How do product management skills change as you get more senior in the role?

As you progress through the PM ladder, the TL:DR is that you will be less in the weeds with the day to day functioning of your squads but rather be working on long term planning and strategy on a larger scope to deliver business goals. Some examples:

1. PM 1,,2, Senior PM - Prioritization for 1+ squads, scrums, JIRA hygiene, align with team goals, quarterly planning

2. Group PM - 1-3 year strategy, people management of PMs, larger scope with 2-3 products in the portfolio, ideation, opportunity sizing and building proposals for future initiatives

3. Director, VP, Senior VP - As you climb up the ladder, scope increases tremendously and you are thinking on higher altitude and how you and your teams can impact the business needle

There is a a shift from from execution to influence & strategy. Earlier in your career you are often helping drive the product to launch and collaborating with a large group of stakeholders to make it happen. As you become more senior, your role shifts to influencing product strategy based on your experiences from the market, competitors, and customers. In this phase you have to be effective at defining and articulating the strategy, then influencing across the organization to adopt, and then leading various cross-functional teams to drive execution, metrics, and long term success. Additionally as you get more senior you have to be looking ahead 18-36 months to really set your product vision up for long term differentiation. 

When you're first starting out in product, you're building your product tool belt and the focus is on execution, customer empathy, technical depth and collaboration to drive a (measurable) outcome. As you become more senior, being able to drive a strategy based on a deep understanding of users, the market and being able to effectively prioritize to drive the biggest business outcomes becomes critical. Being able to align with cross-functional stakeholders and leadership is a huge focus. This requires really strong collaboration and communication skills as well as a deep understanding of the user and market. To become even more senior, you need to build leverage - this could be helping other PMs to help drive forward the strategy that you've help to set or empowering members of your engineering and design team to drive impact so you can deliver even more depending on if you want to move into management or stay an individual contributor.

A year ago, I would have said that the more senior you get, the less execution-oriented you will get and more problem/opportunity-oriented focus. It will become expectation that your time, energy and outputs are oriented around identifying what opportunities to pursue that will move both your customers/market and business forward.

While this is still mostly true, I believe that this shift is starting to happen earlier and earlier in the PM career ladder. With the emergence of AI tools that help make execution easier and faster, PMs are now expected at ALL levels to have better understanding of their customers/market and how to address their most important issues to optimize for business objectives. They're also expected to have a better understanding of their most important cross-functional stakeholders and be able to produce (basic) work those functions are specialized in: design, engineering, and product marketing. It's truly the rise of generalist vs. the specialist.

The skills that become increasingly important in order to succeed:

• Building a POV and a coalition around it - influencing those around you, making them feel like they were part of the definition journey so they can be advocates throughout the ideation, execution, and launch stages

• Building alignment, not consensus - it's nearly impossible to get consensus on solutions or prioritization; your job is to build clarity and alignment to the objectives you're optimizing for

• Fast(er) iteration to get to learning faster - what's the shortest path to (in)validate your hypotheses so that you have evidence to make clearer decisions? Just do that.

Thank you for your question.  A lot of this comes down to the expectation of your organization for your role, but at a high level, product management roles can be seen to consist of three main areas of focus: strategic (e.g., determining how you will win in the market and the path to get there), operational (e.g., the processes and determination of how you will execute to meet current goals and achieve strategic plans), and tactical (e.g., doing discovery and writing requirements to build product). 

Generally junior roles (e.g., associate product manager) will consist primarily of more tactical, with a small focus on operational and strategic activities.  As you progress to more senior roles, (e.g., to principal product manager, director, and beyond) you will see the focus on tactical reducing, and expectations of more operational and strategic increase.

One of the biggest challenges I see in technically focused product managers who get into or seek more mid-level product management roles is the switch to becoming more strategic, where typically they also need to gain more commercial focus and understand the overall market and go-to-market requirements to see their product succeed.  At this level, stakeholder engagement and management start to become even more important. For example, when selling a product that is sold to external customers, it’s imperative to work with sales and partner teams, marketing, finance, and potentially other functions so that you can get buy in and engagement to see your product or feature successfully sold.

Getting into senior level product management roles switches focus even more, as then you’re looked to lead the product management organization, which may include taking on other functions (e.g., product marketing and user experience teams), setting the vision for your organization, driving and developing your team to ensure they can achieve that vision, and more.

What I’ve presented above are generalities, but it’s important to note that different organizations can have wildly different expectations of product management.  You can see that in the many different job descriptions and expectations for a role you may be applying for, or that you may find yourself in.  It’s important therefore to understand the expectations of the role you are in or are seeking to get into, and work with your manager (or undertake in your own time) to identify and follow through on opportunities for development to strengthen areas that need more focus.  In that sense, seeking a mentor inside or outside of your organization, or even joining a community, can really help get a broader perspective and get input from more who have gone through a journey like your own.

Love this one, as I have experienced this myself along the journey so far. Broadly speaking, scope and responsibilities are what changes the most as you get more senior in your role. Yes, along with those comes broader context, broader influence and potential for broader impact (both good and bad) - based on the decisions you and your teams make.

Specific to skills, I would say as a product manager, the north star goal is usually being able to make decisions for delivering products and solutions, that maximize value creation for your target customer, while also capturing that value in $$ for your business to grow ! While that is easier said than done, the skills to make that happen lie in your business acumen, your understanding of your target customer segment and your ability to convince your stakeholders on the path to execute to that goal and vision you set ! Since product management is a role that expects influence without authority, the skills you need to develop with seniority need to be, your ability to expand your influence across the business and across your stakeholders.