m not writing from my couch — or any couch for that matter.

Although I’m not writing from the beach either. Too scared of sand damage.

Maybe someday I will be writing the next big Beach Read (Emily Henry fans will get it). But for now, I have this newsletter and you, dear readers, to talk to about life and times and career development for Product Managers and other functional leaders in Tech. 🤓

On to the stories!

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01 Are you strategic about your career growth?

What’s your next step?
What’s your next ambition?
Where do you want to take your career next?

Every performance review, or in any conversation that grazes on the topic of career and development, I would get asked these questions. Different iterations of the same motivation.

Until recently, I never really knew how to answer these questions. So I wouldn’t. Or I would just shrug and say “I haven’t figured it out yet”.

Primarily because I used to think that the right answer to these questions was a role. A job title.

Senior Product Manager.
Product Lead.
Head/Director of Product.
VP of Product.
And maybe, eventually… CPO?

But I didn’t know what those titles really meant for me, apart from the promotion, pay raise, and a higher position in the job ladder. So I never really saw any of them as my “next step”.

But were they what I wanted to be?

Don’t get me wrong, these roles seemed exciting career-wise. I’ve been working long enough as a Product person to know that these roles are THE goals if one wants to grow their career in Product Management.

They sounded exciting. But I was never excited.

They just didn’t resonate.

However, not attaching to a role can be easily misinterpreted.

• By other people. Not enough ambition. Not enough drive. Making it difficult for people to keep me on top of their minds for any opportunity that might come up.

• By myself. Do I really not have any ambition? Do I really not have enough drive?

Eventually, doubt evolved into an existential crisis. What is my purpose? Is this all there is to life? A title? Surely there must be more. But what?

I’ve lost out on opportunities because I couldn’t articulate what I wanted to grow as. I prioritized the wrong things (or none at all) because I didn’t know what I wanted to optimize for. So when push came to shove, I just named the role that was one level higher than mine in our company’s job ladder and just took it from there. My main motivation? I was afraid to miss out on a promotion.

But I also envied my friends who would get promotion after promotion after promotion and seemed genuinely excited about what they were doing, because they were getting what they were optimizing for. They wanted to be a Product Leader. They wanted to be a founder. They knew. So they became one.

A lot of smart people have said that in order to grow “we need to be more strategic with our career”.

I was the opposite of that. I just went where the wind would take me and did all the pre-requisite hard work that came with it.

Asked to do a new project. Let’s do it.
A new job called. Let me sign the contract.

But always being reactive, while I’ve been lucky a lot of times, leaving my growth up to chances, felt limiting. And a lot less fulfilling.

Every once in a while decisions will be made with more intention. And the feeling of accomplishment is unbelievable.

I can’t do the same job for another year so let’s get a new one!
I need to experience the rest of the world so let’s move to another country.

And I wanted more of that feeling. A sense of control. But how can I replicate it?

***

In 2019, frustrated and demotivated with where my career was going, I started asking myself different questions.

By then I have met several mentors and coaches who taught me that framing and perspective are the 2 most important tools a person can have to help them grow.

So I took their advice. I put on my Product Manager hat and framed my questions the way I would when building a product.

Instead of asking myself what my next step was, I asked myself:

What kind of problems do I want to solve?
What kind of impact do I want to have?
What do I want to do more of?

And this time around, the answers flowed! With surety and confidence that I’ve never had before. And along with the answers, the opportunities followed!

Because here’s what happened:

Much like when we build products, I focused on defining my ambition against the value I wanted to provide, the problems I wanted to solve, and the behaviors I wanted to see more of.

So in 2019, I got clear about my ambitions.

1. I wanted to make sure that other Women in Product wouldn’t have to go through the same career insecurities that I did. That they would get the right support they needed, feel confident about their skills and experience, and grow in their careers in the way that matters for them.

2. I also wanted to help other Product Managers always find their jobs fun and fulfilling. That they will feel empowered and confident with the decisions they make. And that they would feel secure to treat their failures as opportunities to learn and improve.

3. I want to keep solving complex problems and bring to light underserved opportunities that have always had low investment but are critical to the success of the company.

And regardless of the timeline, 5 months or 5 years from now - I knew that these are where I wanted to take my career.

The how?

Well that’s when I started looking at becoming a Product Leader as an option for my next step. The same way that teaching, speaking, and coaching were my other options too.

I’ve started looking at “next steps” as experiments I can do. I saw the roles/job titles as things I can try on to see if they fit and are aligned with what my ambition was in the first place.

And having a more strategic mindset about how I wanted to develop as a professional finally made sense.

So now here we are.

4 years since I started teaching and designing PM courses for All Women.
2+ years into being a Product Leader and Trust and Safety domain expert for my organization in our company.
1.5 years since I decided to coach other Product Managers one on one.

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If you’re also finding yourself unable to answer the following questions:

What’s your next step?
What’s your next ambition?
Where do you want to take your career next?

I invite you to reframe and look at defining your ambition from a perspective that matters to you. I encourage you to ask yourself instead: “What do you want to do more of? What kind of impact do you want to have?”

Maybe the answer is to become a CPO. Maybe it won’t be.

But more important, a lack of an answer does not mean a lack of ambition. What it could mean though is that you need time or maybe even help to define what that ambition is.

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We’re halfway through the year! Now is a great time to articulate what your ambition is, set clear goals for the next 3-6 months to get you closer to it, and experiment with different opportunities to achieve your goals.

Need help doing so? I’d love to help! I still have some free coaching slots starting in August. Let’s have a chat and let’s take it from there. 😎

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02 (FAKs or Folks.Ask.Kax) is still on a break

Hey folks!

I’m still on my summer break. I’ll get back to regular F.A.Ks as soon as I’m back from holiday. :)

In the meantime, you can leave your questions about related to Product Management or career growth in Product Management in the comments below!

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03 Five things to help you this week 🤓

1. Psychologists are studying if we really do grow from adversity.

2. Lead in Public’s Cristina and Jenni talks about 6 types of working genius

3. Twitter is rebranding to X. What do you think?

4. chhavi
   shares on her Twitter the things we can tell ourselves when we’re feeling as if we’re falling behind our career.

5. AllWomen.tech just released a new course! Data Analytics for Business.

And one last thing! 📣

I recently got to take part in 280 group’s Trailblazing Women in Product series where I got to share:

• My PM origin story (we all start from somewhere!)

• The lessons I’ve learned in the 10+ years I’ve been doing Product Management

• What I love the most about a career in Product Management

• What I look for when I’m hiring Product Managers

• And the advice I’m sharing to other Women in Product out there.

Read more about the interview here

p.s. how cool is it to be called trailblazing?! so cool! 😱

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But before you go!

1. Last 2 open slots for coaching starting in August! For the Product Managers and aspiring Product Leaders out there who want to improve your performance, achieve your career goals, and fully enjoy the Product Management life, I’d love to help you. Let’s chat 💙

2. Are you struggling with your job search right now? Your application is being ignored? You get feedback along the lines of “We’re just looking for somebody with more experience”. Get my ULTIMATE GUIDE for creating a Sustainable Job Search system for the Modern Product Manager. My newsletter subscribers get a 10% OFF 😎