Individual motivation

The truth is, it takes time to find the "right" product team, but it is still important to learn the skills to become a more competent product manager over time. Consider the qualities necessary for outsize success of products in the market: finding the right combination of value, at the right time, for people who will pay for this value consistently. This is already challenging, and now to layer personal dynamics and contrasting perspectives for how to develop that product, and product management as a career becomes a questionable choice in masochism. And yet...

It takes a long time to understand why I want what I do, but I know what I want when I see it. It is a complicated prickly mess, but that focus is critical for the long haul.

Product needs to be future thinking, or else you are just managing projects without clear outcomes. There is a time in every organization for short term thinking, but the brands that survive know how to thrive among competition. And competitive forces will always exist and proliferate if there is no long term strategy of differentiation.

Out of all my experiences in the last ten years, I still hold my grant award to the nonprofit where I worked as the most fulfilling thing I have done: Establishing the first program of its kind for survivors of domestic violence in need of transitional housing. But long term career growth and personal development were unlikely for me in a small community nonprofit. I sought bigger companies and ambitious opportunities.

The siren song of a mission-based life kept attracting me to organizations in various states of uncertainty and upheaval. I kept going, because I knew there was more.