No doubt, 2020 was a crazy year. However, for many people, it was also a year for growth. When circumstances force you to adapt, you grow. Eight books, in particular, influenced my development quite a bit during this pandemic.
Failure is a fantastic teacher. Failure is also the way I came to start the Intentional Product Manager.
A few years ago, I worked for this fast-moving Boston area startup, and I could see myself becoming established as a leading product manager there. I wanted to build an amazing vision and strategy, and I tried many different avenues to get there. Still, at the beginning of the first year, my performance was below expectations. I had not been able to contribute anything meaningful to my customers or learn anything about them. My failure was that I let my job run me instead of me running my job.
Ultimately, when I started to build my brand was when things began to change. The key for me has been consistently redesigning every aspect of my job to enhance my personal brand, one step at a time. Even if you have issues and challenges along the way, you’ll figure it out.
Finally, seek out help when you need it. Even people at...
“Three easy steps to __ “ is very popular in the career and personal development space, indicating that if you do these three simple things, that part of your life will be easier for you. What you need to get your ideal PM role is not three easy steps; rather, three ingredients, which may not be as easy.
First, you need a bulletproof mindset. You have enough determination and confidence to get where you want to be, and you understand that you alone shape your future. In order to take the control that comes with assuming responsibility for your future, you must stop blaming your circumstances.
Secondly, you need to focus on the action steps that will get you moving forward in your career. You need to know what initiatives to work on, and where you can use improvement in your skills.
Finally, you need a strong personal brand and visibility. You need to be the person people see as someone who deserves to get promoted. You also need people to see...
(Or the Curse of the Maybe)
There’s a curious phenomenon that prevents most of us from achieving our dreams. And I have an excellent laboratory where I study this phenomenon.
That laboratory is my coaching business.
Clients decide daily whether or not to enroll in my program.
If I give them an offer.
The first decision is mine, and I take it very seriously: should I allow this person to enroll?
You might think of course I will give the person an opportunity to enroll. After all, I get paid at the end of it.
But I do that in less than half the cases.
There’s one of three reasons why I don’t:
The last one is probably the most important reason.
After all, I am going to spend a LOT of time trying to get them to change their behavior so that they can achieve...
Often, I get asked, “Who exactly do you work with, and what do you do?”
There are three ways I assist my clients and help them have a career they can be proud of.
Are you ready to go and apply for a product manager role?
There are three things that you should question yourself when you're really pondering over the decision for anything:
...
How do product managers advance in their careers?
Here is a fact: You are not in the room for the most important decisions that get taken about your career. Everything is happening through stakeholders. The only reason you advance in your career is that you've built those relationships with your stakeholders over time that has ultimately led them to advocate for you to succeed in your career.
The more they have confidence in you, the more you have demonstrated skills to them, the more likely they're going to bat for you when it comes to making that next decision on who gets that fantastic project.
Advancement in your career is cyclical. You learn skills and demonstrate them, which helps build better relationships with your stakeholders. They gain confidence in your abilities and give you more opportunities, which leads to more skill development.
Many times some product managers who've gotten the support of stakeholders advance at a fast pace. And those that...
There are three main reasons why product managers hesitate to apply for that next great product management role:
Six elements are critical to finding your new product management role:
We often view politics as something negative.
I would like to reframe politics for you. Think of it as a way to benefit your company, yourself, your family, and the world, in four ways.
First of all, politics is a way for you to gain visibility for your team’s work. When you view it this way, you begin intentionally engaging in the right kind of activities to move your team forward.
Second, without you engaging in "politics,” people will never understand what your team is trying to accomplish. You will never reach that optimal outcome that benefits the whole company.
Third, politics is a way of building trust by sharing information.
Finally, it is a way to understand the company’s real influence graph, which might be somewhat different than the organizational chart.
These four things will help you better engage in politics in a way that is true to you.
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I don't know if I'm live yet, so I'm just going to wait until Facebook...
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My coaching clients use the very same template every single week to focus in on things that really matter.