When I’ve taken product leadership positions, one of the first expectations of the team is to align on a product ladder — what are the differences in responsibilities between the different roles. Especially, as promotions are considered, a product leader (me) has to be clear on the expectations of the roles and levels.
So, I write job descriptions. I make a ladder. Graphically, it looks something like this:
But, as I reflect on the teams I’ve worked with and help build, something about this always seems off. It’s too simplistic.
This obscures the differences in product professionals, and what’s more, a strong product organization doesn’t always want product professionals who think entirely the same on a team. Diversity of skill set and thinking behaviors makes a team stronger because the team learns from each other.
This lack of illustrating diverse skills is why I find typical “product ladders” or “product matrices” deficient when trying to show the skill development of product managers. Yes, they show the base case for a product professional, but to truly standout, a PM needs to develop a superpower — a skill that sets them apart from their peers. Their personal brand.
Generally, a product person starts building their first superpower when they become a PM, and as they move from PM to Senior PM, their superpowers become more established. As they become part of the team, their superpowers become more valuable to the organization, and by the time they are a Principal Product Manager, they have between 2 and 4 developed superpowers — all of which they should be using to make the entire organization better.
Here are some examples of product superpowers I’ve seen on my teams:
- The Domain Expert — This superpower is the most common and entails knowing something incredibly deeply, either the domain of your customers or the domain of a particular technological discipline like data science. This expert might be a former practitioner or has just been with the domain so long, that they know everything about it.
- The Sales Specialist — This person has incredible set selling skills and is in demand from the selling organization for sales calls. This person can close deals, and the team often jokes that if they carried a quota, they’d be crushing it.
- The Customer Renewal Specialist — This person is similar to the sales specialist but focused on listening to customer concerns and turning the customers around. They often make back 3-4 times their salary just in saving business from being on calls with customers.
- The Metrics Maven — This person can think through the measures of anything and is often advocating for better measurement in the organization. They often take it upon themselves to take control of various metrics or analytics tools, and ensure that the organization uses them correctly.
- The Process Professional — This person knows all of the various frameworks, tricks, and methods to build product. They have studied product methodologies: they can tell you about the history of agile processes, the pros and cons, and how you should best adapt all of the available frameworks to the current situation. They are the person advocating for process changes to make the entire organization work better.
- The Workshop Coordinator — Team meetings get messy, but this person can get the most out of a group conversations. Whether the need is new ideas or consensus around a vision, this person can help drive engagement and clarity across the team.
- The Engineer Whisperer — This person can work across any engineering team and get them to perform. Often they can work across multiple engineering teams and engineering teams that might not be performative under other product managers. They understand engineers, understand how to motivate them, and understand how to get the most from them for the organization. They often can explain how the engineering organization should be set up and which product managers should go with which engineering managers. Generally, they also have an appreciation of the underlying architecture of the product.
- The Prototype Hacker — This person can hack a prototype together in 24-48 hours just to illustrate a point. There’s a UX version of this as well with a PM who can turnaround a design-ready prototype in the same amount of time — so instead of debating the merits of a requirements document, people immediately understand what the feature / product is intended to do / look like.
- Team Captain — This person is the informal leader on the field, the person who can get the team working together. They set the agendas, they take control of the situation, they get the team moving in the same direction. Often, they don’t measure their successes as individual success; they measure success as team or organizational success, and they are invaluable to helping a team move when the leaders cannot always be present.
- The Strategist — This person understands competitive dynamics, and customer dynamics incredibly well. They understand where the industry is going and are looking for ways that way they can develop sustainable competitive advantage. They are looking at big picture trade-offs and always putting them in to a strategic framework of what the company wants to be where it’s going to play, and how it’s going to win.
- The Visionary — This person understands the changes in technology. They see a future 3 to 5 to 10 years out. They are often introducing new technologies into the fold often ahead of engineering. They are pushing engineering and the product organization to be cutting edge, and they are finding novel solutions with novel technologies throughout.
Generally, these superpowers have a lot to do with background (e.g., a PM from sales engineering is usually a great seller) and the innate interests of the PM, but I have found when putting together a team, I am constantly looking for a range of superpowers — even if some overlap, I want people who push me to be a better leader and help the other team members as well.
And, lastly, some advice to PMs earlier in your career — gain a superpower. Be known for something above — or a superpower I might have forgotten. It will make you invaluable to your team.
