Picture this: You’re in the back seat of your parents’ car after school. Signs whiz past in a blur, but suddenly magnificent golden arches take shape in the distance. You plead for a Happy Meal box concealing the shiny, oil-glossed treat you crave, but your mom delivers the final humbling blow to seal your fate: “No, we’ve got food at home.”
What felt like a rude awakening back then has aged into a fine piece of advice in the grown-up world of tech. Oftentimes companies already have exactly what they need, but the desire to look at outside resources instead of internally holds greater allure in order to trigger growth or change.
Consider the tech industry’s current hiring boom. With a drastic influx of new roles opening up in product development and beyond, it can be appealing to look at the stack of resumes pouring in like lustrous rays of opportunity on the horizon. However, the secret weapon any talent acquisition manager or company leader should remember? Actively promote from within.
It can be easy to fall into tunnel vision by only seeing an outside applicant’s more experienced background in leading a team or accomplishing lofty projects, but it is also easy to forget that this potential hire doesn’t know your teams, products and company mission like an internal employee already does. By investing in a current employee’s skills and future, it’s also a beacon for product teams to actively show up and give it their all every day, knowing that flexing their best abilities and showcasing loyalty can eventually lead to a career ladder climb.
“I found that leadership skills are an evolution of the skills that I gained so far in my career, and that leadership in general requires a continuous learning and iteration process,” said Vincent Zhang, vice president of subprime lending at Braviant Holdings.
That’s why Built In Chicago sat down with two internally promoted product leaders to learn about how their career journeys started, each step they took to rise to their current positions and their ultimate advice for other product experts striving to evolve into leadership.
What was your initial role when starting at Discover? Furthermore, when did you get promoted into a leadership role and what did you do to get there?
My biggest contribution — and a major humbling point in my career — was when I first started at Discover. I was an associate at the command center level 1 support — part of the team that created the first 1-800 hotline for people around the world to call for information about missing loved ones following September 11, 2001.
Soon after that role, I became a senior associate at the data center and managed our network infrastructure’s day-to-day operations. During this period, I doubled my infrastructure knowledge and knew I wanted to continue to learn and grow. Discover supported me to pivot my career, and I joined the fraud application team as a project manager, where I led multiple flagship projects.
I then moved from the technology team to the business side and took a project management office role. When Discover transitioned to agile methodology, I got promoted into a product owner role. My new role is very liberating — I’m working closely with product development teams and can directly see the impact we’ve had on our current and potential customers.
What surprised you most about your new leadership role?
In my new role, I quickly realized that focusing only on short-term, quick wins was enough to unlock a significant change in our delivered value. To meet our bold aspirations, our team needed to take short-term risks to drive long-term performance.
As a result, I shifted gears. I took a nonlinear approach to look at long-term sustainability, performance and scalability. By understanding our strategic vision and frequently testing for customer feedback, I’m able to balance our short and long-term goals. And I always keep a laser focus on the problems we’re empathically trying to solve for our customers.
To meet our bold aspirations, our team needed to take short-term risks to drive long-term performance.”
What advice do you have for product professionals looking to move into a leadership role?
The movement toward leadership requires a transformation into a key influencer leader, who’s able to set order and speed over features alone. For example, I’m currently involved in a Greenhouse initiative for Discover personal loans. The Greenhouse program enables cross-functional teams to rapidly prototype “high risk, high return” problems.
Within personal loans, we tend to linearly iterate our messaging and creative design. In this project, I’m taking a step back to reimagine our approach to our creative content. We’ll use rapid test-and-learn techniques to understand what it takes to drive significant changes in our creative content’s performance. While our new content might lead to an initial performance drop, we’re sacrificing our short term for the opportunity to have nonlinear growth.
Without these changes, we wouldn’t be able to achieve that kind of growth or gain this much knowledge about what resonates with our customers.
What was your initial role when starting at Braviant? Furthermore, when did you get promoted into a leadership role and what did you do to get there?
As the first product hire at Braviant, I had the opportunity to work cross-functionally and take new product ideas from the ideation and planning phase to execution, validation and iteration. As the product portfolio grew, I was able to take on broader responsibilities including strategic planning and goal setting for the product vertical, and lead a team of product managers.
With the growth and performance of our business, I was given the opportunity to move into a leadership role and continue to have an impact on our business key performance indicators along with product strategy.
What surprised you most about your new leadership role?
There has definitely been a shift between being an individual contributor and now leading the entire product function — especially on a day-to-day basis. Most of my time and effort is focused on setting product level strategy and resource allocation that balances different types of product work, coaching and driving results through others in the organization, and improving the process of product management.
I found that leadership skills are an evolution of the skills that I gained so far in my career, and that leadership in general requires a continuous learning and iteration process. Product managers take in lots of data, work to understand all the technical details, evangelize what’s best for the customer and work cross-functionally to make enhancements or build new products that will benefit customers.
In my current role, I spend less time on the details and more time on managing and developing my team. I also focus on strengthening the processes and strategies we have in place in order to continue driving strong business results.
Opportunities to advance into leadership are about being prepared by consistently showing an ability to improve every day.”
What advice do you have for product professionals looking to move into a leadership role?
There’s no clear playbook for product management careers because each company does it differently. The same can be said for leadership, which is what makes every day so exciting at Braviant. I have the opportunity to build these skills given our company’s ability to put talented people in broad roles, where they can look for opportunities to activate the muscles and skills required for product and leadership roles at the same time.
However, I’d urge product professionals to not get frustrated if they don’t move into leadership right away. To master the skills required of being a standout product manager, look for any projects that hone data, strategy and people management chops. Opportunities to advance into leadership are about being prepared by consistently showing an ability to improve every day.
