Articles by Brent Tworetzky
Product Manager Skills By Seniority Level — A Deep BreakdownBrent provides a walkthrough of the product management career ladder at XO Group, which has 5 levels and more than 60 skills across 7 skill groups: Strategic Thinking, Communication, Collaboration, Technicals, Details & Quality, User Science & Empathy, and Management.
- Negotiation Skills for Product Managers: 5 Things You Need to Know
Brent discusses negotiation skills for product managers. He advocates using a principled negotiation approach that focuses on understanding interests rather than positions, generating creative options, and relying on objective criteria. This helps negotiations run more efficiently while preserving relationships. Brent also emphasizes separating people from problems, focusing discussions on interests, and inventing options to solve multiple interests simultaneously. Mastering principled negotiation techniques can help product managers make better, faster decisions and improve collaboration.
- Product Manager Skills By Seniority Level — A Deep Breakdown
Brent provides a walkthrough of the product management career ladder at XO Group, which has 5 levels and more than 60 skills across 7 skill groups: Strategic Thinking, Communication, Collaboration, Technicals, Details & Quality, User Science & Empathy, and Management.
Interviewing Product ManagersBrent provides suggestions for interview questions mapped to product manager skills, including: • Evaluating Will: “Tell me what the job is you’re applying for, and why it’s a great fit for your career.” • Evaluating Skill: “Walk me through a successful major project you were heavily involved in, and tell me about your role throughout the project.” • Evaluating Conflict: “How do you make decisions when disagreeing with exec team members or key stakeholders? How do you manage conflict in these situations?”
- Product Management Careers: Levels, Career Growth, and Promotions
Brent lays out the rationale for having a strong career pathing and promotion system. He then provides three principles for how to design a product management career ladder: 1) Objectivity: Make sure the system is used across everyone on the team, in the same way 2) Transparency: Make sure the team understands the levels, take in any feedback, and review each team member's progression regularly 3) Support: Ask each team member about their short- and long-term career goals, and regularly create plans for which skills to develop