Thread by @lennysan

What does it take to become a “senior” Product Manager?

In this week's newsletter, the one and only @jackiebo shares her in-depth advice.

tl;dr Focus on (1) Strategy, (2) Autonomy, and (3) Nuance.

*See thread for highlights*
lennysnewsletter.com/p/senior-produ…

1/ Strategy

A senior PM is responsible for developing and evangelizing a strategy that leads to meaningful customer and business success.

They paint a picture of an inspiring future and figure out the best path to get there.

There are three parts to a strategy: (1) vision, (2) strategic framework, and (3) roadmap. You can get started with whichever one calls to you.

To get started with a (1) vision, sketch out a storyboard of your future customers using your future product and highlight how much better their lives are compared to the status quo.

To get started with a (2) strategic framework, write down your target market, their pain points, and the strategic bets or differentiators that you believe will win that market. Write down some alternative approaches and lay out your frameworks for why you believe you're right.

To get started with the (3) roadmap, write down a rough plan for the next few year’s worth of work, ideally grouped into strategic themes. Once you have the roadmap, imagine someone asking "why?" about each part of it.

Your strategy doesn’t have to be perfect! Your plan will change as you learn new information, but starting with a strategy helps you make better moves now. Block off the time to create a strategy now!

2/ Autonomy

Senior PMs are able to run a team independently.

Great senior PMs ask for lots of input and advice, but they could keep their team running, work with stakeholders, resolve conflicts, and ship successful products without needing their manager to guide them.

Autonomy isn’t just about being capable, it’s also about earning the trust to be allowed to work independently. That takes proactive communication and building a track record of successful launches.

Ironically, if you have a high level of autonomy it can be harder to earn trust. When you’re working independently, your manager won’t see all of the great decisions you make and the tough challenges you overcome. You’ll need to intentionally share your work with your manager.

Here's a template:

1. Hi manager, let me tell you about a challenge I ran into ______

2. Here’s how I’m thinking of handling it (or did handle it) ______

3. Any thoughts?

3/ Nuance

The more senior you get, the more you’ll be faced with decisions where the right answer is “it depends.”

Senior PMs recognize these decisions and reason through them in a structured way. They can grapple with complex tradeoffs and ambiguous situations.

As you work on developing your nuanced thinking, the best guides are your teammates and stakeholders. Take their concerns seriously and look for the hidden complexity. What are the circumstances in which they’d be right? What information might they have you don't have?

To practice this skill, when you make a decision, find nuances where a different decision would be better. Write out, “It depends. If X, then A is the best choice. If Y, then B is the best choice. I think this situation is X, so A.”

By working on strategy, autonomy, and nuance, you can level up your skills, expand your impact, and hopefully get promoted to senior PM!

4/ For much more, don't miss the full post
lennysnewsletter.com/p/senior-produ…