An Unconventional Path to Product Leadership

An Unconventional Path to Product Leadership

Product management attracts a certain kind of person, someone who’s curious about how things work, cares deeply about solving real problems, and thrives in the often messy and uncertain space between users, data, and technology. It’s a career for people who want to influence not just “what” gets built, but the “why” of it, and who seemingly have exhaustive energy for simplifying the complex, and connecting teams, stakeholders, and roadmaps. If you are someone who’s always asking, “is this the right problem to solve?” or “how do we make this better?”, it’s likely product will speak to you or it already has, much like it did for me.

After spending five years working as a digital project manager in full-service marketing agencies running cross-channel campaigns, research and solution development initiatives, delivering against timelines. I found more and more that I leaned into a consultative role when leading client projects, particularly when it came to projects where there was a product head required. Somewhere along the way, I began questioning the ‘why’ of what we were doing and what that meant for the end consumers experience. Of course, as a project manager, I had no business asking “why” to our tactics, the only question I should have been looking to answer was the all-important “when?”. It seems reductive to say someone can be “accidental” in their career choices, but really it felt at times incidental that I pursued a career in product, but in discovering it – there is nothing, I’d rather be doing.

“You don’t get promoted for doing your job well, you get promoted when you are trusted to do the next one better.”

Frances Erasmus, Product Director @ Annalect

Getting to work alongside some talented development teams, and I found myself increasingly drawn to the product space and the theories surrounding product thinking. I tried to apply myself more thoughtfully; spending time researching consumer personas, gathering market insights and applying a more solution-led lens to client work. There is a lot of overlap in the marketing interrogation of an audience, or “the consumer”, and the user personas and journeys we develop as product managers. Understanding our “users”, and how their challenges and needs shape consumer products, is something that’s hard to teach but critical in product thinking. That’s when I started to reassess my role. It wasn’t enough just executing anymore, I wanted to shape the outcomes, solve problems, and contribute to product direction.

Diversify Your Skillset

With that I started exploring product formally. My advice to anyone looking to get into product is to immerse yourself in learning, the more I learned, the more I felt I had an affinity for it. If you are interested in product, I suggest you go broad first, taking courses in product management yes, but also UX, QA testing, marketing and then deeper, establishing foundation knowledge around data flows, and architecture, even as far as beginner programming courses if you’re more technically minded. The trouble with only upskilling in product management is your understanding is grounded in theory only, which often conflicts with reality of a product managers function within a cross functional team and their development cycle. A rudimentary understanding of other functions and their needs or agendas, provides you with essential context and allows you navigate your first product role with compassion and practicality. You’ll need that. Additionally, in the current job market, when roles are at a premium and budgets are tight, I’d also suggest that a broader skill set is more likely to get you noticed in the hiring process.

Chase Impact

Breaking into product wasn’t instant. I applied for entry-level product roles in martech and faced a lot of rejection. Transparently, the market wasn’t what it is now, junior product roles are few and far between in the age of generative AI, but I would still suggest the same approach if making a career change; spend time truly framing your narrative, and stress your subject matter expertise, not just what you’ve accomplished, but how it fits into where you are going. Storytelling is routinely under sung in both job hunting and product development. Once I landed my first role, I focused on proving impact fast by listening, learning, and establishing relationships.

Be Agile

In junior product roles, there’s typically more crossover with project management when it comes to the product development cycle. Initially you might be in the weeds of projects as I was, writing Jira tickets, running QA and UAT, implementing analytics, even running ceremonies. Supplemented by product typical work, like developing user and market research, discovery, facilitating design reviews and feedback loops. Ultimately, you should be prepared to do whatever is needed to get a product into users' hands, and your cross-discipline education may soon become your biggest strength. It also reinforces something I remind those early on in their career of often, a software application will get built whether a product manager is involved or not, we are not essential, but our contribution good or bad can determine a products quality, its usefulness, and its long-term impact.

Get Comfortable with Uncertainty

The biggest learning curve for me was getting comfortable with the frankly, vast chasm of uncertainty, that comes with building new products from zero. Suddenly, you're responsible for whether what you’ve shipped actually works for the user, and whether it was even the right solution to build in the first place. That ambiguity can be uncomfortable initially, there’s no brief, and success isn’t always immediate, or even at all for some releases. It may be the most exhilarating and heartbreaking work you’ll ever do, but that intersection is where the product role is invaluable. You get to be the person challenging assumptions, asking “why”, prioritising the big problems over features, and helping shape the vision and the outcomes, not just managing the process.

