 Hi, I'm Kate Bennett, Senior Product Manager at Nike, and today I'd like to share a concept for career growth with you. Before I do, I'll tell you a little bit about my background and who this webinar is intended for. I am a Senior Product Manager, but first and foremost, I'm a product management professional. I have eight years experience in product management roles and 17 in digital user experience in technology. I've worked in automotive, banking, retail, and healthcare industries, and I bring multi-million-dollar products to market for billion-dollar organizations. My brother-in-law said that was aggressive, and I agree. But when I consider what made me successful in bringing these new products to market for these organizations and who my core audience is, I felt it was best that I do present myself in this way. The reason why I was successful bringing these products to market is because of strategy, and the concept I'm gonna share with you today is based on strategy. The target audience for this webinar is aspiring product managers or acting product management professionals who want to advance their career. I'm gonna demonstrate how you can do this through a concept I've titled a product management practice for career growth. Product management has existed for nearly a century, but there's still a lot of ambiguity around what product management is. This is apparent because even established product management professionals with industry leaders and Silicon Valley tech giants, open webinars and YouTube tutorials level setting on what product management is even now after all this time. It's described in one of two ways. As a product market lifecycle, consisting of four phases, introduction, growth, maturity, and decline, or a product development cycle, consisting of plan, analyze, design, build, test, and launch. This is mainly due to the evolution of product management, which started when Procter & Gamble introduced a role in the 1930s called the Brandman. The Brandman was responsible for managing product sales, marketing, and the lifecycle of manufactured goods. In 1940, Hewlett Packard introduced product orgs into their organizational infrastructure. These product orgs consisted of manufacturing and product roles. Their sales were around a little over 5,000 at this time, and by 1951, they grew them to 5.5 million. If we fast forward to 1990, when the e-business birthed, product management was required to adapt to digital products. In 2000, product management practices were prevalent in most organizations, and they were typically managing digital products that were based in design and marketing, not necessarily only technology at this point, but they were practicing product management skills in these roles in 2000. By 2010, product management was established as a discipline that was recognized by most employers and educational institutions. However, the roles typically assumed other titles like IT project manager or tech producer. In 2010, as best quoted by productschool.com, product management secured its place between design, business, and technology. Today, there are more than 15.4 million individuals on LinkedIn who hold the title product manager. One thing has remained true throughout history, and that is product management is a discipline, and the core competencies are still the same today. They are market analysis, feature planning, roadmap management, product design, product delivery, and product iteration. Today, I'm gonna show you how you can apply the core competencies of this discipline to your career as it was a product you wanted to bring to market or grow, starting with competency number one, market analysis. I just mentioned that there are over 15.4 million individuals that are product managers on LinkedIn. The number of open product manager roles on LinkedIn are far fewer. It is a very competitive field. And for good reason, the compensation is great. When looking at the median-based salary for product roles, whether it's a product manager or a senior executive in product management, these roles comparative to other roles in the job market are at the top of the pay scale. For a good reason, product managers bring value to organizations. They maximize the scalability and profitability of products and they drive incremental revenue for organizations. They are key to growth and a valuable tool to employers. So I think we identified a problem statement. We know the problem and the opportunity. The problem statement is, I'm passionate about a career in product management, but I have a hard time getting noticed because it's so competitive. Competency number two, feature planning. If your career is your product and your experience are your features, you should consider refraining your experience to date on your resume to reflect product management as a discipline. Your product is your career and your resume is like your roadmap. It should demonstrate what features your product offers and also be a tool to manage the maturity of your product. I can give you an example of how to do this in an entry level role for those of you who don't have experience in product management. I started my career in customer service. I would call consumers on behalf of General Motors at the time that on-star navigation and XM radio were being introduced into vehicle technology. And I would ask consumers if they needed any help setting up their user preferences or walking them through the features and functionality. I would also ask them if there were any friction points, if they had any feedback for improvement and collect this information and document it for GM. What I was doing is I was actually documenting the requirements for the manufacturer to make feature improvements or iterate on the product in years