How Product Managers Get Promoted in 2024
A Pathway to Your Next Product Management Promotion
Several years ago, I visited a college campus during freshman orientation. I recall the speaker telling the incoming students about the great opportunities in front of them. One of the things that the speaker stated firmly was this: “you are responsible for yourself.” While it’s a no-brainer to think it was one of those subtle reminders that it’s often a good idea in your career to check in with yourself to see how you’re doing and what you can do to get ahead or get promoted – that is – if that’s what you want.
Over the past few months, I’ve delivered many Product Management Essentials workshops. I did some in-class research by sharing a presentation about career progression (I can do this in your company, too). Over the course of 8 workshop deliveries with almost 200 people, I asked if participants knew what they needed to do to get promoted. Almost everyone indicated they did not. Then, in a recent Linkedin poll, I asked a similar question with similar responses. This is quite surprising. How about you? Do you know what it takes to get promoted?
In The Product Manager’s Desk Reference (3rd edition) I wrote in the Introduction titled The Accidental Profession, that product managers come from everywhere and that there isn’t really a university degree in product management.
So how do you get ahead? How do you climb the product management career ladder?
As a starting point, in your company, can you review the job descriptions for product management people in your company? For example, is there one for an individual contributor? For a director? For a vice president? You may gain some valuable insights.
Let’s take a look at some of the building blocks you can put in place to position yourself for growth.
Product Management Career Building Blocks
The way to approach this is to look at some of the key building blocks of the product manager job description. There are five building blocks you may benefit from understanding. This is not a complete list. Its purpose is to get you thinking about how you consider the work you’ve done and the work you need to do to get ahead within the parameters of the job description.
These five attributes or building blocks include:
- The complexity of the job. This could be associated with the number of products, revenue responsibility, etc. This can also be related to whether you’re responsible for a complete product, a module of a product, or on the other end, a full product line.
- Lifecycle state of your product. This refers to your scope of work on products that are being planned or enhanced versus those that are more mature. To be clear, this is associated with the work you do on products with various lifecycle maturities because of what’s involved at each stage.
- The span of control and visibility of your position. This refers to the degree to which you must interact with others and your reliance on and effectiveness in dealing with people who work in other departments.
- Prior background and experience. Product managers have various academic backgrounds and exposure to different products, industries, etc. The depth and breadth of experience in these areas matter a lot.
- Visibility and other interpersonal skills: It really matters what others say about you when you’re not in the room. Your bosses always ask their peers and others what they think of you, especially around the time of annual reviews.
You can use this list as a guideline for developing other attribute areas, or you may also get more information by reviewing current job descriptions. The point is to use this – and here’s how.
Assess Your Effectiveness
If you’re working towards getting promoted, you’ll want to assess your overall effectiveness on as many attributes as possible. You may develop a list of 3-5 sub-attributes under each. Regardless of how many, consider a technique to assess yourself. For example, you may want to set up a rating scale where one = “minimum exposure” and perhaps ten as “maximum effectiveness” for each attribute. You can ask yourself questions such as:
- What have I accomplished?
- What evidence do I have?
- Does my boss understand about my work?
In my book, The Product Manager’s Career Path, I’ve laid out a comprehensive framework for self-assessment. It’s a short book (70 pages) that can be very helpful in navigating your career.
Second, you may want to speak frankly with your boss, if you don’t already, about what they think you’ve achieved and to help point out areas for you to develop. On another plane, hopefully, you’ve built a good network with your boss’s peers. They can be a great source of feedback, too.
Either way, understand as well that just because there’s a boss doesn’t mean they understand your background and experience, either because you’re newer or they’re newer. I had so many new bosses in my career – they’d pick up the pieces and never really understand my background and experience.
With this overall backdrop of information and a self-assessment, you can identify experiential gaps. When these are set out and seen within the context of other goals that your boss may set for you, you will have a solid portfolio of ‘things to do’ that you can use to fortify your foundation – and use those as a springboard to get ahead.
Yet, even if you do, if there isn’t an understanding from all sides that you’re interested in getting ahead, your efforts may result in maintaining your position. That, in and of itself, may speak to what your next move may be in your career.
I hope this provides some helpful context for you, and I wish you the best on your path to getting promoted in your product management role. If you’re interested, I have developed a host of books and online courses, in addition to my flagship Product Management Essentials workshop. Visit www.sequentlearning.com. And… by the way, you and your teams may benefit from my business acumen training courses. Visit www.business-acumen.com