The (not so) surprising element accelerating your PM career 🚀

Research suggests that the main factor which can positively influences the career of a Product Manager is the person’s manager [source].

There are a lot of reasons for this which we can analyze, maybe the most prominent two are that PMing is something that is highly contextual & requires a specific mix of skills not taught through a single educational program.

Managers will be the main source for how to support your decision making, how you connect within the org, and how you leverage tools and processes. They also are the ones (typically) argue for and support your promotion. Managers are also often the only other PM you’ll spend time talking about your actual projects. All other PMs work on things really quite different from you, or with a set of incentives which actually might not directly allow deep collaboration (like fighting for the same resources, for example).

This makes them the central point for many PMs for all topics of their career. This means a bunch of things in the career of you as a PM.

If you can choose a manager, choose wisely! 🤓

This includes when you consider changing teams. Consider selecting information more likely biased toward an objective truth.

Here are some tactical tips:

• When you interview for a role in a new company, ask for references of the hiring manager.
  
• Ask to speak to a current and a former team members. The former one will tell you some truths, the current one will give you a feeling about the team culture by how they act.
  
• Ask to speak to members of the x-functional staff who have worked with the manager in the past.
  
• Ask to speak with former members of the team, they are less likely to be incentivized to speak only to the positive aspects. There might, however, be a reason they left the team which they might be biased on.
  
• Observe behavior over statements. Current team members, or your potential future manager’s manager have a reason to sugarcoat. Look for their behavior as well as what they say. See if you feel good about their attitude and non-verbal cues.
  
• Do your own research. Look for projects the person has been working on, their social media feeds etc. Do you agree with their POV? Do they seem to be showing signs of values you share?
  
• Ask questions which make your manager share their behavior. Questions like: Which team member recently left and why? can reveal things that otherwise might have been red flags.
  
• Ask your manager about their goals in the organization. Asking more folks in the leadership chain can reveal whether you are set up for success working for them.

There is never a guarantee that things work out, or for how long. But it is critical to do your due diligence, or at least enough that you can attribute any mismatch to bad luck and circumstance. After all, a lot of what makes humans connect is not too controllable after all.

Take Action 🎬

📅 Book a private coaching session with me to grow your PM career. I will share my 15+ years of experience as a Product Manager, all my learning and pitfalls, with actionable tips and concrete lessons to model after.

📚 I found it helpful to read the book Who, which explains the hiring process and teaches you how to think about the other person at the table. It helps ‘reverse engineer’ the process and come up with better questiosn, better information, and ultimately, a better job / manager.

📚 The book How to Talk to Anyone helped me build trust with individuals quickly when I needed to. It is a bit of a ‘guide to sure fire icebreakers’, applicable in any situation. Trust is the number one path to more objective information, especially so when the odds are stacked against you.