9 lessons from my 6th year of product management

I didn’t hit my stride as a black belt until sometime around third degree. As is the case in traditional martial arts systems, I’d trained for two years for my second dan and three years for my third dan, and had spent a fair amount of those intervening years teaching lower ranks: white belts, yellow belts, and green belts. But it wasn’t until somewhere around third dan that I felt like I had enough confidence to mentor the stronger black belt candidates.

I struggled to define my sixth year of product management until I realized that I had hit the same level of confidence I finally achieved as a third degree black belt: aware of what I was capable of, and able to lean into that strength to benefit those around me.

If the theme of my fifth year of product management was endurance, the themes of my sixth year of product management would be confidence and resilience. I stepped into a challenging role that was out of my wheelhouse as the responsibilities of our team expanded, and while it stretched me, I also approached it with a confidence that I wouldn’t have been able to muster two or three years ago.

I’ve also been leaning into sharing what I’ve learned with people who are just starting out on their PM journeys, and, similar to martial arts, it’s been an opportunity to learn more by teaching. Working through things with others has refined my thinking and has helped me verbalize the lessons I’ve learned over the years.

The older I get, the more I realize that the journey and the community are both critical to my job satisfaction. And this series of blog posts have ended up being opportunities for me to synthesize the lessons of this past year of career growth into what is both a time capsule for myself and an opportunity for others to find inspiration for their own growth trajectories.

So with that, here are the lessons I learned in my sixth year of product management.

Note: I’ve linked the entire series at the bottom of this post for reference.

#1 Journal the what, the reaction, and the lessons learned

Somewhere in early 2020, my work journaling practice dribbled off to almost nothing. During my winter vacation this past year, I came to the realization that I needed to start again, and promised myself that I would reserve a few minutes at the end of the week to write exactly one page in my notebook. After some reflection, I ended up narrowing the focus of the journal to write on three themes:

• What happened this week? What did I accomplish? What were the themes I was investing in? Who did I encourage? What did I do to support someone else? What stopped me from accomplishing my goals?
• How did I feel during the week? What triggered those emotions? Are there healthy ways to address any frustrations, shame, or guilt?
• What messages do I want to tell my past or future self? What lessons did I learn this week, and what reassurances do I need to hear? What would someone outside the situation tell me about what I’m experiencing?

There’s something about this practice that helps me both set aside the week and process what happened. I use this time to think about the context of my work and the patterns of behavior I encounter. I try to be brutally honest with myself about my own failures, but also to call out the wins I had that week. This has directly led to insights about organizational health and a better understanding of how to work more effectively with others, and has also served as a foundation for understanding my own strengths.

#2 Managing change is a critical people skill

Our team’s charter expanded this past year; as a part of those responsibilities, teams were reorganized fairly quickly to execute on the goals set in front of us. As a result of this, our team as a whole had to grapple with the change in our day-to-day lives.

As a product manager, I realized that I played a key role in managing the anxiety and stress that came with the unknown. I had to recognize others’ signs of distress and worked with my partner leaders to ensure we were addressing these core issues, which often weren’t expressed explicitly. Often, this looked like bringing a clear, honest view of what we knew and what we didn’t know, and further emphasizing that the team was both capable and resilient enough to handle these changes.

One thing I’ve had to lean on a lot is a classic organizational development theory: Tuckman’s stages of group development. I shared this model frequently in 1:1s with people to normalize the type of behaviors we were seeing as a part of the organizational change. Helping to contextualize the feelings and clearly mapping out the challenges we faced helped our team to understand why we were investing the way we were.

#3 Determine which decisions need fast answers and which need slow ones

Product management is often about the fast-twitch combination of strategy, prioritization, pivots, storytelling, and process, quite often context switching minute by minute. One key lesson I learned this past year was the necessity to slow down for some decisions, particularly ones that disrupted the status quo.

I wrote about this in my 2021 year review, and this lesson has only been reinforced through the experiences I’ve had since January. I can still pull out a decision quickly, but I also know there are times when decisions need some time to percolate before coming to a close.

#4 Growth often means stepping outside your comfort zone

Every once in a while, you step into a season in your career where you can practically feel growth happening. It’s a combination of growing pains, new insights, new perspectives, and new approaches that are demanded by new players in what often is a new situation.

This past year, growth came as a result of two different investments: one that was a result of responsibility change, and the other was taking advantage of a learning opportunity. After an initial panic, I came to the realization that a new set of responsibilities that came my way was in direct response to a series of conversations I’d had with my manager and in skip-level conversations about where I’d like to grow in my career. Two months in, I knew it was the right decision; six months in, I’ve come to treasure the challenge and the change that it’s wrought in me.

