Now, like right now – let’s go!

This guide series is for anyone at any level looking to get into a product management or leadership role in games and tech.

It’s December and you might be wondering about your new year’s resolutions already. Judging by 2020 so far, some of you might simply aim to survive.

I want you to thrive. You will thrive. The decision is yours to make – so take this very moment and make it.

If you’re ready to put in some work, go on this journey with me and I’ll give you step-by-step guides on how to break into product management in 2021. As with any other post, I’ll provide insights into the leadership role and responsibilities that come along with this job. I’m excited to get started on this guide series so let’s charter our path forward together.

Action: This is a where you start getting your thoughts into a document or paper – whatever your preference is just put it in writing. One easy method is to copy the steps below and fill in your answers.

Bonus: There’s another use for this process as well for current product and production roles. We’ll cover that at the end.

Charter

A charter is what we will use to start things off and define the why, what, and how around our journey of breaking into the world.

1. Aspirational vision

What does your reality look like when you’ve landed the job as a PM? What problems are you solving? What experiences are you creating or improving for the world? You can go as high level and visionary as you want here. This isn’t a statement that dictates a specific outcome, it represents an aspirational state you want to achieve. It’s also likely to evolve as you go through this process so don’t hesitate to iterate a bit as you go through these steps.

Examples: As a tip, you can read it as “My vision is to… ”

• Make a positive impact in online social communications in games
• Improve the way people find jobs in tech
• Create a gaming experience that brings diverse communities together
• Lead product explorations in the MMO genre
• Create the next generation gaming experience on an R&D platform
• Redefine the way people play games

2. Operational mission

How do you make meaningful progress towards your vision in a specific time frame? The time frame is up to you to set based on how ambitious your vision is. For the sake of the guide series, I’ll go with 2021. That being said, getting into a new role and industry can take time. Be patient and give yourself space to learn and grow while making steady progress towards your vision.

Examples: “My mission is to…”

• Land a product manager role at a game studio in 2021.
• Transition from my role into product management over the next 6 months.
• (Smaller scope mission than the above two for those that need it) Apply to 5 product management positions per month that pertain to [the product space in your vision].
• Complete a product management, UX, and data analysis course in 2021.

… (end that statement with)… so that I can make meaningful progress towards my vision.

3. A singular priority

This is an important one so I’m going to spend some extra time here.

Having a list of priorities doesn’t offer you a priority. It offers you a prioritized list of things that are important. A priority is your north star and single most important factor of thinking that drives your decision making. It’s critical. Both the prioritized list of important items and priority are useful, but for this exercise I want you to focus on the single priority that drives your decision making.

Your priority should drive you towards meeting your goals, achieving your mission, and living your vision by acting as a focusing mechanism in each phase of this journey.

You can absolutely make your mission the priority if it’s straight-forward and simple. Otherwise, let’s look at one of the example missions from above to show how both can be helpful:

Mission: Apply to 5 product management positions per month that pertain to [the product space in your vision].

Priority: Source positions from online job websites to establish a backlog of jobs you want to apply to.

How do these help each other? The mission gives you a metric to hit. It’s not a glamerous mission that changes the world, bit it doesn’t have to be. It operationalizes meaningful progress towards your vision. Now, how do you establish a priority that helps you meet the mission?

This is where the priority of always keeping a backlog of positions you’re going to apply to is valuable. It helps you ensure that no matter what else you’re doing, you’re setting aside time to ensure you hit those 5 applications monthly.

You may not be ready to set a mission of landing the job in 2021 and that’s okay. It’s good to break the journey down into achievable bits that make sense for you.

Examples: “I’ll always prioritize…”

• Keeping a backlog of jobs I’m going to apply to over the next two months
• Having a mentor and career coach 1:1 conversation scheduled every week.
• Reading 3 blog articles every week about [the product space from your vision/ mission].
• Giving myself one hour every night to make progress on an online course.

Having a priority will help with what you should be asking yourself when considering whether you’re doing the right thing: “does this help me achieve my priority?”. This can be extended to your mission and vision as well. If what you’re doing doesn’t help make meaningful progress, consider the value of why you’re doing it.

