Juggling Diapers and Roadmaps: Winning at Product Management as a Parent
Navigating your product role as a young parent.
Despite not being a parent myself, my client base increasingly consists of aspiring and new parents. Call it life stage, call it refining my customer, call it a coincidence.
And because of it, I’ve thought a lot about how to support young parents who are ambitious in their careers but also balancing the responsibilities of young children at home. While clients with parents aren’t so different from my childless clients, so many of their tools and strategies can be useful for anyone navigating a tricky work/life balance situation. Though I lack the lived experience1, I’ve had a front row seat to some of the best patterns, practices, and intentions that my most successful parent clients are using to navigate this important life stage while being a successful Product Leader.
Here’s what I’ve seen working well for my most successful parent clients:
1)They’re firm about boundaries and scope.
Delegating as an art form
Successful parent PMs are better at setting boundaries. This includes being clear about the scope of their work and delegating effectively to other leaders in the product development triad (engineering managers & design leads). PMs often act as the catch-all, the evangelists who wear multiple hats (PM, UX Writer, PMM) and do a lot of the glue work2. But, my most successful parent PMs are mastering the art of delegation. This obviously doesn’t just apply to my parent PMs but its become an absolute necessity for parent PMs who have a very defined work window that can’t be messed with. Reminder: Asking for help is not a weakness, it’s a strength!
Crafting boundaries
Parent PMs are also better at creating and enforcing boundaries on their calendars. No meetings before 9am. A hard stop at 5pm. We love to see it3, and we don’t challenge it when we know you’ve got to pick your kiddo up from daycare. I hear often from clients that having kids was the catalyst that finally helped them disengage from JIRA tickets and late slack messages. And how grateful they were for it.
Building an Operating Manual
Having a personal operating manual helps in setting expectations with colleagues no matter your family situation. But, it becomes increasingly important when your time and energy is more limited. I love encouraging my parent clients to prioritize creating and socializing an Operating Manual. This includes their working hours, preferred communication channels and response times, etc. These have been game changers for my parent clients when it comes to handling communication expectations. When you’re clear about your communication expectations, especially in a remote working environment, you build trust and work smarter, immediately.
2)They’re more explicit about their career vision.
Many of my clients are explicit about their career vision, especially regarding the Individual Contributor (IC) versus Manager track. Often, when parent PMs are in a critical life stage (new parent years), they prefer not to manage other PMs because they’re already managing a ton at home. There’s no shame in the IC game, but it’s essential to be clear about it. Being a young parent, like many other life events, is a moment in time that requires tighter boundaries and energy management to ensure enough remains for family.
If you’re finding yourself senior without the energy to naturally progress into the management route, speak with your manager about how to explore this role in the future. You don’t have to give up on management dreams but be explicit about how it’s not for you right now.
3) They’re focused on landing at the right company. Not just in Big Tech.
While big tech companies have enticing leave policies and benefits (*swoon*), I often see it’s not enough to keep people happy. There’s still a rest-and-vest culture in certain FAANG teams, but it’s less prevalent than it was in the 2010’s and these companies aren’t necessarily safer than growth companies getting funded.
It’s why I’m most excited about Series C+ companies for my clients. These organizations typically have a Head of Product leader and ambiguous leveling, with less early definition but room to grow in the future. Aside from recommending this size company, I also recommend clients look at companies run by parents or companies that aggressively promote their parent policies, like Parently and The Mom Project. But most importantly, I encourage clients to tap into the whisper networks and speak with real people at companies who are living the work/life balance or lack thereof. Networking is key here! And if you know of companies that are doing it right, drop them in the comments so I can make referrals :)
I’m learning a lot about what it takes to juggle managing a successful career and parenthood from my amazing clients. They are bravely carving out time for themselves in our coaching container to ensure they can be their best selves at work and at home.
Are you a parent in product or know anyone who might benefit from coaching support? I’m a product coach, and I support product leaders through their biggest career moments4. Let’s chat!
As much as I’ve made the case, my dog doesn’t count.
More to say on this topic another time.
Seriously put the details in the calendar invite so I know!
Which is increasingly new parents these days. Come on in!