Getting Promoted to L6 Product Manager
At L6, your job is to find problems to solve. And then go solve them.
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The jump from L5 to L6 Product Manager is arguably one of the most difficult ones to make successfully. At L6 you are usually called a “Principal Product Manager.” Your way of operating, behaviors, and time horizon of execution are very different at the L6 level. Similarly, the expectations of this level are very high. Unfortunately, the playbook on how to prepare for, make, and sustain that jump successfully has yet to be written.
I’ve had the “L6 conversation” quite a few times and struggled through it myself, so thought it would be beneficial to write down some of my thoughts. Because every company’s L6 role is so different, your mileage may vary. But, I hope this is helpful nonetheless.
We could go in a bunch of different directions on L6 and the expectations of that level and I probably will write a few more notes on this topic, but let’s start with the most common that is likely the least understood. At L6, your job is to find new problems to solve and then go solve them. On repeat. Let’s break down what this means and how it actually comes to life in your day-to-day.
But first, the prerequisites have to be there.
Before considering a move to L6, you must excel as an L5 in the table stakes dimensions of Product Management: strategy, execution, and team health. If you don’t have a track record of crafting a strong roadmap to deliver for your users and business, driving tangible impact through that roadmap, and maintaining strong morale across your peers and team — work on these before thinking about L6. This foundational ability to solve the problems presented to you in a defined product area needs to be rock solid or else you risk failing at the next level.
Find a new opportunity to explore.
Reframe “finding a problem” to solve to finding an untapped opportunity to explore. I like to bucket into two opportunity areas: organizational ambiguity and product ambiguity.
Organizational ambiguity is solved by putting processes in place to effectively ship product and get things done. As examples, this might include how teams are collaborating, the product review and roadmapping process, and/or the way PM career development happens across the organization.
Product ambiguity is solved by answering the question, “what do we do next?” This is usually achieved by uncovering a really compelling thing to go build or invest in via quantitative/qualitative customer and market insights. This doesn’t have to be a full blown new product, it could just be a net new feature that is clearly leveraged to build. It could also be what to stop building because its no longer leveraged to do so.
L6 readiness is clear when you are solving organizational and product ambiguity repeatedly and outside of your immediate product area.
A day in the life.
Let’s rapid fire some examples so the above becomes more clear:
I solved for organizational ambiguity by noticing our roadmapping process doesn’t take into account company/business unit level OKRs. This has caused a disconnect between product teams’ goals and company goals. I write a proposal on how we improve this, share it with leaders for feedback and volunteer to facilitate this improvement across the board during our next roadmapping cycle
I solved for product ambiguity by highlighting that we’ve spent 3 cycles iterating on a solution for users to be able to customize their global navigation UI. Customization functionality has an extremely low rate of adoption and takes a lot of engineering time to maintain. I recommended we deprioritize this work and stop investment. Instead, I proposed that the team pivot to working on X which is much more leveraged and a clear customer problem to go solve
Both of these examples are situations that could just keep going as is and no one would point the finger at you to fix them. But an L6 PM notices these opportunities, takes charge of evaluating them, and then does something about it. All while effectively managing and delivering impact through their own day-to-day execution. Finding problems to solve means shifting your mindset to one of continuous improvement and expanding it to look at the entire ecosystem, not just your product team or area. Work on this muscle to start showing L6 readiness.
More of my notes: