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Hello people 👋 Andy in the house today and I will be sharing on my journey on getting promoted from Product Manager 1 to Product Manager 2.Â
Promotion conversations can get very awkward very quickly but it doesn’t have to be awkward and uneasy. I did not surprise my manager by asking how far I was from my next role, rather I was having regular conversations with my manager about my career. I went ahead and controlled my own career by doing these specific things.Â
I set up a monthly career conversation 1:1 which is just focused on my career. It includes feedback, the next opportunities I should work on, areas that I need to work on to get to the next level, and more. This allowed my manager to know what areas I was strong at and what areas I was weak at.Â
As a Product Manager 1, I was a quarterback to my manager. I was heads down focused on execution. That was my mantra! To deliver over and over again and go above and beyond. While I had my own engineering team and designer support, I would run by every decision with my manager and all I cared about was building trust with my colleagues and my engineering team.Â
I grabbed every opportunity that came my way and just executed it, not just better but also earlier. I would not be afraid to dig deep and get the job done. During my 1:1s with my manager, I would constantly ask if there is something on her plate that I can take off.Â
Over time I learned my manager didn’t want to work on certain areas of the product and as soon as something came up in those specific areas, I would raise my hand and pick it up. It is those non-sexy jobs that I did constantly that no one else wanted to do but it had to be done. Â
For example, I understood whenever a very engineering-specific feature came up, I would happily pick it up as none of my co-PMs wanted to do it. I did this even if I didn’t know anything about that area I would jump right in and figure it out myself.
I wasn’t afraid to speak up and express my opinions, I was confident but also ready to be wrong. This allowed me to show that I was already thinking like a PM II in my mind and was expressing what I was thinking. I wanted to get involved in the strategy and have a say in the roadmap.Â
I went on doing 70% of the work that I had to do for PM1 and 30% of the work that I had to do for PM2. For example, I would spend a good amount of the time writing a PRD or backlog of tickets but also spend some time on pricing and packaging and the go-to-market launch for a new feature which was not expected from my level.
I brought a new perspective to the pricing structure conversations repeatedly and this proved to my immediate team that I was ready to be the next level. I was also wrong, a LOT! And I quickly learned from them, my immediate team noticed how fast I recognized I was wrong and course correct.Â
The biggest realization I had was that if I didn’t take the next shot, it won’t be given to me, so I should constantly aim for what seems to be unachievable at my level but will eventually get thereÂ
I used my monthly career 1:1 conversations to talk about a specific project, for example in the pricing meetings, I would discuss what went well and how I could have done better in terms of presentation, influence, rallying toward a vision, or even the proposal itself.Â
I also spent a lot of time asking my manager for areas that I need to prove to get to the next level and we would brainstorm how we can create these opportunities if I didn’t have it currently. I was proactively creating opportunities for myself with the help of your manager and that drive showed that I was ready for the next challenge.Â
For example, I had to prove that I could lead a cross-functional project (which included our engineering team making changes in another team’s code base) to get to PM II and my manager and I brainstormed and found a project where I can showcase that I can influence a cross-functional team to align towards my vision.Â
Another addition my manager likes me to prove was that I can do a specific task repeatedly and it was not a 1-time thing. I was ready to get 2-3 examples for each area that I needed to show I was ready for the next role.Â
The last piece I did was to get buy-in from your stakeholders in the promotion committee. I was proactive in getting regular feedback from them and made sure that they knew I was thinking about growing and was actively seeking out development areas.Â
In the end, it became so apparent that I just outgrew my current role so quickly that I had to be promoted to the next level. At my company promotions don’t typically happen within 1 year in your current role but I proved that it is not impossible. It is the combination of being aware of how far you are from where you want to be and how you can get there.
That’s it for today’s post folks! I hope this post regarding user research experience was useful and please reply to this newsletter if you guys have more questions about user research.Â
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