How can I navigate a situation where I am frequently assigned project management tasks rather than product management responsibilities, and where there seems to be a lack of emphasis on product vision and impact-based product building?

It is important to understand the product culture of a company. PM work is very often confused with project management (as you are experiencing).

Your manager is the biggest lever in this scenario - define your goals clearly with your manager (typically companies follow an OKR based process for this). Goals should be business objectives and then actual tasks to accomplish the goals should be defined by you vs. someone assigning tasks to you.

There will always be some part of project management in our roles (particularly if your company doesn't have a function for that). It is OK to have a few templates/processes for project management - like what do you use for managing timelines, getting and providing progress updates - but try to make this a 'self-service' process. For e.g. give your team the templates and define the process at the start of a project for everyone to enter their updates by xx every week and then you just share those widely. This is a good level of project management to do but your main focus should be centered around accomplishing your business goals / problem solving. I'd be surprised if you are able to accomplish the business goals via just project management tasks.

In situations where you're frequently assigned project management tasks instead of product management responsibilities, it's important to proactively address the issue:

1. Communicate Clearly: Have a candid conversation with your manager about your role and the type of tasks you're being assigned. Express your desire to focus more on product management aspects, emphasizing your skills and interest in areas like product vision and impact-driven development.

2. Define Roles and Expectations: Seek to clarify and define the boundaries between project and product management within your team. Propose a clear delineation of responsibilities that aligns with your role as a product manager.

3. Demonstrate Value: Take initiative where possible to showcase your product management skills. This might involve presenting your insights on product vision or proposing strategies for impact-based product development.

4. Seek Mentorship: Engage with a mentor within the organization who can guide you in navigating this transition and advocate for your involvement in more product-centric roles.

5. Continuous Learning: Keep enhancing your product management knowledge and skills. This will not only reinforce your expertise but also provide you with additional tools and frameworks to advocate for a product-focused approach in your team.

Well, as always, it depends. I'd say first you have to diagnose the situation and understand the root causes. Why are they bringing you tasks rather than responsibilities? Why are they asking you to do tactical, very specific things as opposed to delivering outcomes? It could be that you just have a really inexperienced manager and executive team making these asks, in which case you probably need to decide whether you want to invest your time managing up and trying to get them to uplevel their asks of you or to move on and find a more supportive, better environment.

It may also be that you do have an appropriate management infrastructure, but you haven't earned their trust or given them a reason to believe that you can operate on more ambiguous terms and do higher leverage activity. So I'd have a heart-to-heart, frank conversation with your manager and try to understand what it is. Why are they asking you to do discrete tasks as opposed to giving you higher level objectives and outcomes to drive? And then based on your answer, take it from there. If you don't have the type of relationship with your manager, where you can ask a question like this and get a thoughtful answer, that might be a clue as to some of the dynamics leading to this type of engagement.

I've seen this situation quite a bit and the single most effective way to drive change towards impact-based product building is bringing data to show the downsides of the current approach. I personally failed to drive change early in my career because I tried to debate the merits of different approaches without bringing evidence (only theory).

Even if you are to operating in a project-focused way, there are things you can do to shine a light on a better way:

• Measure the impact of everything you are building (or being asked to build) - nothing drives change like showing investments aren't delivering impact. Go back and see how many customers are using features you built last quarter. Get that data in front of leadership. Include ways you could improve the approach next time (e.g. if we spoke with 3 customers before building, we would have known X would have been a better solution).

• Get close to customers - this may be easy or hard to do in your organization, but figure out how to do it anyway. Ask for forgiveness, not permission. I like a situation where you are on a text-friendly basis with a few customers. This allows you to proactively get feedback before execution and offer this as evidence you may need to make changes. Make sure you don't let your bias get in the way here - also call out when what you are being asked to execute resonates with customers (let leaders know you are objective).

• Find leaders who knows your current situation needs to change - there are usually at least a couple empathetic leaders in any organization that see the need for change. This may be outside of the product organization - it could be a sales leader, someone from marketing, customer success, etc. Work with them to first highlight the problem with project-focused operation and show a better path.

Advice may differ slightly depending on your specific situation. A few situations I've seen where this is common:

• In organizations where the culture is more execution than product focused (typically legacy businesses)

• In organizations where leaders are making all product decisions

• In specific parts of the org where a single leader is unable to let go of the details

A few books you might read - Escaping the Build Trap by Melissa Perri, Transformed by Marty Cagan, and Aligned by Bruce McCarthy and Melissa Appel.

It can be hard to tease apart the line between Product and Project Management - especially since the role of Product Management can vary greatly from team to team.  At the end of the day, you should measure your success by the impact you’re making to the business, and to your OKR’s, not the size or type of initiative you are working. . 

If you feel that you aren’t making that impact for the business, do a retrospective to understand the root cause:

1. Really evaluate the work you are producing and ask yourself if it’s the quality the organization is expecting. 

2. Solicit feedback from your manager and from peers who you feel are making a bigger impact - let them know your goal is to drive value. Then act on that feedback - use it to improve your own framework on the initiatives you are already working on. 

3. If you’re confident in your framework and output, then communicate with your manager and stakeholders to identify additional opportunities you can take on. Volunteer to take on high impact tasks as they pop up, or proactively identify opportunities to suggest. 

With any work you are doing make sure you are delivering it on time and with high quality, and that you are measuring the results against expectation.