Key Takeaways:

• Don’t wait for permission to think like a product manager, don’t be afraid to challenge assumptions and ask ‘why’.
• Learn your domain inside-out, product manager or otherwise you can’t build great products if you don’t deeply understand your industry, users, and their challenges.
• Invest in a broader skillset, UX, QA, data analysis, product marketing, the more you understand, the better you can collaborate and lead.
• Frame your experience to fit the future, it’s not just about what you’ve already accomplished, but what you plan to next.
• Your impact starts with users, not features - get close to them early. Let their pain points shape your roadmap.

Making the shift from project management into product management felt like a big leap at the time, but really, stepping into a leadership role is a big change in its own right. Just as you are finding your footing as a product manager, you realise that growing in this space isn’t just about honing your craft. It’s inherently political, learning how to resolve conflict, establish influence, scaling impact, and how to build trust across cross functional groups with often conflicting agendas, with users, stakeholders, engineers, and your own team. The skills that might get you into product won’t necessarily be enough to propel you into product leadership.

From Product Manager to Product Leader

There’s no real blueprint for stepping into product leadership, actually I would say this is a space where education is lacking, but for me, it came down to this; don’t wait to be promoted to fulfil the role you want and make sure to use your aspirational goals to inform your development plan. That meant thinking bigger, taking ownership of problems no one else wanted, and leading with consistency. You don’t get promoted for doing your job well, you get promoted when you are trusted to do the next one better.

The transition from Product Manager to Product Director isn’t just a title change. A more junior product manager is often deep in the detail: writing tickets, triaging bugs, feature releases, aligning on short-term needs. A Senior Product Managers responsibilities are more attuned to looking at the big picture, larger workstreams, driving outcomes, and building stakeholder trust. But as a Product Director, your world view expands even further. You’re accountable for the why, what, and who connecting strategy across markets, scaling teams, aligning vision, and navigating uncertainty. You’re not just delivering products you’re building the environment that allows great product work to happen.

Something that isn’t talked about enough in product is how much your relationships matter. Be kind. Be consistent, and over time, that builds trust, and finally your reputation. I was late (and reluctant) to the notion of a "personal brand", but I’ve come to realise that you have one intentionally or otherwise so it may as well be intentional. If people know they can rely on you, if you’re solution-focused, detail-driven, and always pushing for better that is your brand. You just need to own it and shape your story. Again, storytelling is the most underrated skill when it comes to progressing your career.

If you want to progress quickly, prepare to work hard. Unapologetically. It’s not a popular take, but I find the phrase “work smarter, not harder” has been taken a bit out of context. It doesn’t mean cutting corners and resisting effort. It means be strategic with your time and make that extra effort count. If you’re going to work evenings or weekends, and I would not advise you should, but if you do make sure it’s on something high impact that pushes the business (and your career) forward. With GAI taking on a lot of admin and repetitive tasks, there’s no reason we can’t use that freed-up headspace to think bigger. Innovation isn’t about the few successful ideas you launch; it’s a mindset, it’s a consistent process that quite often ends in failure, but failure is really the best place to start.

If you’re a woman in tech, (as I am) or a minority; expect to work even harder to establish credibility and be viewed on a level field with your male counterparts. You will most likely face additional barriers in having to prove your intellect and validating your decisions in a way that your male colleagues can’t relate to. A study by InnovateHer found that 50% of women in tech leave their jobs before the age of 35, and if you consider that only 24% of UK tech roles are filled by women, when it comes to tech leadership - that figure drops to just 5%. (techUK) It’s not just gender biases you’re competing with; women are statistically twice as likely to be at risk of burnout than men.

If you’re helpful, conscientious, and prone to perfectionism, it’s easy to stretch yourself thin at home and in the office. While it’s important to be a team player, filling in every gap won’t get you promoted it’ll burn you out. It’s a lesson I’ve had to learn more than once (still learning). Be supportive, yes. But don’t carry the weight of everyone else’s expectations just because you can.

There is no perfect path into product or product leadership, but staying curious, working with intention and keeping the user at the centre of your story will get you pretty far.

Key Takeaways:

• Work with intention, not just intensity, if you plan to go the extra mile, make sure it’s in service of real impact and growth.
• Don’t wait to be given the role, live it. Promotions often follow your behaviour, not your potential.
• Relationship building is not to be underestimated, and trust is built on consistency, kindness, and follow-through.
• For many women, especially in the tech space, the pressure to over-deliver can feel constant. But setting boundaries and prioritising where your time is best spent, is just part of being a great product leader.