When I coach product managers, the conversation usually starts with the same question: what should I get better at next? The common answer is a list of skills such as product sense, execution, strategy, and stakeholder management. Lists like that are useful for describing the job, but they don’t help much when you are trying to decide what to work on this quarter.
One problem with a list is that it treats very different skills as if they were the same kind of thing. Design sense and organizational design sit side by side, even though you practice the first on a single product and only get to practice the second once you lead several teams. A list also says nothing about how good you are. Two PMs can both “have” execution skills and still be years apart in what they can actually do.
In this post I combine three well known frameworks into one map that I use in coaching. The ideas from Shreyas Doshi, Ravi Mehta, and Melissa Perri belong to them, and I point out clearly where my own additions begin.
Three questions behind any skill model
When I look at PM skill frameworks, I find that they are really trying to answer three different questions.
The first question is about breadth: which skills make up the job? Ravi Mehta’s Product Competency Toolkit is the clearest answer I know. It lists twelve competencies grouped into four areas: product execution, customer insight, product strategy, and influencing people. Marty Cagan’s essay Value and Viability adds something useful here, because it explains that the PM is responsible for whether a product is both valuable to customers and viable for the business. That is the reason commercial sense belongs on the list at all.
The second question is about depth: what separates OK from great? Shreyas Doshi’s masterclass on execution answers this better than anything else I have seen, because he describes three levels of the same skill in terms of things you can actually observe.
The third question is about scope: where can you apply the skill? Shreyas’s PM career skills map shows how the skills that matter change as you move from PM to CPO. Melissa Perri’s Building a Great Product Management Organization describes what the top of that ladder involves, including org design, strategy, product operations, and culture.
Most frameworks answer one of these questions well, and career conversations get confusing when people mix them up. If someone tells you to “be more strategic,” they could mean that a skill is missing, that it isn’t deep enough yet, or that you are using it at too small a scale. Each of those needs a different fix, so it helps to know which one you are dealing with.
Scope: three levels of impact
Shreyas groups PM skills by the scale at which they matter most.
At the first level, individual product mastery, the question is whether you can make one product succeed. This roughly covers the range from PM to Senior PM, and the skills involved are product sense, execution, analytical sense, technical sense, and design sense.
At the second level, product portfolio mastery, the question becomes whether you can make several products succeed through other people. This covers Group PM to Director, and the skills shift toward vision, strategy, commercial sense, managing PMs, and mentoring.
At the third level, organizational mastery, the question is whether you can build an organization that keeps producing good products over time. This is the range from VP to CPO, and it involves company strategy, execution at company scale, organizational design, and developing the organization’s capabilities.
Two skills don’t belong to any single level: critical thinking and influential communication. I think of them as multipliers, because they make every other skill more effective. A sound strategy that is explained badly rarely gets funded, and a clear message built on a weak argument usually falls apart at the first hard question.
It is also worth saying that the levels build on each other rather than replacing each other. A Director still needs good product sense. What changes as you move up is where most of your value comes from.
Depth: OK, very good, and great
Shreyas’s execution masterclass is the most useful description of skill levels I have found, because it describes what people actually do at each level instead of relying on vague adjectives.
At the OK level, execution means project management, process, and communication. The work gets done, and people know where it stands.
At the very good level, it means problem solving, contextual expertise, and goal setting. When something breaks, you find and fix the real cause, and the goals you set point the team toward the right outcome.
At the great level, it means creativity, foresight, and persuasion. You see problems before they arrive, you find routes that other people missed, and you bring people along with you.
When I read across the three levels, I see a pattern that applies to almost any skill. At the OK level, you do the work correctly. At the very good level, you choose the right work to do. At the great level, you notice what others don’t and you get them to act on it.
Each level also depends on the one below it. A PM with great ideas who lets the basics slip, for example by skipping status updates or keeping a roadmap that nobody trusts, soon finds that people stop giving them room to be creative.
I used this same pattern to write three levels for each of the other skills on the map.
The full map
The execution row below comes directly from Shreyas. The other rows are my own extension, written in the same spirit, so please treat the wording as a starting point for a conversation rather than as a test.
Individual product mastery · PM to Senior PM
| Skill | OK | Very good | Great |
|---|---|---|---|
| Product sense | Understands customer needs | Finds and prioritizes opportunities | Makes consistently good product calls |
| Execution sense | Project management, process, communication | Problem solving, contextual expertise, goal setting | Creativity, foresight, persuasion |
| Analytical sense | Reads the metrics | Diagnoses causes and tradeoffs | Decides well under uncertainty |
| Technical sense | Understands the technology | Judges feasibility and architecture | Shapes technical tradeoffs in the product |
| Design sense | Understands the UX | Designs coherent experiences | Creates experiences that stand apart |
Product portfolio mastery · Group PM to Director
| Skill | OK | Very good | Great |
|---|---|---|---|
| Product vision | Describes a future direction | Writes a compelling long term vision | Keeps people committed to it for years |
| Product strategy | Sets priorities | Makes coherent choices and tradeoffs | Builds an advantage competitors can’t copy |
| Commercial sense | Understands the business model | Improves the economics | Spots the next big growth opportunity |
| PM management | Manages individual PMs | Builds an effective PM team | Develops PMs who lead on their own |
| Mentorship | Gives feedback | Speeds up individual growth | Grows the next generation of leaders |
Organizational mastery · VP Product to CPO
| Skill | OK | Very good | Great |
|---|---|---|---|
| Company strategy | Aligns with company goals | Shapes strategic priorities | Influences where the company goes |
| Company scale execution | Coordinates across teams | Delivers complex initiatives | Drives outcomes that change the company |
| Organizational design | Defines roles and ownership | Designs team structures that scale | Builds an organization that performs without heroics |
| Organizational development | Spots capability gaps | Builds talent and operating systems | Leaves capability that outlasts any one leader |
Multipliers · every level
| Skill | OK | Very good | Great |
|---|---|---|---|
| Critical thinking | Structures problems | Challenges assumptions | Shows sound judgment when it matters most |
| Influential communication | Communicates clearly | Builds alignment | Changes minds and gets people moving |
Depth and scope are two different things
The idea I find most useful in coaching is that mastery has two separate dimensions: how deep your skill goes, and how large an area you can apply it to.