The second was an Adobe learning opportunity that placed me in community with a number of colleagues I wouldn’t have otherwise met, as well as gave me chances to network with people outside my industry. Some of the content was helpful, some was reaffirming of things I already knew. But putting myself through the formal paces of something approximating school reminded me that I could choose to invest in my growth instead of just letting it happen to me.

#5 Be intentional about creating and enforcing interaction patterns

With change comes a disruption of existing organizational interaction patterns. One of the biggest challenges of this past year has been working with teams that have very different habits and cultures, but I quickly came to realize that we could either be proactive in managing these interaction patterns, or accept the patterns that come naturally.

When water runs through a pathway, it erodes pathways that are then more difficult to shift.

The analogy that comes to mind is a French drain or a swale, both of which are human constructs to divert water away from where it naturally falls. If one doesn’t exist, water will run off naturally based on gravity, but will erode the earth beneath it in ways that might end up being destructive. Alternatively, one can cut a swale or install a French drain in order to divert water into places where it won’t cause property damage.

I’ve found that being aware of the natural tendencies of our organization’s communication patterns also gives me the agency to thoughtfully push forward patterns that might be healthier for everyone involved.

#6 Form order out of chaos for everyone around you

The additional responsibilities this year were in an area that was in the process of being defined, which meant that it was often quite fluid. My job as a product manager was to bring clarity to each one of these situations, and I spent a large amount of time slowly aligning stakeholders until we had common understanding.

This manifested itself in a few ways:

• Narrative — ensuring every stakeholder was able to hear the purpose of our initiative in language that mapped with their own goals, and equipping others to advocate for the path forward
• Frameworks — creating repeatable patterns for other PMs to leverage so as to ensure consistency for our teams
• Predictability — working with our team to get inputs that would lead to outcomes that could be tracked and planned

Investing in this work effectively decreased the overall level of anxiety and stress on our team and shaped our interactions with our partner teams. This work often came as a result of issues highlighted by my leadership partners.

#7 Highlight valuable hidden work

Last year, I was challenged to quantify my work as much as possible. Alignment is hard work, but it largely goes untracked, which means that it falls into a category of what most would call “hidden work.”

I discovered this when we introduced a new process that effectively managed this hidden alignment work. When one of our program managers mentioned I was doing a lot, I made the off-handed comment that it was tracking the work I was already doing.

This made me think: what other hidden work am I doing that everyone finds valuable, but no one sees? How do I highlight not only the value, but the impact of this work? How do I help others understand the sheer amount of labor required to achieve alignment?

This is still a work in progress, so I expect to share more about this in the future.

#8 Choose rest

This was also a year where I took just over 7 weeks off for my sabbatical. The two months leading up to the sabbatical was full of preparation for my departure, ensuring that there would be continuity of business while I was gone. But all of this investment was to give me the capacity to choose rest, and to fully embrace the time away.

While the sabbatical was planned, my philosophy of how to spend my time away was highly influenced by the same concepts I shared in my semi-viral blog post, “An overachiever’s guide to rest.” I wanted to ensure that I didn’t overschedule myself, so I intentionally made very few concrete plans ahead of time, and instead focused on steeping myself in the luxury of free time. I puttered around the house. I made coffee dates with friends. I read books. I pet my cats.

I went on a couple of hikes with friends during my sabbatical, which was both connecting and restful.

I returned more energized and resilient, and even more committed to practicing patterns of rest to ensure I’m able to bring my best self to everything I do, for the long haul.

#9 Don’t let anyone else rob you of your joy

One of the challenges with working with partner teams is the inevitable friction that comes with everything not working quite as you expected. How I responded to these challenges changed when I was rested, and I realized that I had been reacting in my weariness instead of taking charge of the narrative.

I get to do this job. I get to do this with amazing people. I get to work on amazing projects. It’s an incredible privilege for me to do what I do, where I do it. In the two months since my sabbatical, I’ve been able to cling to this narrative, and have, as a result, lived in a place of satisfaction and joy.

Things can’t always be perfect; human nature and human systems means that challenges will come. But I can refuse to allow others’ behaviors to disrupt my own sense of well-being.

During a recent meeting with our product team, we each had an opportunity to share our work values. I wrote the following four things for mine: “Thanksgiving. Investing in others. Strong boundaries = health. Impact others for good.” As I look back on my sixth year of product management, I realize that the lessons I’ve learned this year have all served to reinforce these very values that I’ve formed over time.

I look forward to my seventh year in this career with anticipation, knowing that the journey will be challenging, but rewarding. After all, I get to do this.

Elaine is a senior product manager at Adobe. You can find her on Twitter at @elainecchao. All statements in this essay are her own and do not reflect the opinions of her employer.

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

Photo credits:

• Beautiful top view from the Leutasch Geisteklamm by Jonas Gerg on Unsplash
• Journaling photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash
• A bench in early morning sun by Ilse on Unsplash