Growing with a Growing Product Team

While the concept of a 10x PM sounds great, it can only get the team so far as a start up scales from 10 to 100 and then to a 1000. About a year ago, my then manager brought up the option of managing other PMs. At that point in time, I thought to myself “Hey why not” but boy did I have no idea what I was getting myself into. Previously, I sought to understand my strengths and weaknesses and figure out how play to my strengths and overcome my weakneeses. Now instead I seek to do the same but for my PMs or try to hire other PMs who can help the team grow in the areas that we’re weaker in. Me two years ago valued having a Product mentor, someone in Product that I looked up to and wanted to learn from. Now on the other hand, I’m the one having to having to think about how to best support other more junior PMs in their career. Slowly, i’m beginning to realize that one of the greatest benefits of building and scaling a team is the power to amplify the impact that I have in the organization by helping other PMs become 10x PMs in their own right. The past year has been quite the journey and I constantly question my ability to coach other PMs, if I’m ready to help build the product team that everyone aspires to be part of or whether we’ll be able to make our way closer to being a more product led organization. By sharing my journey, hopefully I’ll be able to help others who might be starting on theirs or are currently on one of their own.

Takeways:

1. Me to We
   As an individual contributor…
   I’m intrinsically motivated and always feel that there’s always so much more that I can improve in. I sought to understand my strengths and weaknesses and know how to play to my strengths and overcome my weakneeses.
   As a manager of PMs…
   I have to understand that everyone has different motivations and levels of motivations and that success may not always be a moving target to everyone. I now seek to understand the strengths and weaknesses of those in my team and know how to play to their strengths and help them overcome my weakneeses (or at least help them get to a point where it no longer hinders them from growing).

2. Supported vs Support

   As an individual contributor…
   I was seeking a mentor who could help support me in my career and would help me to grow by pushing me out of my comfort zone. I was concerned about how to harness UX to deliver best experience for our users, how I could better manage my stakeholders, how to help my squad grow i.e. I was focused on becoming a better PM.
   As a manager of PMs…
   I am now a mentor for other PMs and have to think about how to best support others in their career and helping others to grow by pushing them out of their comfort zone. I now help provide opportunities for PMs to learn about various UX methodologies and when to use them, coach others on how to manage stakeholders and gain alignment (often times I find myself having side conversations with senior leaders to warm them up to ideas before my PMs even meet with them) i.e. I’m focused on helping my PMs become better PMs
   

3. Impact / Impact^x

   As an individual contributor…
   The focus was on delivering impact at an individual/squad level. How can I better utilize metrics to track outcomes? How can I shift the squad’s mindset to being comfortable with iterating and testing?
   As a manager of PMs…
   The focus is now on delivering impact across multiple individuals/squads. How can everyone on the team become better with measuring and tracking metrics? How can I shift the team’s mindset to being comfortable with iterating and testing? The impact that the multiple PMs has the potential to be so much more than what a single PM can make.