Career Strategy, meet Product Strategy
Three powerful ways to approach your career more strategically.
You can approach your career more strategically by taking a page or two out of the product strategy playbook. Because your career is a product. And you have to manage it!
First, let’s define this nebulous term, “strategy.” Some people collect magnets, spoons, shot glasses. I collect strategy definitions. Here are a few from my treasure trove.
There are the longer, more academic ones. The first is from my old MBA textbook and the second is from my recent CPO Program.
Strategy is the “large-scale, future-oriented plans for interacting with the competitive environment to achieve company objectives. A strategy is a company’s game plan. Although that plan does not precisely detail all future deployments (of people, finances, and material), it does provide a framework for managerial decisions. A strategy reflects a company’s awareness of how, when, and where it should compete; against whom it should compete; and for what purposes it should compete.”1
A strategy is
1) Broad enough to provide specific guidance across many specific decisions;
2) Articulable so that decision-makers across the firm can see how the strategy informs the decisions they make;
3) Flexible enough to provide guidance for a multitude of decisions at all parts of the firm, and in unexpected or unforeseeable situations.
And the random ones I don’t even know who to attribute to at this point.
Strategy is a framework for making future decisions.
Strategy defines where you’ll play and how you’ll win.
Strategy is an integrated set of choices that reinforce each other and increase your odds of success.
Strategy is a concise description of how a firm (or how you, in the case of your career) intends to create economic value or achieve a specific goal.
Strategy is what you’re not going to do and why.
Now let’s explore three frameworks that we in Product leverage to build a strong product strategy that can also be applied when building your dream career.
Strategic Planning (e.g., Vision > Strategy > Roadmap)
Finding Your Ideal Fit
Aligning Performance Expectations
Strategic Planning
The strategic planning cadence needed to build a product strategy can be applied to your career.
While there are hundreds of ways to visualize strategic planning, 99.9% of them are pyramids. Here’s a random one.2 I chose it because it’s almost Halloween and it looks like candy corn, the most maligned of the spooky season’s confectionary.
Side note: You don’t need to be able to answer the question, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” to be strategic about your career. Having a career strategy doesn’t mean you’ve planned every aspect of a 40-year+ career. Being agile is absolutely a career planning requirement, especially when it can feel like there are surprises lurking around every corner. Hello, tech layoffs!
Mission, Vision, Values
First, your career strategy, like your product strategy, needs to align to your overarching mission, vision and values.
Mission Statement (Horizon: Lifetime; revisit ~every 5-10 years) — Why are you here on this planet? What motivates you? What gives your life meaning and purpose?
This is 1-2 simple sentences.
It can be the hardest one to define because it is what makes you uniquely you.
It’s possible that your mission doesn’t come into full view until your 40s or 50s. Don’t rush it, but do draft something now, regardless of your age or life experience. Then keep refining it.
My recommendation is to discover your mission by tuning in to the repeated patterns and external, positive signals you receive. What do your close friends and family say they appreciate about you most? What compliments do you receive most often? What do even strangers seem to gravitate to you for?
Vision Statement (Horizon: Lifetime; revisit ~every 5-10 years) — What life are you creating? What can you look into the future and see clearly?
This is as detailed as you can make it. Possibly even a few pages describing your vision for your life. The goal is to become so emotionally invested in your life’s vision that you can visualize it, almost taste it.
I have both a longer vision statement and the “bulleted form” I keep in a highly visible place.
It can include answers to these questions:
Where do you live?
Who do you spend time with?
What does a typical day look like, feel like?
What does your home look like, feel like? Or are you nomadic?
Do you travel? How, to where and with whom?
How do you feel physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually?
Here’s an example: A few years ago, a single girlfriend of mine described her life vision to me. In summary, she said, “I want a man who is tall, dark, handsome and rich. [That part she said with a laugh, in her characteristically facetious and fierce way.] I want to travel all over the world and not be tied down to one place. I want a job I can do from anywhere.” A week later, she met her partner and began creating the lifestyle she wished for. (By the way, obviously those two things didn’t need to come in that order!)
Values (Horizon: Lifetime; revisit after major life changes) — What do you believe? What is most important to you and why?
There are several free exercises online to help you define your values.
Your values may evolve over time based on your life experiences, so revisit them especially after major life changes.
