By Ben Chisell
The highway to the highest not often runs in a straight line, however there are much less circuitous routes to changing into CEO. In line with one of many largest ongoing research analyzing each CEO succession within the S&P 500 since 2000, there are 4 feeder roles: COOs, divisional CEOs, CFOs, and “leapfrog” leaders promoted from under the C-suite.
However a separate 10-year examine referred to as the CEO Genome Venture means that the quickest climbers ± “sprinters” who reached the CEO seat properly forward of the 24-year common — didn’t get there by climbing the company ladder to the highest. They acquired there by daring, typically unconventional profession strikes, reminiscent of taking over a failing division or constructing one thing from scratch.
Actually, what set them aside wasn’t pedigree however constructing a selected skillset that made them CEO materials: decisiveness, reliability, adaptability, and the power to have interaction individuals round a plan.
Product administration doesn’t seem within the CEO-pathway analysis, probably as a result of not one of the main research breaks the function out as a separate class. It’s a comparatively newer perform, and it tends to get folded into normal administration or engineering in profession datasets.
However when you have a look at what the job calls for — possession of a tangible final result, obsession with what clients worth, the willingness to make powerful selections — it maps immediately onto the traits the CEO Genome Venture present in its sprinters.
I’ve spent my profession main product and expertise at firms together with Amazon, eBay, Starling Financial institution and OakNorth. These roles landed me my first CEO place with out having to fill the everyday CEO-starter pack jobs as a result of I used to be capable of articulate my talent set to the board.
In brief, product administration is about making a product profitable; being CEO is about making a enterprise profitable. The substances are the identical.
Don’t take my phrase for it. Sundar Pichai joined Google in 2004, main product administration for the Google Toolbar, years earlier than he turned CEO. Neal Mohan spent eight years as YouTube’s chief product officer earlier than taking the highest job there in 2023.
Sure, the scope of the job differs, however that’s true of each promotion, particularly for the toughest job on provide. A CEO carries the complete weight of the enterprise: monetary efficiency, authorized and regulatory publicity, the board, and the market. A PM’s remit is of course narrower: one product, one roadmap, one group to rally.
However scope isn’t the identical as skillset. The job will get larger, however the muscle tissues you train stay the identical: setting a imaginative and prescient below uncertainty, prioritizing ruthlessly, making calls with incomplete info, and getting individuals who don’t report back to you to ship anyway. Study to do this for a product, and also you’ve already discovered to do it for a enterprise, simply on an even bigger scale.
That mindset isn’t new to start-ups and scale-ups both, the place a PM is commonly the closest factor to a mini-CEO, making calls throughout product, development, and operations just because no devoted perform exists but to do it for them.
A part of the explanation I feel the PM-to-CEO pathway is so typically neglected is that the perform is judged by its worst practitioners. Loads of individuals with “product supervisor” on their CV spend extra time managing processes and stakeholders than proudly owning outcomes and constructing superb merchandise. And it’s that model of the job that shapes how PMs get perceived, and why few are impressed to make the leap. The PMs who’ve executed the job – by taking possession of the result somewhat than the method – are constructing one thing that actually resembles the job description of a CEO.
One of the best recommendation I can provide to aspiring executives and entrepreneurs in the present day – whether or not they’re PMs or not – is to decide on a metric that they need to be accountable for. In my earlier function, I targeted on month-to-month lively customers; now I’m specializing in EBITDA. Strip away the layers and stay outcome-oriented.
The CEO pathway analysis retains in search of the proper sequence of job titles, however that mannequin is more and more outdated within the modern-day work surroundings. Somewhat than specializing in conventional CEO pathways, aspiring executives ought to focus much less on glitzy job titles so as to add to their CVs and extra on the concrete expertise they will achieve. Product administration, executed correctly, gives the right crash course.
Ben Chisell is the CEO of Paysend, a London-based expertise firm constructing a worldwide funds infrastructure to facilitate cash transfers. He beforehand led product and expertise for firms together with Amazon, eBay, Starling Financial institution and OakNorth.
Illustration: Dom Guzman
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