8 lessons from my 9th year as a product manager

To say that the past year of my career was “busy” is a bit of an understatement. I was firing on all cylinders covering for not just two, but three positions in addition to my own, while hiring for just the right technical product managers to join my new team and planning for the next fiscal year during my manager’s extended leave. It sounds idiotic just writing it out.

But I’ve hired two amazing product managers who are bringing their own special sauce of competence, and months later, I’m beginning to feel the weight of the previous season lift.

If last year’s theme was metamorphosis, this year’s theme is expansion. Expanding my role into manager is one for which I’ve been preparing for years, and bringing on new team members has enabled me to increase my oversight responsibilities and the ability to optimize the impact my team makes.

But beyond expanding my scope by scaling through others, I also continued iterating on our organization’s broader goals, identifying and taking action on key themes that have a wider impact on our platform. Throw in a manager change in there, and I’m now discussing themes and goals at a different altitude, while at the same time digging deep into strategic initiatives to shape them for effective change.

So with that context, I present to you this year’s lessons as a product manager. I’ve listed all of the previous posts in this series at the bottom of this post for reference.

#1 Skip level conversations are key to visibility

My skip level manager is a VP and has a very large organization underneath him, with some very ambitious goals and a lot of spinning plates. For a combination of reasons, some of them mine, some of them his, I didn’t actively seek a regular 1:1 with him, as I felt like he had delegated my career and management to my own manager.

That being said, that level of distance ended up not being healthy for our relationship or, likely, for my career. While my manager was out on extended leave last year, her manager made the time for a few 1:1s. Those conversations gave us the opportunity to be more candid with one another and for me to communicate some of my own values and approaches, some of which complemented his.

In retrospect, these skip level conversations were incredibly valuable to invoke the proximity principle: you feel compassion most for those who are closest to you.

#2 It’s a privilege to hire your own team

My transition to a people manager happened in the best way possible: I was able to interview and select a senior team to work with me. When you join an organization as a manager, you often inherit a team. When you’re promoted to a manager, you often times end up managing former peers. Having a fresh start and selecting the people you want to work with is an amazing privilege.

As such, I count myself incredibly fortunate to have been able to transition to this supervisory role with high-impact people who are not only able to execute, but who have growth areas that I can support.

#3 Equipping is an important part of your role

Both of my new hires this past year were from outside Adobe, which means that onboarding was a key part of my responsibilities. But even beyond getting someone situated in the context in which they’re going to be working, I’m constantly thinking about the opportunities for each of them to grow.

We’re in constant dialogue about what each of them wants to explore, and I bring in my own observations about their strengths and areas of opportunity. I know that by focusing on skills growth, I’m building a team that will be able to not only meet the needs of my organization today, but also be equipped to handle the challenges of tomorrow. And, of course, people who feel supported in their growth tend to perform higher and feel greater job satisfaction, leading to greater retention.

#4 Evaluate your own workload frequently to see if something can be delegated

At the beginning of the year, my manager stressed to me that she wanted me to transfer as much of my existing work to my new reports as possible. This gauntlet, once thrown, became a guiding principle. As a part of my regular reflections, I needed to evaluate what I was doing and why. What types of things could I transfer to someone else in order to make capacity for myself?

But at the same time as doing this, I discovered that transitioning projects to my teammates gave them the opportunity to grow as well. For one project, it was the opportunity to present to an executive on a regular cadence and collaborate more broadly with a larger organization. For another, it was a deeply complex technical challenge with many contributors. In both cases, these initiatives were just the stretch projects to help my team expand into new skills and relationships.

#5 Sometimes, it’s just telling the story to the right person

One of my innovation projects has been gaining steam this past year, and finally got some significant engagement from a partner team. I’ve been working on this project in some shape or form for a few years, and it’s now getting to the point where multiple teams are looking forward to leveraging the technology for their own projects.

This wouldn’t have happened had I not continued to discuss the concept with anyone who would talk with me about it. Unbeknownst to me, one person who believed in the concept discussed it with other leaders, and now this initiative is a core part of our combined strategy. I’m looking forward to seeing the opportunities that open up as a part of execution.

#6 Ask for altitude checks

One key principle I’ve learned about skip level presentations is that executives need fewer details and more information about the impact and shape of larger initiatives. One of my mentors calls this “big animal pictures.” This principle led into one of the most productive conversations I had with an executive this past year.

Earlier this year, I was asked to present to one of our SVPs about an initiative I was driving at the time. As a part of our preparation, a colleague and I met with our VP to discuss the presentation. I set up our brief conversation with the context that I wanted the VP’s feedback on the altitude of the presentation.

Setting the context in this way focused him on helping me to tune the existing content to drive the conversation with the SVP. With the VP’s help, our presentation was successful, and the resulting conversation with the SVP gave us exactly the type of feedback we needed at that time.

#7 Be very clear about where you think your skills are and what you want to do to develop

I had a manager change this past year, and as a part of our onboarding, I summarized the skills I’d mastered, the ones I was still growing, and the ones I was only starting to develop. My new manager agreed with my assessment on my skills rating and has been working with me to intentionally grow and invest in the areas where I need more experience.

This clear conversation gave him a perspective into not only what I valued, but what I was looking for out of my own career. By being incredibly clear about what I was interested in developing, I’ve given him some ideas of what projects he can pass off to me and how that can link into my development.

#8 Give people the larger context to help them spin the plates for you

As an engineer, one of the things I appreciated the most was when I understood the value of the work I was working on. The leaders I followed the most were the ones that could paint the picture of the impact of my work.

As a result, I’ve been intentionally doing the same for my engineering teams since I transitioned to product nine years ago. Now, I’ve been doing the same for my fellow product managers, which enables them to advocate for the right thing based on the broader context of what we’re trying to accomplish. Instead of being a cog, they’re now teammates.

I’ve been frequently surprised by the discussions that happen in the background that move an initiative along without my intervention, just because someone knows what matters. This is a form of scaling I want to further explore in the year to come.

The anchor of my career has been — and continues to be — relationship. I’ve recently been reflecting on the incredible privilege I’ve had to work in one place for such a long time. Some of my colleagues and I have worked together for well over a decade, and in some cases, nearly two. Projects have come and gone, but the relationships I’ve built up over the years have directly contributed to my professional efficacy and success.

This bias toward relationship is now benefiting my team as I’ve stepped into a management role as I invest my time in the cultivation my team deserves. As with martial arts, my own growth comes through the growth of others.

This year of expansion has already proven this to be true, and I know this next year will be filled with new discoveries.

So here’s to year 9, and I’m looking forward to year 10 of this product adventure.

Elaine is a Manager, Product Management at Adobe. You can find her on Threads at @elainecchao. All statements in this essay are her own and do not reflect the opinions of her employer.

• Last year’s reflection
• Seventh year reflection
• Sixth year reflection
• Fifth year reflection
• Fourth year reflection
• Third year reflection
• Second year reflection
• First year reflection
• Six month reflection

Photo credits:

• Chinese Acrobats by Nick Fewings on Unsplash
• Hand tools on a pegboard by Anton Savinov on Unsplash
• Altimeter by Nowhereman on Flickr under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
• Nighttime Manhattan by Sergei Lushchik on Unsplash