Vision Statement (Horizon: 15-20+ years; revisit every 3-5 years) — What is your career North Star? What’s the highest point of achievement you are currently aiming for?
A career vision statement can be as simple as “VP of _____” or “Founder and CEO of a startup”
Or you can create something similar to your life vision statement (which can be more of a novella), but career-focused.
I have both the simple statement and every time I start in on a job search, I update my list of >30 things I want in a future role at a future company. This is a list I’ve continued to curate throughout my career. You may start out really simple with, “A steady paycheck in a role I can learn and grow in” and build it out over time.
Your mission, vision, values are aspirational. They are what you’re working towards and may not fully achieve for many years.
Strategy, Roadmap, Goals
As you start to think about what is achievable in the nearer-term, you craft your strategy, roadmap and goals.
Career Strategy (Horizon: 2-3 years; revisit and refine annually) — Understand what is required and valued in your dream job and create a flexible framework to get there.
What is needed for your dream job? (This is also defining “Where you’ll play”)
Research job descriptions of that role online.
Set up informational interviews with people already in your future role.
These interviews can also help guide you with the industry, company size, in-office/hybrid/remote, geographic factors you should consider.
Connect on LinkedIn with top voices and influencers in the industry, company and/or role you want.
Based on understanding what is going to be required, what are some of the major choices you need to make? (This is defining “How you’ll win”)
For example, do you need to attend a top-tier business school? Do you need to gain a set of skills through low-cost or free courses? Do you need to do a specific type of internship? Do you need to develop specific connections within your network? Do you need to make a lateral move or even take a step down to leap frog into what you want long-term? Do you need a mentor or coach? Do you need a side hustle to build a personal brand through creating content or offering services?
The horizon on your strategy could be fairly short. One year from now, two years, maybe three years.
Once you have your career vision, your North Star, and then your career strategy, or the integrated set of choices, you may choose to simply focus on your very next move. Your next career pivot.
The key is to keep it aligned to your North Star by asking, Is this move taking me closer or further away from my ultimate goal?
Learn more in Jenny Blake’s Pivot. Also, more on pivoting toward your ideal fit role in the next section.
Final thought here: There are no mistakes. We make the best choices with the information we have at the time. Everything adds up in your career. You may feel like you’re getting off course or made a wrong turn. It’s all for your good. It is all, ultimately, beneficial and will move you forward if you learn from every move.
Career Roadmap (Horizon: 1-2 years; revisit annually) — I also see your roadmap as a loose structure that provides some guidance but doesn’t become deflating. It should motivate you.
Think of your roadmap as simply a way to sequence your “How you’ll win” portion of your career strategy. What needs to happen first, second, third if there are building blocks or dependencies?
For example, I knew that moving into Product Management in SaaS from Program Management in Financial Services would require more familiarity with agile methodologies. I took training courses and attempted to implement some of the principles within my current sphere of influence. I also knew that one of the easiest ways to pivot into SaaS was through a software I was already familiar with and had championed at my current company. I volunteered to be on the implementation task force and I used the software every day. I became a product expert and trained others on it. A few years later, I landed a job as a Product Manager at that software company.
Career Goals (Horizon: Depends; revisit as you’re achieving the goals and need the next set) — Finally, define points at which you want to reach certain career goals. How will you measure your success?
Your goals may be about title, compensation, type of experience gained or any number of things you value.
The only caution here is be careful chasing a title at the expense of the compensation. Titles are highly relative company to company. I would recommend anchoring more on compensation than the title.
Everyone is different. I tend to feel most motivated by the next title, plus a next base/bonus compensation number. My goal is always a title that feels unattainable and a number that scares me a little.
Your goals may have nothing to do with a specific status or money. They could be about creating a sustainable sense of well-being with financial freedom and career optionality.
We’ll save your Career Action Plan for another day. The above is plenty to get started with.
So now you have your Life Mission, Vision, Values and your Career Vision, Strategy, Roadmap, Goals.
How do you find your ideal fit role, right now?
Finding Your Ideal Fit
In product strategy terms, we call this principle “achieving product-market fit.”
Brian Tod created this breakdown to show what happens when there is imbalance between Viability, Desirability, and Feasibility.3
For your career strategy, you’ll find your ideal candidate-market fit with these three elements: Passion, Competence, Need.
You will get mixed, but well-meaning, career advice. And that’s because everyone places varying importance on these three things.
