From PM to Director of Product
What is the difference between a PM and a Director of Product ? How do you make the transition ?
Fundamentally the following things change while you transition between PM to Director of Product
- You mostly become manager of PMs at various levels. There are cases where you still remain an IC
- You do meta-execution (execution through others who do execution through others)
- You manage a larger problem space (scope)
- You define Vision and Product Strategy for the larger scope aligning with the broader organisation
Becoming manager of PMs
Product management is an individual contributor role where the individual executes through others through influence and an implied cross-functional leadership position. A good product manager can create immense value without managing other PM-s. Compared to their engineering counterparts, PM-s manage other PM-s quite later in their career.
In many product companies, you have an IC ladder if you are more comfortable being a high impact individual contributor. However there is also another way of increasing your impact — by managing other PM-s.
The following things happen:
- You are responsible for hiring the best PMs for your team
- You are responsible for setting high standards
- You are responsible for continuously improving the PM-s you manage. Your team become your product
- The quality of your team defines you
Product management happens in the details as well as in the big picture. A genius product team matters more than a genius product leader.
Doing meta-execution
You become even more distanced from your products. You are bound to give your PM-s enough space in decision making. However, you set direction and goals and provide just enough guidance for the team to deliver.
Your tools
- Goal setting frameworks
- Check-ins, reviews, 1:1-s
- Participating in user feedback sessions (a small sample)
- Reviewing mockups, documents, experiment results, qualitative and quantitative data
Managing a larger problem space
Your tools:
- Delegation and trust
- Data and instrumentation
- Knowing where your attention is required at this point in time
- Knowing what to prioritise and what to kill. Having a sense of what will generate the maximum impact
Setting Vision & Strategy
Much has been written about this.
How do you make the transition ?
In general the hiring manager looks at the following:
- How big is the impact this person has delivered ? Can he execute well ?
- Was this person a really good IC PM ?
- Is this person good at big-picture vision & strategy ?
- Has this person managed others ? Can this person be good at managing a team of high quality PMs ?
The path - you demonstrate this internally to move up or demonstrate this externally to get an offer from outside.
