Expanding Your Impact As An Early / Mid PM

To progress your PM career, look at delivering more Impact, one project at a time.

I believe that having the job of a Product Manager is truly one of the best jobs in the world. You probably think the same, which is why you’re a reader of this blog!

Whichever your company industry or sector, you will be given many complex problems to solve, and the resources and autonomy to solve it in the way you feel is best, based on your understanding of market and customer needs.

However, as you progress in your career, your professional development needs also grow, meaning that you need to find new challenges to develop a higher product mastery, one project at a time.

These new projects and experiences don’t just land on your lap. You need to be humble about your own capabilities and development gaps, then find ways to close the gaps that are often expected at the Product level you are targeting.

Closing these gaps cannot be something you do on your own. Your ability to grow as a PM is hugely dependent on your environment around you, and whether your manager can provide opportunities for you to deliver more impact and be rewarded for it.

You also need to be open and honest about your development needs. To do this, PMs need to ‘look into the mirror’ with humility.

Looking at the Mirror

When you wake up in the morning, one of the first things you would do would take care of your basic hygiene, looking at the mirror to perform your daily care routine, getting ready for the day to come.

Photo by Andre Mouton on Unsplash

As children, when we look into the mirror, we often see the best of ourselves, unafraid to do whatever we want during the day.

As adults, we recognise that we have many traits that makes us feel fantastic (“strengths”, previously covered in this article), but also many blemishes that we may feel vulnerable about (self-proclaimed “weaknesses”).

But let’s be honest: we hate our imperfections. We cover up our blemishes, aiming to blend in, when instead we should learn to love them.

Looking at one’s own product career is much like looking at the mirror. For many reasons, Product Managers undergo huge imposter syndrome (covered previously here), often understanding of their own weaknesses, but unwilling to accept them as traits that uniquely define their leadership style.

Using Weaknesses As Opportunities For Growth

To feel complete, I advocate that PMs start with an honest self-assessment: to take a long hard look at oneself in the mirror and define a daily care routine that makes you feel healthier each day you wake up.

These steps include:

Your Honest Steps for Self-Assessment

• Reflection: Assessing your professional development gaps (e.g. using public competency frameworks, such as these skills listed by Reforge or Progressions.fyi)

• Acceptance: Understanding what your Product superpowers are, and your weaknesses (previously covered here)

• Seeking Guidance: Working with your manager to find projects around you that help improve strengths or cover weaknesses, often discussing where you can deliver more impact

• Developing Your Path: Considering options to address these gaps. Note: switching jobs may be needed!

To complete these steps properly, you need to understand the various types of impact that you can generate as a Product Manager as you move up towards a role of Leadership.

The Varying Degrees of Product Impact

I see a Product Manager’s type of impact varying depending on the levels of your organization, namely:

• You (Individual): Deepening your product sense and insight

• Your Team, Product and Stakeholders: Delivering value for customers via features or domains.

• Your Group: Helping adjacent teams covering other domains to achieve shared outcomes

• Your Department: Serving as an advocate for the Product function

• Your Company: Prove the value of Product, leading by example.

Levels of Product Impact by Organisational Level

Let’s dive into examples of how you can expand your impact per level.

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Widening Your Impact Per Organisational Level

Below is a mega-map of the different types of product manager impact across the 4Ds Product Development Lifecycle. It shows the various areas of impact that, over time, expand from an internal focus to an external focus.