A common one is, “Do what you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life!” If you do what you love really well (Passion + Competence), but no one is willing to pay you for doing it (no Need) … Congratulations, you have a hobby!
Someone (like an anxious parent) might encourage you to, “Follow the money! Find the jobs of the future in high demand that will pay the best.” If you chase the money but don’t have any passion for it, you will become bored or burn out quickly.
If you absolutely love what you do and it pays well, but you aren’t any good at it, this is an opportunity to grow. (And grow fast or it could lead to failure.)
What happens when you have all three relatively balanced? You’ve (hopefully) found your purpose-driven ideal role. For me, that’s product leadership.
Aligning Performance Expectations
Once you’ve created your career vision > strategy > roadmap and you’ve found your purpose-driven ideal role, you want to get promoted (i.e., be a commercial success).
How do I do that?
Here’s one promotion principle I wish I knew sooner:
Know what is valued at your company for your role. Know what you gravitate toward. The delta between those two will determine how quickly and how often you are promoted.
Shreyas Doshi breaks this down in a simple way. (I recommend following him on LinkedIn. I learned the below from one of his free Sunday morning trainings.)
There are three layers to every job, especially in Product:
Everyone has a default or “comfort zone” level we like to operate at. Be honest with yourself. Where do you like to live?
You also have to understand the level your organization or manager expects you to operate. What level is most valued for your current role and your next role (promotability)?
You can work as hard as you want at your default level. You can even go above and beyond any expectations within your default level. (And because we tend to spend more time and energy on what we’re familiar with and enjoy, we’re more prone to put extra, even unnecessary, effort here.) But if your manager expects you to show up on a level different from your default, the recognition and reward will be slow to non-existent.
How do I know what’s valued? One big clue is notice what you get feedback on in performance reviews. (Or, better yet, initiate your own 360-degree feedback loops with peers and stakeholders.)
This happened to me several years ago. I live most comfortably in the Impact level. I was working extremely hard, long hours with my team to create outcomes for customers and the business. Yet all the constructive feedback I got was about managing Optics. It was frustrating and discouraging. But I knew that’s what was valued at that company.
When I stepped back and stopped focusing so much on making a bigger impact and focused more on managing optics, Boom! Within six months, promoted with a pay raise, while working well under 40 hours a week consistently. I’d never felt so low-stress and been so well-rewarded for my work, ever. (And it was one of the rare times in my career where I was promoted to a new title and level of responsibility and received the commensurate compensation at the same time.)
What’s the product strategy equivalent? Stick with me here. This one might be more of a stretch for some.
The above model is a basic strengths and weaknesses analysis through a specific lens. There’s a missing element, though: The broader context you’re operating in. Your competition. It’s often your strengths and weaknesses in aligning your default level and what’s actually valued compared to your peers who are also vying for promotion. Who has performed better, or even the best, during any given promotion cycle?
In strategic terms, we look to the classic SWOT4 and Porter’s Five Forces analyses.5 Trade out terms like “customers” or “competitors” with “peers” or “stakeholders” or “manager,” depending on the context.
There’s no silver bullet for success (either role/career or product/commercial). All of the frameworks in this section help fill in context, align performance expectations, and help you make better, more strategic decisions.
Final thoughts
Building a career you’re proud of takes time and effort. You need patience and intrinsic motivation to keep going and achieve your goals.
You also need to approach your career strategically. Remember Alice and the Cheshire cat.
Having a few frameworks like strategic planning, finding your ideal fit, and aligning performance expectations can help you find the right road again and again.
But, you don’t have to over-complicate it. My advice is to pick one thing, just one, that resonates from the three frameworks we explored and decide right now how you’ll implement it.
What change will you make today, this week that will help you move one step closer to your dream job and therefore your dream life?
You got this! If you want to explore more about your career together, let’s connect.
Be well, my friends.
Pearce−Robinson: Strategic Management, Ninth Edition. The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2004.
https://www.flowtrace.co/collaboration-blog/how-to-align-company-vision-with-work-planning
https://briantod.medium.com/about-product-market-fit-what-ive-learned-about-the-goal-the-process-and-the-nuance-e7b317740f43
https://www.semrush.com/blog/swot-analysis-examples/
https://www.marketlinks.org/good-practice-center/value-chain-wiki/porters-five-forces