How To Learn The Most Underrated Skill of Product Management
If you haven't achieved the success you've expected or hoped for in your product career, this might be the reason
Drawing on some of my work coaching Product Managers in the early stages of their careers, I’ve pulled together a few ideas that can get you unblocked.
In this edition
This week, we’ll take a look at some ways to grow in your product career.
We’ll start with my latest piece on becoming aware of and consciously taking ownership of how you’re perceived in your organization and your personal network.
On the theme of Product career development, I also share Petra Wille’s simple and effective “PM Wheel.”
And finally, we’ll review Marty Cagan’s take on assessing Product Managers as a first step towards designing a coaching plan for career growth.
Let’s go!
The Underrated Skill That’s Still Holding You Back In Your Product Management Career
How to add a key piece of the Product role ladder
I initially wrote a short LinkedIn post on something I’d seen bridging the worlds of strategy and product management for less-experienced product people:
The post clearly resonated with Product LinkedIn.
Thanks to everyone who saw that original post and contributed to the ideas and conversations. This developed the concepts and add new areas I hadn't considered.
This helped organize the final long-form piece to deliver maximum value.
Read the full-length post on increasing your product “brand” within your org here on my blog
Petra Wille’s “PM Wheel” Competency Model
Petra Wille’s “PM Wheel” does a phenomenal job focusing on identifying core Product Management skills across 8 dimensions to assess and help product people make progress in key missing areas of their career:
Petra addresses the “people” dimension of Optics with her point 6, “Team”:
“6: Team: How good is the product manager when it comes to teamwork? What do they know about lateral leadership and motivating teams?”
I’ve used the PM Wheel early in my product coaching, and it has brought up good topics of conversation for 1:1s.
While I think this approaches the personal dynamics notion of “Optics,” I do believe there may be a component around verbal and written communication power that could be missing from Petra’s model.
Read about and download helpful resources around Petra’s PM Wheel on her blog here
Marty Cagan’s Product Manager Assessment Model
Marty Cagan and his stellar team at Silicon Valley Product Group continue to lead in advancing modern product management.
Aside from their blog, there are a host of invaluable resources I highly recommend.
One of the biggest is his Product Manager Assessment Tool.
Marty divides up the assessment across the areas of
People
Process
Product
Marty specifically addresses what I would term the “Optics” area under “People Skills and Responsibilities” across these dimensions:
Team Collaboration Skills
Stakeholder Management Skills
Evangelism Skills
Leadership Skills
I can’t recommend Marty & the SVPG’s work highly enough.
Take a look here at the Assessment, and how to use the output as an input into an effective Coaching Plan here.
Let me know how it’s going as you improve your Optics!
Cheers,
