 Rwy'n gallu cwestiynau. How many of you believe being a people manager improves your career growth? Let's have a show of hands. I can't see all of you, to be honest, but let's see how we're doing. Not as many as I thought, I'm going to be honest. Maybe 20, 25% of you. I've got another question for you. How many of you believe being a people manager increases your influence? OK, there's a lot more of you believe this one. Well, I'm going to talk to you today about being a product leader and having a fulfilling career in product management. And these are part of having a fulfilling career, but what do I really mean by product leadership? Well, I think that if I ask you if we talk about it generally, we tend to think about chief product officer, VP product, all those senior job titles that you see around, that you see on LinkedIn, wherever you see them, that's a product leader. But that's not what I believe, and I don't think that's true at all. We are all leaders in product because we are incredibly lucky. We actually get to work in an industry where we are leading problem solving, where we are guiding teams and road maps, where we're leading thinking, where we're leading the industry, where we're leading change. Do you see the common theme here? We all get to be leaders no matter what role we do because leading is not about a job title, not about a job title at all. Leading is not about seniority. Leading is about the skills you bring, the attitude you bring, and the work that you do. And there is the opportunity to be a leader at every single level of your career. No matter what role you do, you can develop those skills. And when we start to think about it so much more holistically, then we open up so many more opportunities for ourselves. We open up so many more opportunities to pursue. And what is it that creates a fulfilling career? What is it that brings you joy and passion and all of those things? Well, I can tell you that it doesn't come from a narrow definition of leadership. It comes from embracing wide experience and opportunities. You all know that because you're product leaders and you all know that by embracing wide perspectives by thinking broadly about problems you get to better outcomes. We need to apply the same thinking to our own careers. Now, there is this traditional view. You've probably seen one of these. Maybe your business has one. They've existed for tens, probably even 100 years. And they're very linear. And maybe you're an associate product manager sitting there today. Maybe you're a senior product manager and you are looking at this and you are thinking to yourself, oh my gosh, there's a huge life defining change in front of me. I've got to make a decision. Am I going to go left and become an individual contributor for the next 10, 20, 30 years, however long? Or am I going to step the other way and become a people manager for 10 or 20 or 30 years? Whatever the decision is, there's one moment in time to make it and I've got to make it now. That's a huge weight. And actually, that's not real life, is it? This is much more like real life. This is much more indicative of my own career. Maybe you've come into product from a different discipline. Maybe you're a career switcher. Maybe you're sitting here in the audience today and you've done a boot camp and you're on your second career in product. Well done to you if you have. It's a great step to take. I have never been a senior product manager. I have never been ahead of product. But I am here today as a chief product officer because I've done a whole load of variety of roles in the tech industry and in business over the years. And I've bounced between being an individual contributor being a people manager. I haven't followed one path. I haven't even stuck to one path. I was a people manager. I then took on an individual contributor role in a sideways move, which is one of the best things I ever did. It was a role where I learned so much and it catapulted me forward in my career. So I think this is a much more realistic picture of our careers today. And I encourage you to think about it like this. Bounce around from one to the other. Experiment and learn. We are not ever really finished learning. We're not really ever the finished article. And as we go through life, as we learn, as we develop, as things change in our lives, our priorities change and what we want from work changes. And that will change the roles that you think you want to take on. Sometimes we learn new things and it sparks something that we didn't know that we loved. And if we think about ourselves as just on one path to tread, then, you know, we get stuck and we can't pursue the things we love. And Steve Jobs talked about this. You know, you spend a lot of time at work. You might as well make it great work because we all spend so much time doing it and I fully agree. But enough about structures and charts and linear career paths. There's much more fulfilling elements to your career than what your title says on paper or the path that you followed. So, like I said, your work is going to fill a large part of your life and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. The great words of Steve Jobs and a great thing to think about when you're thinking about your North Star. So this diagram here is not intended to be a linear upward progression. It's just an illustrative example. An example of what got you here will not take you where you want to go. Your career is not a random event that you let happen to you. You're in the driving seat. You have agency. You own every decision that you make. And if you don't drive your own career, then the decision you've made is not to do that. And I don't think that that's what any of you want. So, you need to think, what is the plan for me? What is the meaningful next step that takes me from where I am to where I want to be? Now, of course, the things we've learnt along the way, the skills we've learnt, the experiences we have have a really important part to play in taking us forward. But that's not the whole picture. And we can't rely on those skills forever. We must look forward. We must make a plan. We must be purposeful with that. I've got another question for you. I think I know the answer, but I'm interested. Can anyone here read minds? I feel like I heard somebody whisper, yes. And if you did, then you've got a head start on me and pretty much everybody else. But I can't read minds, and I think that's what 99% of you also think. So, why am I asking you that question? It's a bit random, right? Well, no, it isn't. Because you own your career and the steps, but it is critical that you also talk about it with other people. Because, you know, your manager is there to help you, your mentors and other people are there to help you. If you do not tell them, if you do not talk about what your personal goal is, your ambition, your North Star, then they're going to make assumptions for you. And those assumptions will be made with the absolute best of intentions. But they're not yours, they're mine, or they're that person's. And you might find yourself shepherded down a well trodden path in a certain direction, but it's not the direction you want to go in. So owning your career is also about standing in your strength and being clear about what you want and why, and not being afraid to talk about it, and not being afraid of being ambitious. Don't hide the fire within you. Don't be ashamed of wanting what it is that you want because every desire, career-wise, that you have is yours. It is your personal plan. It doesn't matter what I think. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks because it's about your fulfilling career. So don't hide those things. Talk about it. Tell the people around you what you're striving for. They might have great advice. They might be able to connect you with other people. And that leads me on to another really important point here. We have to be purposeful and we have to plan our careers. But it can be really difficult to do that because maybe if you're early in your career there are a few obvious options that come next. But the more senior you get, the more experience you get, the less clear it becomes. And what I have found really valuable and what has served me well to get to where I am today is to stop thinking about the job title, to stop thinking about the position in the hierarchy, and to start thinking about the capabilities and the skills. That you want to develop. That you love doing. Think about the things that you don't like doing and why you don't like doing them. And what I do is get that down on paper and I then say to myself, okay, these capabilities, these skills, I want to do more of those. I want to move towards that. The ones over here, I can do them but I don't love them. They don't give me energy. They're not my passion. They're not the best of them if I can. And so every opportunity that comes my way, it's not about the title or any of that. The question I always ask myself and I encourage you to ask yourself is, does this work take me closer to the capabilities that I want to develop or that I want to be working on or does it take me further away? When you start thinking about it like this, you will find there are so many more opportunities open to you that weren't originally obvious. Maybe they will take you outside of product. Maybe they won't. For some of you like me, they will bring you into product because you weren't there in the first place. But it's really important and I think it's much easier to build a plan when you think about capabilities and what you love and what your passion is than if you think about a job title that must be achieved. And how do you go about figuring that out? It's easy to say, harder to do, as always, with advice. But the things that have served me well are reaching out and finding mentors who do the things that you want to do, who've worked in the areas that you want to work in or might have a different perspective to offer. I think pursuing learning for specific skills is really important as well. Just about learning on the job, there are certain skills that you need to go out and cultivate. For me, that came, for example, some time ago, I was working as a chief of staff and I was doing a lot of corporate finance, which is not something that I'm particularly good at. But I was enjoying it. And so I said to myself, well, I want to do more work like this. I love this job so much. I want to do more. I want to be better. So off I went and started my Chartered Institute of Management Accounting exams to learn that skill. And I encourage you to find ways, small and big, to cultivate specific skills and do learning. I think it's also great to reach out to people in other industries. Maybe there's an industry you really want to contribute to and you want to learn about it. Find somebody out there who can tell you about it. Get some advice about how to approach things in that industry. Get some connections, network. Absolutely critical. And then my last piece on this is one which is often overlooked or underrated. But I can tell you has been one of the most meaningful things for my own career development. And that is taking a sideways move. People often don't want to take a sideways move. It seems like it might hold you back. But I assure you is actually the springboard that catapults you forward. Last year I was here talking about creativity coming from broad perspectives and different views and getting real creative solutions. We need to bring that same thinking to our own careers. Taking a sideways move, learning something new, getting a different perspective, building as much breadth as you can is invaluable in helping you as you proceed in your career. I am better at nurturing people in my team. I am better at mentoring and I am better at solving problems and approaching business challenges because of the breadth of roles that I have undertaken and the number of sideways moves that I've made in order to make that happen. I really encourage you to think about that as you plan your career. So there's a few tips there and we talked about capabilities and we're here for a product conference. So I've tried to boil down some of the product capabilities we might want to look at. So broadly speaking we've got product management skills like product execution, customer insight and we've got product leadership skills which remember applies to everyone, influencing people, product strategy. These are very high level. So I've broken it down a little bit more, only a little bit more and obviously underlying all of these, you know there are a bunch more skills there but I had to stop somewhere and simplicity is also a skill in product. So these skills here are critical no matter what you do in product. Now perhaps maybe you're sitting here and you're working in UX or a UX designer then voice of the customer, user experience design they're going to be really important parts of your skillset. Maybe roadwapping is a lesser part of your job but you still have to engage in that process. You still have to know what it's about. You may not do it every day, it may not be a big part of your role but it's still important and that goes for everything on here. These are all part of being successful as a product leader and in the product discipline. We talk a lot about being an individual contributor or a people manager and there are lots of perceptions about who has influence and who doesn't. But I think you can see here there are a number of skills that we all need in influencing and even team leadership applies whether you're a people manager or an individual contributor. As an individual contributor you're going to be leading roadmaps, leading designs, leading teams in a matrix way. You're going to be setting the direction. You're going to be making decisions