Execution is a good example. Many senior PMs are great at execution within their own product. They spot risks early, find creative ways around blockers, and get their own team on board. If you put the same person in charge of a project that spans the whole company, though, they may only be at the OK level for a while. They can coordinate and track the work, but they can’t yet see around corners at that scale.
This is completely normal, and it happens in the other direction too. A Director with strong organizational skills can find that their own product sense has slipped to average, simply because nobody has asked them to use it in years.
So I don’t think of career growth as a single climb from OK to great. I think of it as gradually increasing the scope at which you can do great work, and doing it more than once, so that it is clearly a pattern and not luck.
Seeing it this way also makes career conversations clearer. Instead of asking “am I ready for the next level?”, you can ask two more useful questions: at which scope am I great today, and what evidence do I have that I am getting there at the next scope up?
Nobody is great at everything
Ravi Mehta’s essay What’s Your Shape? makes a point that skill matrices tend to hide: strong PMs have uneven profiles. Some lead with product sense and design, while others lead with execution and analytics, and both kinds of PM can be excellent.
The two PMs in the chart above would both meet a Senior PM bar, but they would struggle in different places. PM A would probably get frustrated in a role that is heavy on process and metrics, while PM B would find it hard to work on an early stage product where nobody knows yet what to build. Neither of them is the better PM. They are simply suited to different problems.
For coaching, this has two practical consequences. The first is that you shouldn’t try to be great at everything. That person rarely exists, and trying to become them spreads your effort too thin. The second is that the gaps worth working on are the ones that hold you back at the next scope. If you want to lead a portfolio of products, being only OK at commercial sense will hurt you much more than being only OK at design.
Teams are where these different shapes come together. Ravi makes the same point in his essay on product skills in the AI era: individuals go deep in a few areas, and the team as a whole covers the rest.
How I use the map in a coaching session
I use the map as a conversation tool rather than a scorecard, and a session usually follows the same four steps.
In the first step, we draw your current shape. For each skill at your current scope, you pick OK, very good, or great, and for every “great” you give one concrete example. If there is no example, it isn’t great yet.
In the second step, we name the next scope. Where do you want to be working in 12 to 18 months? We read the table for that level together and mark the skills you have never had a chance to practice.
In the third step, we pick one skill and one step: one skill, moved up one level, at one scope. “Get better at strategy” is too broad to act on, but “move commercial sense from OK to very good by owning the pricing review this quarter” is something you can start on Monday.
In the fourth step, we agree on what evidence would show progress. That might be a decision you made, a tradeoff you spotted before anyone else did, or a goal you set that the team reached. When we check in later, we compare against that evidence rather than against a general feeling.
To help someone place themselves on the depth scale, I often ask three questions. For the OK level: does the work you own get done without people having to chase you? For the very good level: when something went wrong last quarter, did you fix the cause or only the symptom? For the great level: what did you see coming before anyone else did, and what did you get people to do about it?
What AI changes
AI tools are making the OK level much easier to reach. Writing specs, summarizing research, drafting updates, and building quick prototypes now take a fraction of the time they used to. In his essay on product skills in the AI era, Ravi Mehta argues that judgment, craft, and customer understanding matter just as much as before, and that the PM’s job is shifting from deciding what to build toward deciding what deserves to ship.
On this map, I think that shows up as a shift toward the right. As the OK column gets easier for everyone, more of what makes a PM stand out sits in the great column: foresight, taste, and the ability to change people’s minds. The map itself still works, but the bar for standing out is higher than it was.
If you coach PMs, or you are working on your own growth, I would suggest starting with the first step: draw your shape honestly, with a real example behind every dot. The gap that matters most is often not the one you expect.
If you would like to work through your own map with me, you can book a coaching session on ADPList.
References
- Shreyas Doshi, A Masterclass on Execution: What Skills Make Product Managers OK, Very Good, and Great at Execution. Source of the three depth levels.
- Shreyas Doshi, PM career skills map. Source of the three scope levels and the skills in each.
- Ravi Mehta, Product Competency Toolkit. Twelve competencies in four areas.
- Ravi Mehta, What’s Your Shape?. Why strong PMs have uneven profiles.
- Ravi Mehta, Do my hard-won product skills still matter in the AI era?
- Melissa Perri, Building a Great Product Management Organization. Org design, strategy, operations, and culture.
- Marty Cagan, Value and Viability. What the PM is accountable for on an empowered team.