What’s a Director of Product?

What’s a Director of Product Management do? It’s a tough topic.

What’s a Director of Product Management do? It’s a tough topic.

Job titles are a complexifying factor. In big tech, titles like Director mean something different or maybe nothing at all. Let’s not go there.

In the rest of our culture, a Director of PM manages a team of Product Managers who often oversee the execution of cross-functional teams.

Some companies have a role where “PM Director” is an individual contributor — like a super senior product manager. Personally, I find this confusing. Starting at Director, I like a separate career track for IC PMs: Principal PM, Sr Principal PM, etc. But you do you.

From my perspective, the key function of a Director is to manage and lead Product Managers. A Director of Product Management is not a Product Manager any more than a Director of Engineering is an Engineer. Your focus as a Director is the success of your PMs, and you do not get success from people by doing their job.

If your leaders are giving your Directors the PM tasks that they think are too important to give “regular” PMs, they are blowing it. What would happen if the CTO tried this with her Director of Engineering?

Moving on: I have heard “player/coach” used to describe every job in Product Management and, honestly, it’s never helpful. Let’s stop doing this.

When wishfully thinking about the magical unicorn who will lead your product team, you might as well try not to confuse “coach” with “quarterback.”

I think you are imagining a superstar player who is out on the field, handling the ball on every play, throwing passes to herself, and also playing special teams and kicking her own field goals. Amazing!

I think hoping that person will also be the coach is a bit much.

A coach leads the entire team, offense and defense, designs the plays, shares a vision for success, delegates credit and takes blame. Having her running on and off of the field through the game… that’s not a recipe for success.

Oh god, worst sports metaphor ever. Let’s end this here.

I’ll continue another post with how I see Group and Director PMs laddering up to Sr Director, VP, and CPO.

These are all opinions, some of which are probably wrong. It’s just what works for me.

Let me know your thoughts, please!