to come. That is just one example of how you can reframe your resume to demonstrate the product management discipline. Now, I don't mean change your title, but what I am trying to convey here is that you can showcase that you have practiced the product competencies in your experience to date. And you should do so because your target audience are employers and you wanna make sure that you are meeting their problem statement, which is that they need a product manager. So your resume should reflect that you really know the discipline and that you can actively apply the product management competencies in your experience. Competency number three, roadmap management. If your product is your career and your experience are your features, you can sequence your features for outcomes that support your product's maturity path, like a product roadmap. And I'm gonna show you a few ways that you can manage and navigate this product roadmap to advantage yourself against the competition and to help you get noticed by employers. If you have experience in operations, consulting or working with people, processes and tools, you'll likely be targeting roles that highlight or have keywords such as product excellence. If your background is in design, websites, apps or interactive media, you're likely gonna wanna target roles that manage consumer products. If your experience is highly technical and you have experience with enterprise architecture or service engineering, you're applying for technical product roles. If you have a competency in all of these areas, you're a good fit for online to offline product. And what I mean by that, and I'll give you a good example, curbside pickups is a great example. We're seeing that a lot right now, especially among the pandemic. Curbside pickup is a service that's offered by a lot of companies and it is a product that can be managed within an organization. These products are typically managed by senior or principal product roles and the reason why is because they're highly complex. You have to consider how the people and tools that are being used by the end user, the processes and the day-to-day operations impact the design and development of the technology. You also have to consider how the technology will impact these end users and the day-to-day operations for the business. It is a great way to gain a senior competency in product management. I would highly recommend looking for these roles if you have experience across operations design and technology. Now, if you are looking for a role or looking to get a role as a people manager or you're pursuing a path of leadership, you're likely gonna target roles that highlight portfolio management. Management of many products or many product managers who manage many products. And as a leader, provide oversight for the portfolio that you manage. So portfolio management is a great next step for a senior product manager to take. Candidacy factors for new roles include accreditation, seniority level held, applicable product experience, number of years spent practicing the discipline and a history of successful outcomes, which brings me to competency number four, building a valuable product. As a product manager, you're ultimately accountable for maximizing scalability and profitability. Therefore, every role on your resume should showcase delivery and financial outcomes. If not your own, then demonstrate how you contributed. If you were not the directly accountable individual for the delivery, you should state that you contributed to the delivery and how. Either way, you should showcase value in this way on your resume to show that you own a valuable product, that you are a valuable product to an employer. Elon Musk has put this best by saying, if there is a track record of exceptional achievement, then it's likely that it will continue into the future. Competency number five, product delivery. Check in with your OKRs when you're applying for roles or when you're searching for roles in the market. A few of mine are, is this role aligned to your product roadmap? Are your product features adding value to the role? Is the role growing your product? It's important to check in with your OKRs, not only to make sure that you are meeting the objectives of the employer, but also to make sure that the role is meeting your objectives and the key results that you desire in your career path. Product competency number six, product iteration. Like a product that you bring to market or a new feature that you're releasing, you are going to monitor and measure the performance of that product. Check back in with what's working and not working in your career or when applying for roles. If you're not adding value like managing a product, you must consider that the role might have reached the end of its life cycle and pursuing a path of divestiture is a product responsibility because your product, your career is your most valuable product. So our main takeaways today for applying the concept of a product management practice for career growth are market insights and your experience are actionable data. You should use them. You can sequence your maturity path like features on a roadmap to help you target the right roles. This will help you become a competitor in the job market for product management roles and also help you take the advantage over the competition. And third and last, use these core competencies to apply product management practices for career growth. I hope you take something valuable away from this and that this helps you get into the product management discipline or if you answer yourself in the product management hierarchy. If you have any questions, I can be contacted at LinkedIn or Twitter. Again, this is Kate Bennett and thank you for your time today.