"PM" (product manger) to "CVO"?
Here’s what you need to know about transitioning into a CVO role from a leadership / senior product manager role!
Take a look at some of the most profitable organizations of the world today & the growth percentages they have managed to pull off in recent times.
When some of them seem to have a clear advantage in the business vertical they operate in & some have rather carved an own niche for themselves when the others (especially the Tech orgs.) have built products that have helped them occupy a sizeable market share, continually improving it, making it more relevant to the audience (/users) over a period of time. The one thing that commonly stands-out among all those organizations is the presence of a winning STRATEGY.
But rampant changes over the workflows & the technological landscape seems to have triggered changes over the titles, the roles, the responsibilities. Gone are the days when organizations were going in with a preset title & a role, how giving out one of those could have effortlessly led to the other over merely an intelligent guess. Today we see a whole lot of titles being carved out of nowhere & positions emerging on a whim, thanks to the top-brass decision makers who stop at nothing, are ready to break any archaic rules / protocols towards facilitating teams & helping them move towards their goals undividedly.
What role may have seemed unimaginable a few decades back is more of a reality today & they still continue to evolve as they have been, leaving everyone with one single large choice that is “to adapt to the needs of the market they are a part of & are operating in”.
But hark back & you’d see how the role of a STRATEGIST isn’t new at all. Its been there for ages now, right from medieval times of kings & war. History has it that some kings had appointed a few people (strategists) who went into analyzing multiple aspects of the opponent, starting from the strength of their army, the capacity of the artillery, the contours where was to be fought, the use of unique equipment that made them superior as opposed to the others, the strengths & weaknesses of the warriors / soldiers / chieftains.
Although the word “STRATEGY” finds its roots in Greek “STRATEGIA” & largely believed that it’s wider use might have started around 6th Century, the effective use of a strategy does date back to many years before. CHANAKYA one of the primary ministers in the court of Chandragupta Maurya (350 BCE) was known to be a master-strategist & not to mention a few references from the Mahabharatha (3137 BCE) that have characters as special mentions as for strategizing.
Fast-forward to talking of the corporate world there could be multiple places where strategists are required vide positions like Business Strategist, Brand Strategist, Functional Strategist or the more common one in the product world - Product Strategist.
Definition:
“The strategist is largely entrusted with the job of finding a host of opportunities towards using all the required data whilst operating within the confines of a scope & making wise decisions that could pay-off well for the teams / organizations post implementation”
And one such role that seems to have emerged & is currently evolving we speak is the role of a CVO – “Chief Visionary Officer”.
Firstly, let us understand what CVO does picturing it in stark contrast against the role often played by Product Managers. This also ought to serve as an answer to “how do I go from a PM to a CVO?”.
You need to ensure that you are checking all these boxes:
Let’s go over each of those in detail.
1) Visionary Mindset
Often what sets a CVO apart from a strategist is the farsightedness, the big picture thinking, the ability to play the visionary & do it well. When most product managers are entrusted with the ideation towards building a strategic course & driving the product forward over a set goal / optimizing for a specific metric, the difference here is over the macroscopic scheme of things.
PMs could look to tackle situations like improving engagement by targeting the UX over a specific feature when a CVO may be thinking in terms of the next big thing over the tech landscape & how they could factor all that in & think beyond into the future, like say over the next 2-3 years, BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) could be a CVO’s best friend
2) Affined to Super-High-Growth
Since a CVO would possess the big picture thinking, it is also pretty obvious that they are the one who would more often than not know exactly which particular area could land them into super-high-growth.
PMs would tend to think of improving a specific high-level metric like say revenues / no. of users using the product (XAU) when a CVO would be thinking of paths / alternate routes so as to steer the org. into the next (x) million dollars over the upcoming quarter
3) Strategic Alliances / Partnering
Given how a CVO often is operating at a high-level they are expected to be super-effective at striking alliances with potential business partners / orgs. whose synergies perfectly blend with them & the whole idea-exchange session could get them all super-excited about what’s to come in the future.
PMs often collaborate with XfN teams & work towards those outcomes by wielding their sphere of influence so as to get them all aligned towards the goals if not excited, when a CVO & the relationship they build could go beyond the org. they are advising or a part of
4) Building Trust
CVOs are often dealing with ideas whose scope much beyond the current market scenario, almost always set in the distant if not the near future. So, they are often known to research a topic / given tech area / business segment thoroughly to a high degree of granularity & then use a combination of product sense & visionary / big-picture-thinking to help everyone understand why it makes sense to hit that particular area & how they could all get together towards contributing to cracking the code.
Of course, PMs jobs do start off with building a degree of trust with all the stakeholders of the org. & not to mention a few of the user groups as well, but a CVO could often be required to take up the task of building trust with the stakeholders of partner orgs. or the upcoming alliances they plan to strike which may as well include the top-brass (C-suite / members of the board / investors)
5) Impeccable Execution
Just as much as CVOs do generate strong & workable ideas over a given scope, they are known to be great pioneers of execution just as much, which would mean that they would almost always possess a high degree of clarity over the kind of roadblocks they would face-up with over deploying a given business strategy.
PMs & especially the young ones who have taken to the job recently would obviously get a good amount of exposure towards execution given the tactical nature of the job role itself, but a CVO although not required to contribute towards such minor-level execution, would be needed to contribute actively towards weeding off teething troubles & smoothening out the execution path most times even before internal teams realizing & flagging it as a roadblock
In summary:
As evident, the scope of product manager’s work / job function could be a good precursor to that of the CVO, just that one ought to learn to think bigger & beyond their current boundaries. It’s possible that PMs are strong in strategy but a CVOs role goes just beyond what merely represents STRATEGY which is one of the primary understandings a PM ought to have if they are looking to grow & transition into something bigger & better over the course of their experience.