that set the direction for the entire business. As a people manager you'll do some of that too but your focus might be more on developing the people in your team directly and your responsibilities in line management. My point is that when you think about the skills you need to succeed they're the same. It's just the focus is different the way they're applied is different and when you start to think about it like this it becomes obvious that you can of course bounce between the tracks between roles. You can go from one to the other and you can think holistically about your career. You can open up all the opportunities. I find this a much clearer way to look at the role that I want to do. But there's another important factor here it's not just about the skills we have it's not just about developing the skills because you can be really good at a job but absolutely hate it and that's no good. Someone can tell you that you're really really good at that thing. For example I often got told that I was really good at detail so I absolutely hated having to do jobs that were all about the detail because I love thinking about big picture ideas and bouncing ideas off people and I didn't want to only be doing detail I was forcing myself to do it. It's important that we recognise those things. So you need to discover your why you need to think about not only the skills you have but what is it that gives you energy what sparks your passion what drives you forward what is it that makes you jump out of bed on Monday morning we don't want the Sunday scaries we want to be full of energy for the work that we do we want to love it because Steve Jobs said it really well we spend a lot of time doing it so that means finding your why what do I mean? I talk about this all the time with my teams with people I mentor I think about it for myself a lot as well your why is the passion that drives you forward your why is the reason that you do what you do your why is the thing that makes you feel proud of the work that you're doing of the role that you play of the impact that you have and it's critical that you examine this and you think about what it is only you know the answer and like I said with ambition it doesn't matter what it is it's unique and personal to you and as long as you know what it is and you're driving for it that's what matters we're not here to impress other people we're here to live our own lives we want it to be worth it right so really think about why think about the energy think about what you want to be doing part of figuring that out is having a gross mindset is another one of my absolute favourite topics another thing that I talk to my team about all the time and again we're super lucky because in the product world we do a whole bunch of things to learn from our users the industry to grow and improve our products so you all already have the skills you need to develop this gross mindset to cultivate it you just need to turn them on yourself you need to turn them on your career so here are three easy things that I guarantee that every single one of you already knows how to do and is probably already doing on a regular basis in other forums be agile and have a retrospective culture you all know what a retro is I'm sure you do them all the time do the same for your career do the same for your role think about the times where you felt amazing where you felt like you could conquer the world you could do anything think about when you were happiest think about all of those things and it will give you a clue you will find a thread for me it was about being part of a really great team where I felt like you know what if I make a mistake the people around me have my back and I know if I'm in that environment I can tackle anything no matter how hard it is that's what I discovered when I started to think about it you will discover those threads for yourself and it will help you to make really great decisions about the environment you want to be in rapid learning and experimentation again I'm sure you're all running experimentation on your products you're all rapid learning talking to your customers learn quickly all of this stuff that we do in product turn it on your career what can you do to experiment I actually was talking to somebody the other day and they said to me Jess you get on stage in front of thousands of people and you're not nervous how do you do it first of all we're all nervous when we get on the stage that's normal but second of all I didn't go from never doing a presentation to getting on stage in the Barbican I talked in teams I went to meet-ups I did lots of small presentations over many many years and that was my advice to this person go and practice experiment find out what works for you and then do more and learn and grow and then the second or the third time that you get on stage at the Barbican is as white as bad as it was the first time and you hope that one day you won't feel any nerves but I'm not sure if that's true I'll tell you if it is and then lastly transparency and feedback culture again I'm absolutely certain you're doing this in your teams that you're working on this every day we don't need to be afraid of feedback we just need to choose who we ask and why we ask them or crisp up those asks so that we ask them for something specific that's going to help us think about the questions you want to ask think about the people you respect and whose feedback really matters to you and go out and ask those questions because self-awareness is key we can't succeed if we don't know ourselves if we don't know ourselves we don't know what gives us drive we don't know where we want to go and we don't know how we're performing it's nothing to be afraid of it's all part of the journey often we shy away from this but actually being transparent about what you want to achieve where you want to go talking about it and seeking feedback is all part of the journey I've had so much feedback during my career some of it is so cringe and horrible I don't repeat it but it's all a learning journey it's helped me be who I am today it's helped me learn how to give feedback to people so that it doesn't devastate them in the moment it's helped me reflect on why certain feedback hurts more than others it's all part of the journey embrace it don't be afraid of it so we want to have a fulfilling career I hope I've left you with some thoughts on how to achieve that and how to move away from linear career path and focusing on job titles to actually creating a career for yourself that's meaningful career fulfillment is not about taking a single path it's about finding your passions and what you love find what brings you energy and channel that into your career growth into your personal growth it's so important today's path is not the path for tomorrow make your decisions take hold of the opportunities own your career make it a great one and go and achieve your dreams thank you