Photo by Rachel McDermott on Unsplash
How to add the Product role ladder’s missing piece
I was coaching an extremely sharp Business Analyst who had all the hard skills of great Product Management.
They had a solid grasp of the end-to-end flow of value, from idea through Discovery with end-users, excellent close working relationships with UX, and did an amazing job documenting, and working through the details of Delivery with the team.
When the main product person was on vacation, this person took over the product role, handling everything beautifully, including tricky meetings with senior stakeholders, and GRC (Governance, Risk, and Compliance).
When a key product role opened up, I reached out to an influential senior leader about promoting the BA I was coaching into that role.
After some pleasantries and general positive feedback, the senior leader delivered the judgment that ended the conversation:
“No, they’re not “strategic” enough.”
And the role went to someone else.
It wasn’t strategy
For Product Managers just getting started in the role, or for those whose careers may have stalled, they may have been labeled as “non-strategic.”
And it’s stopped their Product Management career’s forward momentum dead in its tracks.
Yet ironically, when I hear Product Managers described as not “strategic” enough, I’ve found more often than not it really means they’re lacking one underrated skill:
Mastering the soft skills of communicating effectively and connecting with others.
The Three Levels of Product Management
Product thought leader Shreyas Doshi has evolved a simple and powerful mental model for understanding the three levels across which Product Managers need to manage their work:
1. The Impact Level — How important is this work to the organization as a whole?
2. The Execution Level — How do we take this from idea to execute through the team to deliver working software in front of our clients?
3. The Optics Level — How effectively are others within our organization perceiving us, our work, and our potential?
All three are important and need continuous and conscious effort to improve as you move from junior through C-Suite product leader.
And the sad truth is you could be executing brilliantly through the team, consistently delivering work that delights clients, and still be passed over for other opportunities, as happened with the Business Analyst I was coaching.
So if you’re stuck in your career, it comes down to one key competency: Optics.
Understanding “Optics”
At its core, Optics comes down to mastering our messaging and building relationships.
We do this across four dimensions:
1. Mastering storytelling
2. Managing our schedule
3. Proactively connecting with the right people
4. Sharing the right message
We’ll go into each below.
1. Master Storytelling
The easiest way to spot someone who hasn’t yet mastered Optics:
They have one single way of communicating with everyone, and it usually means going deep “into the weeds,” or getting into too much unnecessary detail. Do this with consistently the wrong audience, and it becomes career suicide, and getting the dreaded “non-strategic” label.
Instead, managing Optics effectively depends on curating and crafting clear “stories” around:
– Our product
– Our team
– Ourselves, the role we play on our teams and within our organizations
It relies on us presenting crisply, clearly, and compellingly both
– Vertically, with senior leadership
– Horizontally, with peers
The same crispness, clarity, and persuasiveness applies equally to writing effectively.
Every piece of writing we share: Emails, memos, product briefs, requirements, and strategy statements require organization, clarity, and focus.
Storytelling starts with listening
Storytelling starts with paying attention and raising our awareness to what’s important to the person we’re communicating with, so we’re able to tell the story that needs to be told, through that channel, in that context.
At the Product level, our first step requires us to spend time listening to end-user clients with our Product Trio, to truly understand their unmet needs in the process of Continuous Discovery.
If we’re unable to get access to clients, another powerful opportunity is to reach out to and speak with our internal customer support or success people to better understand the client problems they face on a daily basis.
In every organization I’ve consulted with, I’m always pleasantly surprised by the sheer wealth of client insights these key people on the front lines can provide.
At the same time, I’ve been disappointed how rarely product people and their teams reach out to them.
Structuring our story
Now that we know which client needs are top-of-mind for them, it’s time to construct the story of our clients going from dissatisfaction to delight with our product.
Every story requires an “arc” — laying out the current situation clients care most about, the challenge of their dissatisfaction, and how our solution will solve the problem.
Crucially, we have only 3 minutes to capture and hold attention to tell that story.
Two Proven Ways to Boost Our Storytelling and Persuasive Speaking
Two proven ways I’ve seen help people use to master the skill of breaking down our message and presenting with power:
1. Toastmasters
2. The 3-Minute Rule
1. Toastmasters
Toastmasters is a global organization renowned for getting people to realize their potential as presenters and leaders through speaking mastery.
