My Advice for Senior Product Managers
Skills to excel as an SPM
Joe Biden[Not his real name:)] is on a senior product manager(SPM) track. His goal is to become a CEO one day. His track may, or may not take him through the Chieif Product Office rank. However, as an SPM, I recommend strengths in Strategic Thinking, Product Quality, Technical Capacity, Research, Analytics & Empathy, and Management. I take communication & collaboration for granted — my expectation is that every PM should have this.
Day-to-day can bog us down as Product Managers. Gains to product leadership means we need to be proactive about the future of our product. Enviable strategic thinking skills would imbibe an approach that solves for every aspect of your product success, and establishes you as your product authority. You would be able to identify lucrative market opportunities, expand your product portfolio and execute on go-to-market.
As an SPM plans and preps his product his overall goal of product success is a function of the product quality — the degree to which we elegantly meet user needs. Highly skilled SPM would minimize error even as product increases greatly in scope and complexity — articulates & prioritizes requirements clearly & accurately, delivers outcome consistently.
Technicals become more important as you mature in your Product Management career. At this stage, you should have the proficiency and prowess to partner expertly with engineering and design — material understanding of technology, versed in PM tools (story writing, prototyping, roadmapping, bug management) proficiency in analytics, basic SEO application.
Very fundamental for an SPM is the talent to innately understand their users. It is important that they can synthesize their research (A/B, Interviews, Analytics etc) and fit the product into user needs and behavior.
Of course, there are quite a bit a Senior Product Manager should have in their kitty but I highlight these as imperatives that help Aspiring Product Managers or mid-level PMs navigate to a Senior Product Manager role.
In all, SPMs need a thorough understanding of product management, project management, product marketing, tech, and finances. They should be able to develop new features/solutions, drive growth and profitability and collaborate with several parties simultaneously.