4. Goals

The last thing I want you to do is to make your mission or vision your goal. That’s one of the biggest mistakes I see people make when it comes to goal setting.

Often, a big vision or mission can lead to people setting lofty goals for themselves. This can mean, every day you wake up, you’ve failed at achieving that goal until the day you finally meet the goal.

Here’s a common example:

• Lets say you took a mission from above and made it your goal. We’ll take the mission of landing a PM job at a game studio in 2021.
• Until you’ve landed the job, your results are negative. That can have an impact of how you psychologically think about your progress.
• What a good set of goals can provide is a set of clear, manageable objectives, and results that act as a feedback loop.

Example goal setup:

Mission: Land a PM job at a game studio in 2021

Priority: Keep a backlog of jobs I am going to apply to over the next two months.

Goals:

For this exercise I’ll use the OKR method of organizing goals. This is where you establish a clear objective and measurable results. I’ll dedicate an entire post to OKRs and goal setting in the future, but today we’ll simply provide some examples in the scope of this exercise.

• Objective: Actively apply for product management positions at game studios
• Key results:
  • Apply to at least 1 job every week
  • Reach out to at least 1 recruiter every two weeks asking about company culture and what they’re looking for in a candidate.
  • Track active applications and phase of interview loop in a document.
• Objective: Improve interviewing skills with weekly practice
• Key results:
  • Run weekly mock interviews rotating between friends and colleagues
  • Watch interviews online and document questions along with personal answers
  • Research a new company weekly to study their product, vision, culture, values, and leadership in order to better understand what they might ask in interviews

With OKRs, the idea is to give yourself qualitative objectives and quantitative key results that are easily understood and measurable. It takes practice. Don’t let a process or method stop you or slow you down in goal setting. Think and write freely about what you want to achieve and then format to your preferred goal organization method.

5. Values

Your values are what define who you are. When you scope that to the values associated to your vision, mission, priority, and goals it should bring everything together. This is a list of values that should define the why behind your charter. Don’t be ashamed to put anything here. These are personal to you and no one can challenge that. Go with your gut here – there are not right answers, just truthful ones.

Examples: “I value…”

• A position that gives me autonomy to explore different solutions for important problems
• A company that trusts me enough to let me work remotely
• A work schedule that let’s me fit in personal interests
• An organization that focuses on growth of their people through in-house education programs
• A company that pays me enough to live comfortably and have extra money to spend on [your choice]
• An interview process that offers feedback
• A company taking time to interview for various roles for each candidate

This list can be short and concise or long and detailed. It all depends on how you will use these listed values to decide whether the position you’re interviewing for is aligned to what you value.

Now what?

Take these next few statements with you on your journey ahead. They’ll keep you focused and guide you through iterating on this exercise if you choose to revisit it. I recommend revisiting a charter like this quarterly.

Your vision should be something you’re ready to live and breath in your career and passion for a time to come. You have to be intrinsically motivated by it or it won’t be something you’ll fight to achieve when times get tough.

Your mission is something you’re ready to dedicate your time to and consistently make progress towards. You’ll aim to optimize for learning more than consistent success. The former is more important for growth.

Your values are what you live by. They cannot be shaken, but they can evolve over time.

Your priority drives your direction. You can’t have more than one within the scope of this effort. Stay focused.

Your goals are clear and rely on your honesty and perseverance to ensure they’re met. It’s okay to fail – it’s not okay to lie to yourself about falsely meeting a goal.

Well, there you have it. This is your charter for the journey ahead. When you look back at this charter a year from now, I guarantee you will have seen great personal growth if you put in a solid consistent effort into making this leap in your career. I sincerely hope you find this guide series helpful.

GL HF!

Bonus

Remember I said you could use this process for something else? You can use this to charter paths for teams, products, and projects as well. Get your team together and engage in discussion to identify your vision, mission, priority, goals, and values. Take those forward and use them as you develop awesome experiences for the world to enjoy. GL HF!