Attracting and especially developing talent is one of the most critical and challenging tasks for a product leader. I firmly believe that good product managers and product leaders, are made, not born. One of my most profound insights as a product leader is that my team is my product. The selection below showcases some of my favorite talent development initiatives.
Co-Founding the Springer Nature Product Academy
Context: Working at a multinational company, with over 9,000 employees and dozens of offices globally, means it’s sometimes difficult to connect, share experiences, and collaborate. This was especially true for the product management function. The craft of product management was evolving (and continues to evolve!) in parallel to the new types of products that teams like mine work on. As naturally curious people, product managers and leaders began showing increasing interest in empowering better connections between the many diverse product teams. In this context, the appointment of a new C-Suite product leader was the catalyst for action.
Approach and Impact: As one of the most prominent advocates for an internal product management network in my business unit, I joined the newly formed leadership team of what would become the Springer Nature Product Academy. With the support of senior management, the Product Academy is tasked with providing opportunities to the support the practice of product management and company-wide product community. The remit is purposely very broad - my role on the leadership team member is to organize and help steer the development of Product Academy. The activities are varied, e.g., sponsoring product-related training courses, organizing internal networking and case study events, and organizing guest lectures. A big highlight for me was helping to organize and then moderate a session with our inaugural guest speaker - the legendary Marty Cagan himself (see below)! To date, the Product Academy has and continues to support hundreds of product managers and product leaders with the scope to do even more.
Implementing a Dual-Track Career Path
Context: A major challenge in developing product management talent is figuring out what the career ladders should look like. Specifically, is becoming a people manager the only way to advance and develop? I faced this very question when managing an experienced, high-performing senior product manager in my team. Her skills and achievements warranted a promotion, however, the only position available was to ‘group product manager’ with direct line management responsibility. Given my team’s size, this move unfortunately wasn’t an option. The fundamental problem was that there were no advanced, individual contributor (IC) roles available.
Approach and Impact: I learned that other product leaders were similarly dissatisfied with the lack of senior IC roles and the resulting lack of options to promote people into non-people manager tracks. The topic of dual-track career paths is well-established in some areas, like software engineering, but isn’t (yet) widely implemented in product management. There are, however, examples of dual track paths being implemented that could be used as a model (see the above image from Sherif Mansour’s article on dual track paths at Atlassian).
Not taking ‘no’ for an answer, I developed a proposal for a new, senior level IC product manager role and presented this to the HR teams. I positioned the role as not only helping in talent retention and development, but also addressing the more widespread challenge that other product leaders were having. In principal, there was support but time would be needed to implement the proposal. In the end, the proposal was successful and a new, senior level IC role was created - the ‘principal product manager.’ I could thus move ahead with the promotion. This achievement was particularly noteworthy as this was the first ever role of its kind at the company. While many structural changes are ongoing, creating the ‘principal product manager’ role was a critical first step in the quest to implement dual-track career paths more broadly.
Corporate Sponsorship for Toastmasters International Membership
Context: As detailed on my ‘Resources’ page, I was a founding officer of the first ever Toastmasters group at Springer Nature. The group grew and continued to thrive, achieving various levels of Distinguished Club Status since founding. However, there was one milestone I and the rest of the club leadership wanted to reach: having membership fees covered by the company. Not only would full sponsorship of Toastmasters membership fees lower the entry barriers, but the ongoing benefits would be greatly welcomed by existing members too.
Approach and Impact: The shift to hybrid working during the COVID-19 pandemic meant that all co-workers could participate, join, and benefit from Springer Nature Toastmasters. Using this fact, I helped develop a business case for the company to sponsor new membership fees for new and existing members. The modest membership price, when compared to many, much more expensive one-off trainings, was a key selling point. Another important point was fostering a sense of community and connection precisely because of the shift to hybrid working. The proposal for sponsorship was well-received by the global learning and development leadership and I supported the subsequent rollout. As a result, Springer Nature Toastmasters has not only continued to thrive with new members, but a spin-off club specifically catering to India-based colleagues was created as well, giving even more opportunities for colleagues to develop their leadership and communications skills.
