Play the right moves, leveling up your PM career

Overview

Grow your career by focusing on the right skills, competencies, and relationships. In this talk, Jordan provides an overview of how the product manager role evolves as you get promoted, and what to focus on to succeed in that level and continue growing.

Key Points:

• PM career growth is like chess—each level requires different moves and skills.
• Junior and associate PMs should focus on execution, learning, and stakeholder relationships.
• Senior PMs own larger scope, influence strategy, and mentor others.
• Principal, group, VP, and CVP roles shift from product outcomes to organizational leverage.
• Teamwork and relationships matter at every level—not just technical product skills.

Transcript

[00:00] Intro

Oh, awesome. Okay, thanks folks. Um, yeah, I wanted to have a casual conversation around the product management levels and from my experience like what the function of each level and each role within your within our teams is and then also like how you can be most successful in those levels. And I will caveat this by saying like I've only made it to to senior PM, right? And there's Principal PM, VP, and CVP still above me. So, and this is the first time that I'm giving kind of a talk specifically aimed at this topic. Um, and so in the future I will go chat with GMs and CVPs and kind of update this deck. You know, over the weekend I was kind of struggling to figure out like, oh, what do I say? You know, how do I tell the story of like the time at Microsoft and everything and there's a lot of articles internally in the company that just kind of like, yep, here's logically straightforward how you get promoted. But I thought I would take a little bit more creative spin on it. I'm not a huge chess player, but I did grow up playing a lot of chess. And so I figured, you know,

I started reflecting on the game of chess, and it just so happens that you can map pieces on the chess board to different levels of product management.

[01:00] The Chess Analogy

So, let's just chat really quickly why I think this analogy kind of works nicely. So, when you're playing chess, right, like the objective is to defeat your opponent via checkmate using your pieces strategically to set up uh certain scenarios where they're basically defeated. And in product management, our objective is to basically win the market with our product, right? Basically convince other people that our product is is better than than the next person's product and they should come use ours. Each team on the chess board has different pieces that specialize in different moves. We'll kind of see how that kind of plays out across the PM levels, but PMs in the company, right? Like when you're a PM1, you have a very different scope and set of skills than if you're a general manager. And then overall, it's really about choosing the right strategy and then playing the right moves, right? So in the product sense, this is product strategy and tactics, right?

[01:50] Jr. / Associate Product Manager

So let's just start at the very basic level, right? So for each of these different levels, we have a different piece on the board. We have what's its allowed movement, so to speak, and then a couple things I'll speak to. So I've kind of mapped that when you're PM1 and PM2, you're kind of like a pawn on the board, right? You can only take one step forward um at a time. And PM one and two is really about learning the game, learning the foundational skills of product management, building the expertise and just iterating multiple times and proving out that like you can you can do the job, right? So most of the time PM ones and twos will focus on individual features or maybe a couple different projects at once where you have to think critically about how they might interact. Um, but really it's about, you know, honing your actual skills. So interviewing customers, running focus groups, you know, putting together UX mockups, uh learning how to write a really good spec and translate those customer requirements into actual scenarios and features with uh with really specific clear details, right? But my motto for this stage about how do you actually be successful is really it's just about getting the project done, right?

you can demonstrate as a level 59 or 60 PM that you can just drive projects to completion in a timely manner. Generally, that's a good way of demonstrating that you know how to figure out what the key problems are to solve and then work with the dev teams in in actually solving them and getting the ball uh to the finish line. Now, you might be thinking, oh, the pawn is the least important, you know, uh piece on the board. This is actually not true. All these pieces have to work work together. Um, but like PM ones and twos are really like the on the ground executing the tactics uh type of role.

[03:23] Sr. Product Manager

So then we move up to the senior PM role, right? And this is where you become kind of a knight. The knight is a special piece in chess because it can move two spots forward and one step over. And what I like to think about with with products in this is like you need to be able to see two steps ahead and maybe like a variant one step over in in the same thing, right? So you need to start seeing how your projects are going to move forward, but also you have to start seeing how they fit into the strategy of the team, the strategy of the board a little bit more so, right? So when you're a senior PM, your objective is really learning now how to master the game, right? How to take your skills and now fit them into the team's broader mission, the team's broader vision, right? So this is where you're going to start seeing expanded scope. So instead of just driving individual features, you're now going to have a full set of features or maybe a a whole product in and of itself.

um you might be running like a cross organization or a cross company program at the same time or sometimes also senior PMs are set off to kind of go do more experimental work and what I've seen in that sense is kind of like if you're a high level senior and you're looking to break into that principal band you might go off and do an experiment that kind of proves the vision of of the team and then you'll get promoted into principal to go drive it sort of a thing. Um and so the motto in this area is you really need to focus on not just getting the project done but really being seen as a leader in the product area. So you need to know your customers really well, know your team's vision really well and then know what the roadmap is for how you go from project to, you know, full product and how you actually get to um the end vision. And this is where more tactics come into play too because you might have some PM ones and twos working on on your programs, right? And so you need to be able to coach them to execute the tactics that you're kind of coming up

[05:05] Principle Product Manager

With for the vision. So then we we go one band up further and now we reach Principal, right? And so Principal instead of now just focusing on tactics, you now understand how kind of the game works. Now it's really about seeing the board, right? So in my experience, what Principals are really good at and the ones that actually drive the most change, they're kind of seeing into the future for the team and kind of helping the management figure out like what is the vision? What is the long-term strategy? This is because now you have a lot of experience in the space. You understand your customers. You've been working with them for maybe five to probably more like eight eight to 10 years at this point. And so now you have that deep understanding. But this is also where like relationships come into play because Principals are also really driving cross company projects or cross-org projects and the only way that those are going to get done is if you have really strong relationships and you can communicate that vision and get people working across the company on on your programs.

