Moving Up to Director: Organizational and Career Skills for Product Managers

New
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3 Weeks

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Cohort-based Course

Product managers often wonder how to move "up" to director-level roles and how that would change their work. We'll dissect that journey.

This course is popular

4 people enrolled last week.

Course overview

We will focus on product organizations, career paths and 'soft' prod/exec skills

Getting your first product management job was very challenging. And it's going well -- understanding users/customers, working with engineers and designers, building products. But you may be thinking about what's next...


We'll map out the next level in most product organizations: Director, Group Product Manager, or similar titles for people who oversee teams of product managers/product owners. What's the same/different versus PM roles? What do they do more of, less of? Is that a good fit for me, my current situation, my preferences?

How do we pursue such roles? We'll talk about approaches, strategies, organizational challenges.


And we'll have exercises around the Language of Money; product outcomes and financials; R&D budgets at an executive level; building whole teams; and justifying product headcount.


You'll get practical, hard-hitting, no-BS advice and tools that will help shape your career -- no out-of-bounds issue!

This course is for current product managers/owners

01

We' focus on organizations, roles, and working better with executives/leaders. You will already know how to do core product management.

02

You're already thinking a bit about your next challenge or opportunity. You're succeeding as a PM but open to new challenges.

03

This course is a safe space to talk through careers, interview frustrations, company challenges, real stuff. We'll share what's happening.

What you’ll get out of this course

Understand a typical product career organization and ladder

Every company has its own title scheme, division of labor, and approach to product work... but we'll map out the general approach

Learn how to raise your hand for director-level roles, humbly

Most product managers are great at managing their products, but not their own career paths. We'll walk through signaling that you're interested in moving "up", and thoughtful internal outreach

How changing companies to get promotions works (or doesn't)

Changing companies in order to get a bigger role/title is challenging. We'll dig into that, share some networking strategies, and do some quick resumé reviews.

Practice the Language of Money

Product folks love to talk about development processes, tech, user experience. But most executives need to hear about economics, outcomes, revenue. We'll unpack this, practice, learn to identify our different audiences.

This course includes

3 interactive live sessions

Lifetime access to course materials

9 in-depth lessons

Direct access to instructor

Projects to apply learnings

Guided feedback & reflection

Private community of peers

Course certificate upon completion

Maven Satisfaction Guarantee

This course is backed by Maven’s guarantee. You can receive a full refund within 14 days after the course ends, provided you meet the completion criteria in our refund policy.

Course syllabus

Week 1

Jan 8—Jan 12

    Jan

    8

    Session 1

    Wed 1/84:00 PM—6:00 PM (UTC)

    Product Manager vs. Director roles

    1 item

    Is this a fit for you?

    1 item

    Q&A/AMA and peer networking time

    1 item

Week 2

Jan 13—Jan 19

    Jan

    15

    Session 2

    Wed 1/154:00 PM—6:00 PM (UTC)

    Internal Promotions

    1 item

    External Promotions

    1 item

    (2 volunteers) resumé review

    1 item

    Q&A/AMA and peer networking time

    1 item

Week 3

Jan 20—Jan 22

    Jan

    22

    Session 3

    Wed 1/224:00 PM—6:00 PM (UTC)

    The Language of Money

    1 item

    Course Takeaways

    1 item

    Q&A/AMA and peer networking time

    0 items

What people are saying

        Rich’s course has helped me to both hone my craft as an individual contributor and to refine my thinking and communication as I grow my career. His examples are priceless templates for how to steer the many nuanced conversations we PMs navigate - through the lens of focusing on problems, not people, and being a useful servant of the business
Ala

Ala

Product Manager 
        This was the exactly right course before heading into my next challenge!
Karen

Karen

Principal Product Mgr
        I love the way Rich describes the basics of where product sits in the org and how to interface with each other business discipline. I will always sign up for his courses because I need refreshers on these. We all do. And there's always a new nugget of wisdom and insight each time I hear it.
John

John

Product Manager
        Thanks for having this course, so much learning condensed, especially useful for a remote worker where I haven't been able to observe some of these patterns in the office as I usually would pre-covid.
Krish

Krish

Senior Product Manager

Meet your instructor

Rich Mironov

Rich Mironov

Rich coaches product executives, product management teams and revenue software organizations.


Rich has been the 'product guy' at six start-ups (including as CEO) and parachuted into 15 companies as interim VP Products/CPO. A seasoned tech executive and serial entrepreneur, he is a relentless blogger, speaker, teacher and mentor on software strategy, product management: aligning “what-we-can-build” with “what-markets-will-pay-for.”

A pattern of wavy dots

Join an upcoming cohort

Moving Up to Director: Organizational and Career Skills for Product Managers

January 2025

$320

Dates

Jan 8—22, 2025

Payment Deadline

Jan 6, 2025
Get reimbursed

Course schedule

2.5 hours per week

  • Wednesdays in January

    8:00am - 10:00am Pacific

    Cohort dates are January 8, 15 and 22.


    All three 2-hour sessions are on Wednesdays at 8am Pacific, 11am Eastern, 4pm/16.00 GMT. Via Zoom.

  • Very light preparation

    < 20 minutes/week

    Attendees will have some lightweight preparation ahead of each session: looking at your own R&D spending budget, sketching out how your products make money, thinking about your own motivations/goals.

  • After the course is over...

    All participants will get access to Rich's calendar for an hour of private 1-on-1 coaching or mentoring.

Learning is better with cohorts

Learning is better with cohorts

Active hands-on learning

We'll have a series of in-class exercises, discussions, and real-world examples.

Interactive

With very light preparation, you'll learn from Rich and each other - shared online worksheets, breakout rooms, and some peer social networking time.

Learn with a cohort of peers

Your class peers will be in similar roles and situations. We'll all be surprised (not!) that so we share many challenges/issues.

Frequently Asked Questions

A pattern of wavy dots

Join an upcoming cohort

Moving Up to Director: Organizational and Career Skills for Product Managers

January 2025

$320

Dates

Jan 8—22, 2025

Payment Deadline

Jan 6, 2025
Get reimbursed

$320

3 Weeks