Be Internal

This is the third post of a 4-part "How to Become a Product Leader" series.

So now we’ve covered two of the most obvious ways to become a Product Leader.  However, they’re two of the toughest, and they might not be for everyone.  Next up, we’ll walk through two ways to become a Product Leader that might be less obvious.  First up: “be internal.”  Before you become Captain, become a key part of the team that you want to play on. Like anything else, the way to get to your leadership position is by starting… somewhere.  Anywhere you can build up trust internally, and prove your ability to

• understand customer needs
• work with a diverse group of stakeholders
• formulate a vision, and 
• execute

In other words, you can prove your ability from within an organization, from any number of backgrounds.  Here’s a handy chart showing some ideas of where you can started:

Your Background	Target Department(s)	Showcase Project(s)
Undergrad — non technical	Sales / Customer Success	Unbuilt solutions for market-wide needs
Undergrad — technical	Engineering / Quality Assurance	Performance optimization / Feature prioritization
MBA	Product Marketing	Product packaging / pricing / positioning
PhD — Sciences	Data Science	Algorithms with defined customer benefits
Business / other (1)	Operations	Improve internal process
Business / other (2)	Marketing / Analytics	Acquisition trends / retention programs

Use your existing skills to come up with new ideas, become an outspoken member of your team, then carry your ideas to Product Management, and push to see them carried through.  If you have enough passion, and can correctly identify where your firm is uniquely positioned to better serve your customers, you’ll be as able as anyone to end up carrying your ideas through.