Level up! 5 levels of becoming a great product manager.

There are a lot of sources that tell you what a great product manager is made of. But how to get there? From being somewhat ok to really great. It’s nothing that happens naturally. You need to work on it. Day by day. Level by level.

Level 1 – Status!
You made it into product management. Your LinkedIn profile is finally worth its existence. Congratulations!

It’s not a lot to learn here. Better make sure you enjoy the initial intoxication and move on to the next level soon.

Level 2 – Busy, busy
People around you recognise you as a product manager. As the go to person. They are approaching you and you are happy to be recognised. They need you. And being needed feels great! You are one of those guys in the company that are important! You are worth it! You are busy talking to people, making calls, answering emails, holding presentations. The busier you get, the more important you feel. What would they ever do without you!? A busy bee is a valuable member of society.

This level is all about developing your self-organising and time management skills. Learn to focus and to be approachable. Don’t hide behind your desk and don’t use the workload as an excuse. It’s all about deciding what to do and what not to do. Those skills are valuable and worth keeping. You will need them from now on. Leave behind the wish to please everyone.

Level 3 – Doing the right things
Being busy feels great in the beginning, but you realise it’s no real value behind it. It’s exhausting without the positive thrill of moving forward. You need to start to produce some outcome. You need to show that you can do it. You need to get things done. Once you start finishing stuff, you gain the respect of the people around you. Some might even hate you for it. Especially those who are stuck at being busy. Your boss will love you, because you finally get things out there. Well done! Great job! Backslapping!

Of course, it’s not only about getting things done. You need to focus on the right things. Make sure you don’t waste your energy and the company’s resources. You can produce a lot of stuff that’s worth nothing. Use your team and the people around you to find the right things. Learn all about the users. Try to understand how engineers think when looking at a problem. Spend a lot time with UX. Talk to marketing often. Dive deep into data. It’ll probably cause some headaches, but it’s worth it. You’ll spend quite some time on this level before you feel the need to move on. Actually, some product managers never feel it.

Level 4 – Part of the team
You want to do more than just produce stuff. You want to feel connected. You want to be a part of a team / tribe / family. You realise that the way to a successful product is more than just telling people what to produce. You start to actually understand the different views of engineering, UX, design. But also the users, the other product managers, the members of the board etc. You want to be a valuable member of product management. Not just a part of it. You want to be an accepted member of your core team. You understand that your team will promote you as a person outside the room. While your product will promote your success.

Being on this level, you will learn to listen to the team members. To stakeholders outside the team. Not just listen in order to take notes. Listen to really get their point. To understand what’s important to them. Sometimes even without them being able to tell you. You will learn to read them. You understand their fears and why they might be unhappy with your product. You want to understand them not just to find ways to influence them. You want to feel being connected to them. And you want them to feel being part of the team as much as you want to be. Community will achieve things, a product manager filling backlogs will never be able to.

Level 5 – Leadership
Real innovation starts here. You understand that working with people is greater than working with tools. You respect the different ways of people’s thinking. You get it, that engineers sometimes just want you to shut up and let them do their job. You get it, that marketers like to repeat the ‘Yeahs’ and ‘Yos’ and that they do it for a reason. You get it, why your boss wants to see roadmaps while the whole world tells you that the age of roadmaps has passed. And you find ways to tell him what he really wants to know while reducing roadmaps to a useful minimum.

Basically, you understand that your job is to orchestrate all the stakeholders. To enable them to do their best. To motivate them and to deliver all the information they need. And to step back to let them do their job. To make one thing happen: a great product.