🎧 How to Sound More Strategic as a Product Manager
You know you need to be more strategic to grow as a Product Manager, but not sure what that actually means in practice?
You don't want to miss this episode.
I cover the three most common mistakes I see PM's make that hold them back:
Not staying updated on market and industry trends
Failing to think long-term and big-picture
Lacking the ability to share big ideas with confidence
As always, I provide actionable tips you can do TODAY to overcome these challenges.
Ready to SHINE in your Product Management career? ✨
Learn more about my SHINE 1:1 coaching program for Product Managers seeking promotion and greater leadership impact. It's designed to help you grow your confidence, stand out as a strategic thinker, and take the next big step in your career.
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Jess Sherlock (00:00)
If you find yourself in meetings with leaders of your talking about the who's, the what's, the why's, and the how's of your industry, maybe even acronyms, and you're sitting there with your head spinning, not able to follow along, that's your sign that you've got some homework to do.
Jess Sherlock (00:16)
Welcome to another episode of AFTER THE CERT the career podcast for product managers who've collected all the certifications and taken all the courses and still feel stuck in their product career. I'm your host, Jess Sherlock, product management career coach. I know firsthand what it feels like to be overwhelmed, lonely, and stuck in your product career. And I'm on a mission to help you feel confident and empowered to take the lead your product career and achieve your unique career goals.
on me for practical and actionable advice, plus relatable stories from PMs navigating the messy middle of their career.
And remember, if you're feeling stuck with your product management job search, worried about making a great impression during your first 90 days in a new product job, or you want to position yourself for a promotion at work, I'm here to help. You can check out my coaching programs at jesssherlock.com/apply.
and book time on my calendar so we can chat.
Let's get into it.
Jess Sherlock (01:13)
I'm really excited about today's episode because I think all of you are going to be able to find a nugget of value and something that you can take action on right away in what we're going to talk about. here's a question for you. Have you ever been told you're not strategic enough? Or maybe you just know that growing in your product career requires strategy skills, but you're kind of stuck on what being strategic actually looks like in practice. This episode is for you.
I'm going to share the three most common mistakes that I see PMs make that is holding them back in their career. Because building a reputation as a strategic leader is going to allow you to gain the trust of your leadership and your stakeholders and your peers. It's going to allow you to increase your scope of ownership on the product. And it's going to give you the opportunity to work on longer term, higher risk, higher impact initiatives,
all good things for a strong product career. All right, let's talk about these mistakes. We'll start with mistake number one. And this one, is the easy stuff, if I'm honest. The other mistakes take a little bit more work and more thought to solve, but hopefully all of you can find one actionable way to avoid this mistake. And so mistake number one is,
not staying updated. And that could be on the latest industry trends, market dynamics, consumer behavior, competitor moves, regulatory changes, all these sorts of things that are happening in the outside world that would be relevant to your product. Many PMs will inadvertently, because we're busy, it's not something we intend to do, right? But we sort of get into our backlog.
into our products and into our world of coworkers and the business and we forget about the broader world in which our product sits. strategic leaders are able to speak the language of their industry. They know what's trending. They know what's not. They know who the market leaders are. They know what their competitors are up to, how we stand out, what our weak spots are. Okay?
If you find yourself in meetings with leaders of your company, department heads from other areas, founders, and they're talking about the who's, the what's, the why's, and the how's of your industry, maybe even acronyms, and you're sitting there with your head spinning, not able to follow along, that's your sign that you've got some homework to do.
Because think about it, how are you ever going to be able to put forth compelling proposals and opportunistic suggestions and compelling pitches for your product if you don't understand the world that it exists in? So here are my top tips if you feel like this is an area you need to work on and you need some help staying updated.
Make sure that you're finding ways to stay informed regularly. Think of this as a daily or at least weekly activity. This is not something that we want to do once a year You want to kind of make it so that you're swimming in the waters of this information and you're able to just sort of always be aware of the trends and things that are going on because it's in your sort of metaphorical newsfeed that you're consuming.
So here are some tactical things that you could do right away if you feel like this is an opportunity area for you. Number one, set up Google News Alerts or sign up for newsletters related to your industry. Think about the keywords that are relevant. Maybe sign up for competitive newsletters.