And so the motto in this one is really about providing vision and also helping to execute tactics like so as you go up you you don't ever stop actually doing the ground the ground work um but what you you mainly focus on changes. So,

[06:10] Group Product Manager

This is where I'll give the caveat and say I think this is where I'm sort of projecting into the future for myself a little bit. Uh, but just based off of observing, I think I've worked for three different GMs now, three different managers, two different VPs. Um, and I've, you know, you guys all know Microsoft reorgs every year. So, I've seen, you know, a reorg times now. Um, but the GM role, this is now where you become the rook. So the rook is one of the most powerful pieces in in the chess board because it really dominates an entire lane of of the board, right? So if you have a rook, you know, lined up down the center, you you own the center of the board, for example, right? And so when you're a GM and you're you've been given a team of PMs and developers to go solve problems, your success is really going to be about can we dominate that space, right? Can we go can we solve the entire uh the entire area of whatever problem, right? So now your focus is about building a good team, right? It's about having a couple good principles who can really see the vision,

figure out where you're going. It's about having seniors who can manage the game, manage the teams, manage the programs, and really drive the execution. And it's about having great PM ones and twos, great soldiers who can uh execute the tactics really seamlessly, right? But the thing that I've seen really makes or breaks the success of GMs is their ability to pick the right strategy. So, uh, while I've worked for three different GMs now, I've also observed about eight to 10 different GMs and who's had rapid success, who's taken longer to get there and and which things just seem to fall apart and and don't kind of make it forward. And really kind of hinges on like do they have the right strategic approach. Most people are pretty good at identifying their customers problems at this point in the game and they kind of see the vision, but are they able to build the right coalition and build the right stepping stones to get there? That tends to be the different differentiating factor. Um, and so when you're, you know, observing your GMs, it's like, are they building good relationships? Are they, um, you know, are they unblocking things for the for the team to go figure out? Are they solving the high level problems that allows other people to execute? Um, okay. Now,

we get to what most

[08:08] VP of Product Management

People consider to be the most uh dominant piece on the chessboard, which is the queen. Um, and this is like the VP level, right? So, this might be a partner, program manager, or this might be a VP of product management. Um, and while most people think that the queen is the most powerful piece because it can attack in all directions, anywhere on the board, it's actually the most powerful piece because it provides board-wide game level support. Right? So, the best people in chess use their queen very tactically to attack, but actually they use it more so to support other pieces on on the board. Right? So, when your seniors and your principles are out there developing strategy and making moves, the queen needs to be in a really good foundation providing that support. And this is where the focus is really on now building organizations, right? So building teams of GMs who are working strategically together. Don't have any tip in this in this area yet, but it seems to me that like the best thing uh VPs can do is really work to keep the pieces on the board, work to keep the teams focused, right? So GMs also generally feel lots of different customer asks, lots of partner asks,

and oftentimes can can fall prey to spreading the team way too thin. such that yes, you're working on a lot of things, but you're not actually making any significant progress. And this is what happens when you have an initiative that's been running for like five years or like seven years, and it seems like it's going somewhere, but like it's never actually reaching the finish line. And what a VP does is figures out what are the things that we need to drop, what are the needs things to focus on, what are the things we need to accelerate, right? And then lastly, we

[09:35] Corporate Vice President

Have the king, right? And a lot of times people think like the king is arguably one of the weaker uh pieces on the board because it can only move one space at a time. Though it can move in all directions, but it's also the piece that's constantly under attack. But you know, this is like the PVP level at Microsoft. The king is actually the most important piece on the board because it, you know, you're trying to protect it and you're trying to go after the other king. But really, you know, when we think about product management, it's about making the right strategic move as for for the company, right? So while the king kind of oversees all of the pieces, the king can only move the organization one space at a time forward, backward, left or right. And so this is where like if you're Azure engine platform, it's like what is your focus for the year or what is the focus for the company over the next you know two to five years. That's really like choosing the right large problem that customers have to go after um is the differentiating factor I think at at this level. So, so that's kind of the overview. Um, each piece,

[10:35] Advice on Teamwork

You know, has its own sort of functions and what it needs to focus on, but I'll close with just uh, you know, not to think so individually about your role, right? So, yes, the best way to be successful at PM1 is just to get projects done, but also the best way to get projects done is to work with other people and build really good relationships such that they'll, you know, work a little bit harder on your project or go the extra mile or set the pace on it, right? So, you know, being a good player requires understanding how everybody's role is fitting together and supporting each other. So, when you look at, you know, the senior PMs and the principal PMs in your org and you see the type of work that you're that they're doing and, you know, you can see that it's kind of fundamentally different, it's kind of like, well, how could you use your skills as a PM1 or two to help them be successful and how can then they kind of pull you pull you along with them on whatever vision, whatever journey kind of they're going on, right?

um this is so this is the best way to grow skills and relationships is just to work as a team say yes to to more projects and figure out what other people are struggling with and and help them with that. So kind of you know you have to balance doing the actual work uh on the project and interviewing customers and writing specs with learning new skills and building relationships but you know no one piece ever makes or breaks a chess game. There's a lot of, you know, different types of strategies where you might actually be sacrificing a piece at one point to let other pieces come in and kind of win win the game. But when you're thinking about developing a strategy overall, it's really about how do the pieces come together? How do they support each other in in service of, you know, the broad vision? So, yeah, that that that's kind of the uh the short the short of it, I think. But um yeah, any questions or stuff?