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:

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.

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

So you've got your eye on Product Management, defined in the first post of this introductory series, but you don't yet have the Product Management title or responsibility.  What else can you do to build up that experience? Build Something!

1. Be a Product Manager (duh)
2. Build something
3. Be internal
4. Be an expert​

Figure out some problem that you want to solve, then find a way to test if people would be interested in an offering of any kind.  Do this on a small scale before investing too much time or money.  Instead of spending $100,000 on developers or equipment, set up a landing page using Launchrock or a pre-sale page on a site like Kickstarter to see if people are even interested.

Once you're confident that the problem you're solving is one that would pique the interest of other people, begin to formulate a vision of what your potential offering might look like, and bring your offering to life, one small step at a time.

As one example, I'm going to share some early links of Mystery Gift Machine below.  For the first time, I'm publicly documenting the progression of the online present-giving service that I built in 2012.

I built the first versions quickly, and they were hideous and embarrassing.  Like Eric Ries says in his classic entrepreneurship book, "The Lean Startup," the way to build a successful startup is to Learn, Build, and Measure.  I'm building on that here by emphasizing the importance of iteration, recognizing that small tweaks can often provide outsize returns after you bring an initial solution to market.

If you follow these steps and "Build Something" -- whether it's software, a community group, or a non-profit organization -- you'll refine many of the same skills you'll need as a product leader:

• Defining the problem you are solving
• Coming up with a list of possible solutions that you could potentially deliver
• Understanding what would be most effective to the most people
• Prioritizing your roadmap
• Working with different technologies/ people / groups to bring your solution to life
• Iterating!

​
Until next time, follow @AdamStober

Version 1, Google Form "launched" as a solo project just for fun. Processed credit card transactions manually using PayPal email invoices: http://bit.ly/trysssy

Version 2, Weebly WYSIWYG design, Wufoo for forms, pre-cut HTML code snippets for Facebook plugin, launchrock for lead generation, processed over $1,000 in gift shipments.  With release of V3, V2 moved off of custom URL to live archive at http://mysterygiftmachine.weebly.com/about.html

Version 3, Heroku/Python/Git as infrastructure for potential scaling, Facebook app to automate birthday marketing, Themeforest CSS template to introduce responsive (mobile-friendly) design, mailchimp for email marketing, promo video to attract press in Boston.com, TechCocktail, and BostInno.  Overwritten by Version 4.

Version 4, Django-powered dynamic gift pages installed to scale order processing, JavaScript timer to automate collection period, Stripe payment processing installed to avoid redirecting to PayPal and lower abandon rate, SSL certificate installed to securely process credit cards on-site, "learn more" pages and Twitter Bootstrap design elements added to help increase visitor-to-customer conversion rate, olark live chat installed to better serve and engage with site visitors, Facebook app removed to simplify user experience.  Currently live at http://www.mysterygiftmachine.com
​

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

What is Product Management, anyway?  Let's start with the following definition, drafted by Rebbie Hughes, Melissa Appel, and myself ahead of a recent EnerNOC career fair:

For anyone looking to either become a Product Leader or get started in Product Management, it's not unusual to see "Previous experience in Product Management required" in most or all Product Management job posts.  If that's not a classic catch-22, I'm not sure what is.  Given that Product is such a critical role, employers like to hire someone who has been there before. So that's one way to get started in Product Management, though I've seen at least four:

1. Be a Product Manager (duh)
2. Build something
3. Be internal
4. Be an expert

​
Over the course of this series, we'll go through each approach in sequence.  Meanwhile, if you're interested in learning a bit more, I'd recommend:

• "Good Product Manager/Bad Product Manager" by Ben Horowitz (blog post)
• "Inspired" by Marty Cagan (book) 

For the next posts, follow @AdamStober