Aaron is currently a Director of Product Management and has been in the tech space in Waterloo for 15+ years. I had the opportunity to interview Aaron to get some insight into his journey, the lessons he has learned and the tips he has for others in the Product space.

How did you get into the Product space?

During my early days as a software developer, I noticed that the Product Managers were rarely in the building. They always had a lot of influence to dictate what was built and that interested me. I thought that software engineers should be the ones to dictate what was built and what the goals were. But I came to learn that Product Managers were the ones talking to customers, building strategy, and coordinating with stakeholders. After that, I took the leap over to a Technical Product Management role at Blackberry and haven’t looked back since.

The longer you spend in the Product Manager role, the more you tend to focus on strategy. After executing multiple products and projects – I ended up leading other Product Managers as well. I continued to oversee the strategy and work of the individual contributors, while also managing the team and ensuring that they’re being set up for success.

From there, I took on increased accountability with senior product management roles with D2L, TD Bank Innovation Lab, Magnet Forensics. All of these opportunities allowed me to expand my toolbox into other areas including data analysis, UX and prototype development. I also believe it’s important for software product management professionals to learn new technical areas so I recently crossed over into the Cloud space where I now lead a team of great Product Managers at OpenText.

Going from an individual contributor as a Product Manager to a Director of Product, what do you find are the main differences are and what are your main job responsibilities now?

A Director of Product title and responsibilities can vary depending on what stage of growth a specific company is at. For a very early stage company, a Director of Product may not be needed as the founder(s) are taking on many roles including product manager. – but for a company scaling, it may need to start exploring and building new segments, and doing portfolio management.

The main differences that I find in being a Director of Product are:

1. Leading other Product Managers – Help set other Product Managers up for success in their current role and help them grow in their careers .
2. Cross-functional collaboration – Director of Product needs to ensure that there is alignment amongst other leaders and that there is effective collaboration and planning. The individual contributors are focused on problem solving and driving the metrics associated with the product they lead.
3. Product Strategy – it’s paramount that the business has strategy and someone overseeing the opportunities and challenges that the business sees as important for the product to succeed in the market.

What does a typical week look like for you?

I have quite a few tasks to complete and goals to meet during a typical week. One of them is managing one-on-ones that I have with all of my direct reports. A big part of it is also managing your relationship with executives and the person you report into to ensure that they have an understanding of how the team is doing and how the products and projects are progressing on their initiatives.

10-15% of the time is also spent talking to select customers or focusing on a specific problem that may need to be solved across the Product team.

One of the other main parts of a typical week is internal evangelism – talking strategy and roadmap with the different teams to ensure that there’s alignment across the business. There’s also a level of firefighting that goes on throughout the week. There are issues that arise that need specific action, and this can take up quite a bit of the day if it’s not given the necessary attention; however, I feel like the team and I have gotten a lot better at allocating specific time in the calendar to do some deep thinking and focus work.

What makes a good Director of Product in your opinion?

I think there are different elements that make up a good Director of Product:

1. Leadership – using a servant-based leadership style is important, where you know your individual contributors. A leader should hire and develop the right individuals, who are driven, independent and want autonomy to foster creativity. Work with the team on a regular cadence and provide them what they need to be successful.
2. Cross-Functional Lens – being proactive and ensuring that you are building bridges between the other functions of the business. It’s your job to ensure that what the Product team is building is aligned with the rest of the organization. This also includes keeping other stakeholders involved in what Product does at the organization and how they’re driving value
3. Culture – A good Director of Product should celebrate great things that the team is building, foster a culture where the team is continuously learning and provide support to the team so they can continue to grow in their career.

If you could go back in time and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?

Listen more. Be more empathetic. As people in the Product space, we talk about how important empathy is. Always remember that the problems you’re solving are those of your customers and ensuring that is top of mind at all times.

Don’t fall into the traps of filling a roadmap of things that could be useful — be ruthless with ensuring that those items are validated as valuable. With the tools and processes that are in place today, it’s much easier to understand if something is going to be valuable to the product.

Another main component is to learn by doing. There are great resources out there to facilitate learning, but ultimately, you learn by doing and by being around great people who have this same mindset.

What is your favourite thing about the work that you do?

Impact. Ultimately, if things are done right and you’re able to build not only the product, but the framework to plan and execute, it feels really great to know that you’re hitting your milestones and that you’re hitting your shared metrics.

You’re seeing the results for the business in a positive way and you’re seeing the problem being solved for your customers.

Having worked with product platforms and industry vertical solutions, I really feel like I’m making a difference by enabling and empowering great people day-to-day.