Adam Stober
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How to Become a Product Leader - Be Internal

1/8/2016

 
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.

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