Another thing that I really like to do is to encourage people to ask their founders, leaders, sales team, whoever it is at your company. Like think about who's that person who always seems to know the latest, greatest info. Think about the person where like if there's ever an industry question, they always have an answer. Go chat with them. Ask them where they get their info. What newsletters they like best. What websites they check out. What blogs they follow. Who do they follow on LinkedIn, right? Whatever it might be.
Don't try to go out there and reinvent it. Figure out who already is well informed and start to consume the information that they are consuming.
The other thing that you can do is sometimes this knowledge is already in your organization. You just need to tap into it. some instances, the marketing team has actually created the personas or competitive Intel. Maybe the sales team has what they call like competitive cards where if they're on the call with a prospect and they bring up a competitor, we have this sort of cheat code to know like, how do we compete against these competitors?
What do we say if they ask us how we're different from XYZ competitor? owns the market trends? Do have a data team or a business insights team that has that information? And you know what, if you ask and no one has it, maybe that's something that you could start creating and share the information with others to start to build the knowledge in the organization.
All right, let's move on to mistake number two. And that is not thinking long-term and big picture. Strategic leaders, they think about the future. They reference or they're creating the vision of where we are heading. They consider the big picture. They think about problem spaces broadly. They're not just thinking about one area of a problem space. They are...
considering all the angles, they're thinking about complicating factors, and they're going beyond immediate problems and immediate situations, and they're starting to connect the dots three, four, five steps ahead. They're playing chess, not poker. These people are proactive. They are looking for opportunities. They're not just reacting to the problems that come up. They're thinking ahead.
anticipating consequences, thinking about the implications of their decisions. And when there are risks, they're making decisions about how to manage those risks, maybe how to mitigate those risks. And these folks will take risks, but only if it ultimately plays to our advantage. So if you find that you are stuck in reactive mode, focused on problem solving, what's like right in front of you,
then it's probably time to challenge yourself by thinking outside your comfort zone. Okay, so here are my top tips if you feel like you're stuck thinking near term and tactical.
the advice I most often give for people who want to start thinking more strategically is to identify someone that you know, someone you work with that does this well and ask to shadow them. Partner with them on a project. Sit in on meetings that they're running. Ask them to tell you more about a certain project they're working on or how they came up with a certain conclusion or bet or strategy that they put forth.
Sometimes it's so helpful to see it in action rather than trying to learn the concept and then apply it yourself.
The second thing I always recommend, and this is especially helpful for PMs who are earlier in their career, is rather than trying to start by creating your own strategic start by looking at the work that your company is already doing. So presumably your company has a strategy right now if you're working somewhere. So see if you can get access to, if you don't already have it,
or ask for more context on the why behind what your team is working on. And focus on really understanding it. So sometimes earlier career PMs are so accustomed to focusing on execution that we kind of don't pull our head up out of the sand to look around us. And so you might find it really helpful to see strategy in action on a product you're already familiar with, with work that you're already neck deep in.
If you can sort of zoom out and see what are those levers we're trying to pull? Why did we decide to do this work? You're really going to start to understand and see those strategic bets that are being made. Maybe your company is starting to really invest in globalization and localization types of features, Allowing your customers to, I don't know, enter different distance units or currency units or translation inside the app, those sorts of things.
You might have just said, well, I don't know, when I started at this company, that was a big initiative. And so that's why we're doing it, right? But as you dig in and really start to understand the why, maybe what you learn is that we have tapped the full extent of our market opportunity in the United States. And therefore we have to start to expand globally in order to continue to grow our revenue. Maybe what you learn is our product is not as competitive in the market,
because of what other competitors are doing related to expanding globally or offering different languages, instead of trying to challenge yourself to create something from scratch, sometimes sort of using your company as a bit of a case study so that you can dig in and understand the strategic thinking that led to the work that you're doing today, that can start to help you connect dots and warm up those parts of your brain that you just haven't had to leverage before.