There are chapters everywhere. Find a local one, pick a track, and hang in there.
You will never be more nervous than before doing your first speech.
But the transformative power of having a speaking mentor, and a supportive community around you can fast-track your speaking success in a way few things can.
Interestingly, I’ve found the lessons of Toastmasters have worked equally well in both my written communication as well my speaking and presenting style.
2. The 3-Minute Rule
I learned about “The 3-Minute Rule” from studying with Hope Gurion and Teresa Torres, and it’s transformed my speaking and presentation
Renowned for producing such television hits as “The Biggest Loser,” Brant Pinvidic presented hundreds of pitches to studio executives. His ratio of success with his pitches was always low until he evolved his “WHAC” method.
From that point, he radically reduced how much he said, and exponentially increased his “win” rate.
Pick up Brant’s book, and if possible, the audio book, as well, narrated by the author himself. This can help absorb Brant’s enthusiasm and pacing, hearing first-hand how he varies his speed, intonation, and pitch.
Powerful stuff.
Story power
As we master the skill of storytelling on a day-to-day basis, we’re increasingly able to tell stories that help focus and motivate at the Team level.
And as we continue to evolve and focus our message, we become skilled in crisply sharing these stories in different ways uniquely suited to presenting at Senior Leadership levels.
But to grow in our skills, we’ll need to have time to learn and practice alongside our daily work.
2. Manage your schedule
This is probably one of the biggest challenges for most product people I work with — they’re invited to so many meetings, they feel they’re always struggling to catch up and have no time to continue building their knowledge and skills.
The key is not to let your schedule “happen” to you
Sometimes, it will be important to be seen and present effectively in the right meetings.
But overall, there isn’t a single product person I’ve coached who hasn’t benefited from being more selective about which meetings to be in.
One of the first steps is to block your calendar to schedule dedicated Client, Team, and personal “deep work” time.
This allows us time to work on and develop our skills and practice, allowing us to be ready when the time comes to present.
3. Proactively connect with the right people
Before we can move forward in our careers, we need to understand who the decision-makers are on our path, starting with our own direct manager.
The goal is to understand what’s most important to them. Success will be a natural byproduct of making them look good in front of their leadership.
Listen deeply to their concerns, and connect with them on a personal level in non-transactional ways.
Be “relentlessly” helpful and supportive in addressing their concerns, and show a willingness to take on challenges. After you have some consistent, solid success, you’ll want to check with your manager to ask if it’s OK to connect with some other people across the organization above you in areas where you have interest.
After every conversation, make sure you follow up and recap, and ask, “Is there anyone else I should speak with?”
These don’t have to be long conversations. But you’ll get far more out of asking targeted questions in short, 15–30 minute 1:1s than you’d ever get being one of 60 people in a four-hour “all hands” meeting.
Regularly investing in real, human relationships with the right leaders and stakeholders is one of the most important uses of our time in managing our “optics.”
4. Share the right message
As we create higher visibility, we’ll have more opportunities to share our views. We can’t squander it by spreading negativity about others.
One of the strongest signals we can send is to be relentlessly supportive of our team and our current manager, combined with loyalty to leadership and the organization’s mission.
Become known as someone who’s positive, appreciative, and can be trusted to go the extra mile to make and meet commitments.
This, combined with effective communication, will help us become the kind of person who can build relationships and open up new growth possibilities in our careers.
Takeaways and TL;dr:
“Optics,” or managing how we’re perceived, is a core underrated product competency.
Few are born with it, although some take to it more naturally than others.
While we might look at others and dismiss them as “politicians” and “self promoters,” it’s important to learn from their success if we’re to increase our impact and make progress in our careers.
Rest assured, if you’re struggling, you too, can improve your optics by improving this key competency, through:
1. Mastering storytelling
2. Managing our schedule
3. Proactively connecting with the right people
4. Sharing the right message
Have you started working on your Optics?
Share your journey and your next steps in the comments below.
References
Shreyas Doshi — Tweet: The 3 Layers of Product
Brant Pinvidic — The 3-Minute Rule