Stages of PM Development

Beyond those first 30 days…

In my first year as a full-time product manager, I had an OK performance review. I read over the comments and thought: this feedback makes sense. Mostly, I’ll keep doing what I’m doing and continue to “grow” with time, when I get more and bigger opportunities.

And then I realized… I didn’t know what more senior product managers were supposed to do differently. Sure, you have a bigger scope with more responsibility. But how do you plan toward that? “Someone eventually gives me a bigger project” didn’t feel like the right way to think about career growth.

I wanted to confront my assumptions head-on, so I drew my manager this diagram and said… is that all there is?

He showed me a few things that changed the way I thought about personal growth for PMs.

1. You’re always working on those “general professional skills.” Those soft skills are the core of being a good PM.

Without thinking too much about it, I assumed that public speaking and being perceived as a leader were things that you could “achieve” and move on from, to focus on the real work. As a PM, those skills are part of the real work. You need them to advocate for your team’s priorities. New contexts (company leadership, team dynamics, a current product’s successes or failures) constantly challenge your ability to tell the right stories about your work.

2. You’re always working on influencing people — just at different scales.

Your skills in leadership and public speaking only matter if you’re successfully influencing people to make work happen. It’s one thing to make a slick powerpoint and give an articulate presentation… but it’s another to have that result in buy-in around a course of action. As your role grows, your suggested courses of action have more weight — involve bigger budgets, more significant strategic shifts — and your ability to credibly influence company leadership becomes a driver of your success.

3. Effectively communicating vision is a big hurdle between being “senior” and having a real leadership role within the company.

In order to effectively lead a group of other PMs, there has to be a central vision that they can align with. Now that you’re no longer making granular decisions, you have to help communicate the framework other PMs should be using to do so. You’re moving from “doing the job” to helping others do the job right.

Great PM leaders aren’t just “deciders” — they’re experts on process, and can help other PMs identify flaws in research, buy-in, or implementation. They teach junior PMs how the product team works at your company, and how to connect their narrow work to the company’s broader goals. This is where it’s easy to see the value of more and bigger projects, and more time-in-role — you have more opportunity to see mistakes, learn from them, and help your teams avoid them the next time around. You learn how to replicate your successes and avoid your failures.

At every stage of your PM career, you’re building the same core capabilities. You’re making decisions, accepting wins, and learning from mistakes. Understanding the nuances of what works and what doesn’t — whether that’s a pricing strategy or a presentation deck — ultimately accelerates your growth and your team’s work. I’ve been happy to discover that there’s no need to wait for a “bigger project” or “more scope” to grow as a PM.