Some careers are filled with ambiguity. Product management fits that bill. Grant Hunter, Co-Founder of Product Growth Leaders reflects on how he has embraced ambiguity and thrived as a product manager.
Grant started his career on a large, steady corporate ship with General Electric. At GE he picked up many skills good product managers need. This included market research, problem solving, and strategic planning capabilities.
Grant leapt from GE to apply these skills in other product management pursuits. Since GE, he’s worked for a number of mid-sized companies, continuously seeking problems to solve. Plus, he’s lectured at Rutgers and with Vistage, the world’s largest executive coaching organization.
I’ve highlighted six core themes from our discussion. Most of the themes apply to anyone’s career adventures. Things like embracing problem solving and managing sunk cost fallacy. Listen to the full episode. You’re sure to pick up a nugget or three.
Don’t have time on your commute to work? Skim the top themes below. Then listen to the full episode on your commute home.
6 Core Themes!
Grant highlighted six major themes you should take note of in your own career adventures.
Iterate & Problem Solve
Career adventurers should love iteration and problem solving. They continuously put themselves in new situations. New situations fuel personal growth. Once you feel like you’ve “figured it out”, it might be time to figure out how to solve a new problem. For Grant, this involved changing jobs. He knows his role is the fixer, not the steady state manager. Regarding seeking growth via a new gig, he said…
“it looks like you changed jobs pretty frequently. What's wrong with you?…I like to solve problems. I like to figure things out. Once I figured stuff out and they wanted me to run them, I wasn't interested in that. I wanted to, figure new things out. So I was always looking for a new challenge to grow.”
Build Your Foundation
Grant built his career foundation by working at GE and in market research. Early on, a trusted manager encouraged him to go into market research. His mentor “pushed” him into the space. He knew that the experience would set a good foundation for other areas of interest like product management.
“he said, let me tell you why you don't want to take a product management job and why you want to come do market research with me. Good product management is based on good market research and analysis. If you go into a product management role, you might get some of it, but building a foundation, doing market research analysis at GE is gonna give you capabilities and skills to succeed in product management and beyond.”
Don’t Overvalue the Past
Sunk cost fallacy is a real thing. Remember, what’s happened in the past is in the past. You can’t change it. All you can worry about is the path forward. When seeking growth, you will make good and bad decisions. They happen even if you’ve researched the entire internet and identified the right gig. Be kind to yourself. Recognize that decisions still happen in a moment. Decide. Try. Assess. Make another decision. That’s all you can do.
Speaking on making the decision to leave one job for another, Grant said…
“the opportunity in front of you is what guides your decision. You make a decision in the moment.
When I made that decision, we had a one year old and another on the way. It was going to be a 40 to 50 percent increase in income. Where I could have waited out for stock options and that type of stuff. Maybe if I had done that, I would have made more money in aggregate. But, as a career adventure, you can't get stuck too much in the what ifs”
“Be Ready” to Go Back
Everyone should “plan” to return to a company. You likely will not. Nonetheless, do your best to keep relationships strong. Grant decided to go back to GE when he was in his thirties and building a family. I can relate. Like Grant, I’ve returned to two companies. You never know where life will lead. Make sure the company leaders or HR think of you on positive terms. Also, you never know if your current employer will be a future client or business partner.
“The opportunity to go back, the thing that stuck with me the most is, especially at companies like P&G and GE, I know that when you do your exit interview, the HR person also does an exit interview with your manager. The final question is, would we hire this person back?
I left on good enough terms with enough respect for the people that they saw the value of me and because I would not have gotten that chance to go back to G. E. if they did not answer yes to that question. And so it was sort of a come full circle.”
Product Management: An Ambiguous Field
Grant loves product management. It’s ambiguous. It requires problem solving. He discussed his love of conducting user research interviews. They energize him. If you love problem solving, understanding people, and envisioning strategy, product management could be good. Grant mentioned anthropologists as people with common skills.
“You have to be comfortable with ambiguity. And there's some people who aren't, right? Product management is a unique role, just like brand management. We interface with the whole organization upstream to downstream. The lens switching that you have to do mentally, you go from one conversation with finance, where you're talking pro-formas to a conversation with engineering, where you're talking APIs and user interfaces. You should be able to balance them all in. The context of the problem and persona and market segment.”
Beyond Yourself
It’s not all about you. The best adventures go beyond oneself. They include others. For Grant, building teams is a point of pride, something that fuels his career adventures. He loves building capability. We all can help others in their own career journey. We can use the resources, knowledge, and network at our disposal to aid friends, family, and strangers.
“To have built a team that succeeded, that thrived without me…It's about helping other people get better at it. Maybe that's why I ended up in the more of the educational advisory coaching type stuff.
“But it goes back to integrity. It goes back to putting the other people first. It was these people who are not selfish, right? They're selfless. They help other people. They try to make other people better on their good resources.”
Listen to Grant’s Full Story
Grant has a wealth of experience both with big corporations and entrepreneurial pursuits. You’ve read a snippet of the major themes. But, there is more. We discussed career lessons from the 2005 movie Nanny McPhee starring Emma Thompson. Plus, we discussed the key ethos of product management and how products have natural S-curves that many companies too often ignore.
Download the full episode to hear all his thoughts. It’s the perfect way to reflect while on a commute.
Enjoy the episode! Thanks for you support!
Paul G. Fisher
I’d love to hear from you. Have any guest recommendations listeners should learn from? Shoot me a note!
Leading Product Growth