All right, mistake number three. strategic leaders don't just think strategically in a vacuum. They sort of exude strategy and executive presence and this leadership presence. They seem to start every conversation with the why. They're connecting ideas or opportunities or today's conversation back to the long-term goals, back to the long-term vision.
often they are communicating in such a clear and concise way, even when it's really complex information or complex concepts, they're making it really accessible to their audience. And while they're doing that, there's a kind of cool calmness about their presence. They're focused. These are not the people who are frantic, who are scattered. They...
make you feel like you can trust them right away. They feel immediately credible. And without even trying, they tend to attract followers to their cause or to their projects. People naturally want to work with them. And
This isn't a situation where they're know-it-alls and refuse to listen to input from anyone else. They manage to still make you feel like you're heard. of deeply listen to feedback or even actively solicit feedback because they want to make sure they're not missing anything. these are not authoritarian types who are going around acting as if they have the best answer all the time. These are people who have put in the work,
to come up with strong strategic thinking. And their goal is to constantly make sure that they are learning and growing and iterating as needed and trying to avoid those blind spots.
Now, if you find that you tend to start with the what in product, that would be starting with the feature itself, you're not starting with the why. Or if you find yourself having to like literally, or I guess metaphorically yell to be heard, or if you're known for being really resistant to input, really resistant to feedback, it's time to work on this. Because if you...
really well informed and even if you are thinking very strategically these things will not make up for not being able to communicate effectively you will lose your audience and you will lose the trust if you can't get the message through
All right, here are some tips if this feels like an area that you need to work on. identify someone that you know, maybe someone you work with who does this well. And I want you to just listen and watch carefully. Make an attempt to join meetings that they're in or attend presentations that they do.
so that you can try to pick up on the nuance and the subtleties of what it is that makes their message come through so well. sometimes what you really need to see isn't so much the sort of happy path, right? The meetings that go well. But what I always find really interesting is to watch how strong leaders handle curveballs or challenging questions or, how do they handle it if someone challenges their thinking? And
Those are the really interesting situations where you can watch someone remain calm, manage their own emotions, respond thoughtfully, as opposed to sort of reacting and becoming emotional. And so I can sit here all day long and tell you how this looks, but I really think if you identify someone that you can witness in action and look for those actionable things that you could start practicing right away.
you'll pick up little tricks, you'll pick up little phrases, even body language. It's really one of those things where when you're looking for it, it's quite obvious.
another tip would be to reflect on someone that you admire, maybe someone you've worked with in the past who does this really well. So maybe you had a past boss who was really good at this,
What I want you to do is in these moments where you know you need to communicate something or you really want to try to communicate in a more strategic way, ask yourself, how would that person handle this situation? What would they say if someone challenges them? You might even think of little phrases that they use. Like I'm known for saying, for example, I think what I'm hearing is, that's one of my go-to phrases because
It doesn't make anybody get defensive. It's curious and it creates closeness in a conversation. But the idea here is that you try to channel this person. It's like a what would so and so do, what would Jess do in this moment. And you try to channel them so often that you just start to embody some of their characteristics.
Now the last tip I have in this area is to ask a mentor or a manager or a coach like me for help if you feel like you're not even sure where to start here. Sometimes while we're there and we're communicating, it's really difficult to know what is working or not working. And so if it feels like you're not even sure where to start and you need some help identifying those blind spots or opportunities for improvement, find someone who can help.
And then once you understand those opportunities for improvement, it's just time to practice. This is a muscle that you have to build and it requires reps to do it.
All right, before we wrap, as always, talk is nothing without action. So if this resonated, I want you to identify one tactic that you want to put into action this week to help build your strategy skills. So maybe you'll pick a tactic related to staying informed. Is there some newsletter that you could subscribe to this week that you think would have a good chance of building your knowledge about your industry?
Or maybe you're gonna identify a tactic related to your strategic thinking skills. You're going to maybe look at your company's current roadmap to try to, detangle what it was that led us to this strategic bet this quarter or this year so that you can start to witness strategic thinking in action and see how it works. See how leaders came up with a strategic bet.
Or maybe you're going to identify a tactic related to communicating strategically. Maybe you're going to ask your manager for feedback on how you could improve. Maybe you're going to attend one meeting with someone who does this particularly well and try to identify three things that they did in that meeting that you want to emulate. whatever it is, I challenge you to find one thing that you can try this week that will start to build your strategy skills.
If you'd like to see how SHINE could help you avoid these sorts of mistakes in your product career and you're wanting to build a reputation as a strategic product leader You should check out my SHINE program. That's at jesssherlock.com/shine and as always I'd love to hear from you So if you have questions or reactions about today's episode feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and send me a DM Or you can check out all of my coaching programs at jesssherlock.com/apply and you can book time so we can chat
I'll see you on the next episode of AFTER THE CERT.
