How To Manage Your Career Like A Product
As a Product Manager and a coach, I have found one sad thing to be true - most Product Managers will do what others tell them to do and consistently avoid conversations related to their careers. They spend 100% of their energy managing their product and none on their career. The only time they are thinking about their career is when they are expressing anger or frustration.
My clients are happy in their careers. They are getting promoted faster than ever. Why? Because they have found extreme value in managing their career like a product.
When you get this aspect wrong, you feel angry and frustrated. You do everything that is asked of you. You have no roadmap in sight and no career strategy to grasp onto.
With that, I have one question - if you were the Product Manager of your career, would you be proud of how you run it?
When we get this right, we get promotions and raises without fighting for them. Recruiters begin noticing you and reach out to you. You get more speaking engagements. When you manage your career like a product, you are happier.
With all of this, there are five fundamentally essential things to do to manage your career like a product:
- Gain clarity on what matters in the context of your career.
- Manage stakeholder relationships with intention.
- Communicate like a marketer
- Work on fine-tuning your mindset
- Ask for the promotion several times.
