You’ve been a star Product Manager.
Every decision, every strategy, every triumph – guided by best practices and hard-earned experience that have honed your instincts. You know how a successful Product Manager thinks.
Here’s the twist: the traits that made you an exceptional PM can be your biggest hurdles in the quest for product leadership.
Surprised? Don’t be.
You cannot lead a team of 100 the same way you lead a team of 10.
It’s time to evolve your mindset.
Shift Your Mindset, Boost Your Career
The strategies, the approaches, the very beliefs that have been your north star may no longer serve you.
This realization? It’s your golden ticket to true leadership. Understand the shifts needed in your mindset. Take small, immediate steps to adapt.
Start thinking like a Product Leader, and you will act like a Product Leader.
Here are 8 mindsets that work well for Product Managers, but must change to become a Product Leader.
8 Mindset Shifts
1. Team Focus vs. Company Focus
As a Product Manager, you have a narrow scope and well-defined area of responsibility. Your focus is on your team. Success is about nailing your team’s objectives.
As a Product Leader, you lead multiple teams. Your perspective must encompass broader business goals. Success is no longer about nailing any one team’s objectives, but rather the shared (company) objectives.
Start shifting your mindset: When faced with a decision, don’t ask “Is this the right decision for my team?”. Ask “Is this the right decision for the company?”.
2. Doing vs. Empowering
As a Product Manager, you’re used to getting your hands dirty and participating in every decision.
As a Product Leader, you risk becoming a bottleneck. Your teams need to align globally, but decide locally. Your role is to inspire and motivate your teams with a compelling vision that guides their actions and decisions.
Start shifting your mindset: Try bottoms-up planning next quarter. Outline the desired impact and why; ask your team to define the how. Provide feedback, iterate, rinse, and repeat.
3. Lead Team Members vs. Lead Team Leaders
As a Product Manager, your team size lends itself to meeting regularly with all team members. You can personally keep each team member informed and aligned.
As a Product Leader, it’s just not possible. You have to scale a different way. You lead by empowering team leaders to own their domains, make informed decisions, and in turn empower their teams. Your focus is on setting the vision, fostering cross-team collaboration, and supporting your team leads.
Start shifting your mindset: Structure your team like a mini-org. Identify & meet regularly with senior members on your team. For junior team members, reduce the frequency of 1:1s and ask senior members to step in as mentors.
4. Be the Expert vs. Mobilize the Experts
As a Product Manager, you’re viewed as the “go-to” person for your team. Your scope of responsibility makes it possible to have complete and thorough knowledge of your team and its activities.
As a Product Leader, your expanded scope makes it impossible and unnecessary to know everything. Instead, you must leverage your teams’ collective expertise. Your job is to match the right expert with the right problem.
Start shifting your mindset: When answering incoming questions – CC the team member with the most knowledge, asking for additional insights you may have missed. Over time – get comfortable removing yourself from the loop. Refocus that time on higher-order priorities.
5. Problem Focus vs. People Focus
As a Product Manager, you’re focused on solving a key set of user problems, and solving them well.
As a Product Leader, you know the journey to achieve the company vision will surface many problems to solve. Success is not about solving the problems at hand; it’s having the right people in place to solve all the problems, now and in the future.
Start shifting your mindset: Think of your team’s successes as golden eggs, and your team as the Golden Goose. If you want to keep producing golden eggs far into the future – what investments are you making today to keep your Golden Goose (your team) happy and healthy?
6. Managing Up vs. Managing Across
As a Product Manager, your immediate manager is a great source of help when solving tough problems. It is important to manage up well and keep that relationship strong.
As a Product Leader, escalations are rare. You are the leader, and expectations are that you will solve the problem. Your cross-functional partners become your biggest source of support. Managing relationships well across the organization is critical to your success.
Start shifting your mindset: Acknowledge a cross-functional partner’s contributions to your team’s successes. Email their manager, CC’ing the partner, to express appreciation. Repeat regularly with different partners.
7. Optimize for Speed vs. Optimize for Predictability
As a Product Manager you have narrow scope, clear objectives, and the expertise and resources to execute. The faster you execute, the faster you deliver value.
As a Product Leader – the number of moving pieces increases significantly. You must forecast scale, headcount, and budget needs months or years in advance. To do this, you must synchronize multiple roadmaps, marketing campaigns, resource allocation, and more against a single timeline. The more predictable this timeline, the more accurate your forecasts.
Start shifting your mindset: Hold a retrospective at the end of the quarter. Don’t focus only on how much work got done. If your team under- or over-achieved against the plan, ask “How can we estimate more accurately next quarter?”.
8. Tactical Risk-Taking vs. Strategic-Risk Taking
As a Product Manager, your team’s objectives are part of a larger strategy. Risk-taking is confined within this framework, and often tactical – designed to achieve your objectives faster without disrupting the broader plan.
As a Product Leader, you define the larger strategy. The right strategic pivot, paired with the reallocation of significant resources, can unlock transformative breakthroughs and rapid growth. Bolder risk-taking is encouraged.
Start shifting your mindset: Practice thinking bigger when it comes to risk-taking. Ask yourself, “What would I propose if I wasn’t afraid?”. Consider advocating for some or all of your proposal.
The Product Leader Mindset
Don’t wait until you are promoted.
If you want to be a Product Leader, it’s time to adopt the Product Leader mindset.
Your role is to inspire, empower and support your team, and take a broader perspective that encompasses the entire organization. Think bigger. Think bolder. Most importantly, cultivate the relationships every leader needs to succeed.
You won’t shift your mindset overnight, but you don’t have to! Take small steps today to start changing the way you think and act.
The secret to getting ahead is to get started.
Mark Twain
