Managing Up as a Product Manager

Product management is a constant juggle. Refining the backlog, reviewing designs, conducting user research, making presentations, analyzing the data, and the list goes on. Throughout it all are the constant questions - How’s the project coming? When will we get to see the latest demo? What A/B tests are running? Is the forecast updated?

Product managers play a central role in the overall success of the organization. Communication is a key strength of the most successful product managers. Answering all of the questions at the right time - even before stakeholders ask them, can help keep everyone in the organization informed, confident and calm. Managing up is a fine art and a key to growth for every product manager. Here, we discuss three important points focused on communicating up and out within your organization. 

The PM as the Hub

First, it’s important to realize the keys to the realm that you hold in your role as a product manager. You are the hub to the strategy, user needs, UX, development, analytics, financial impact. You can be the one stop for answers for nearly all stakeholders. 

Driving the narrative - promoting your brand 

The upside of being the one to provide answers is that you are also in the driver’s seat to drive the narrative. You can be the voice of the consumer, of the analysis, of why we prioritized what we did. Your perspective is the one the company hears most and repeats as the messages shared among their teams, senior leaders, and customers.

In addition, managing up and out also gives you a chance to increase your visibility with your company’s leaders and practice your leadership voice. The more they see you as a leader, the more they think of you as one of the next leaders. This is one of the fastest ways to advance your career.

Strategic Information Sharing

The most successful PMs share answers before the questions are asked. It is your chance to manage your stakeholders and manager(s), instead of them needing to manage you. The more you put communication at the top of your to do list, the more valuable you will become in your organization. 

What to share? In short, everything - big and small wins, new designs, A/B test results, a milestone, a roadblock, a feature release, a feature release rollback. All these updates are important and valuable to different stakeholders.

How you share the information depends on the audience, how directly it impacts business outcomes and how urgent the issue is. The key is to find the right intersection of audience and medium so that your communication is appreciated as thoughtful and relevant. 

For urgent issues, you may decide it’s best to use Slack or schedule a meeting with a handful of impacted team members. You might want to send an email to specific stakeholders with a link to a great article; call a meeting with the whole leadership team for a competitive analysis presentation; or to secure a spot on the next Town Hall’s agenda to reach the whole company for the launch of a new feature. As a product manager, the more you think of the questions everyone else might be thinking and answer them before they are asked, the more breathing room you will get to do the work that excites you and be proactive, vs. reactive.

Evaluating the impact of your communication strategy

Finally, in order to know if you are making an impact, pay close attention to the questions you are asked and by whom. If the questions are detailed about features and dates, maybe you could share clearer or more frequent status updates. If they are asking why again and again, maybe you need to try a new approach to the messaging on the product strategy. If they are reaching out to you about strategy and financial outcomes, that is a sign you are showing your leadership skills and they want to engage you more deeply in those conversations - way to go! 

Addressing questions like these are all great opportunities to practice managing up and out, practice your leadership skills and grow as a product manager.

This post was jointly written by Ashley Serotta, product and e-commerce leader, most recently at Tripadvisor and Milica Golubovic, Product Manager at CarGurus and a volunteer with the BPMA blog team.