Get ready for a fantastic new year with my quick goal setting and year-end retrospective exercise designed specifically for product managers looking to grow their careers.
Setting goals and planning for the future is crucial for any product manager’s career. But it’s not always easy to know where to start. That’s why I’ve put together this quick goal setting and year-end retrospective exercise specifically for product managers looking to grow their careers.
So, whether you’re looking to move up within your current company or want to explore new opportunities elsewhere, this exercise will help you get focused and set yourself up for success in the coming year.
Setting Product Manager Goals for the New Year
Product managers should always look for ways to improve their product management skills.
To help product managers set product management goals, here are the four steps to help you quickly set goals to make this your best year as a product manager yet!
Step 1: Conduct a personal retrospective.
It all starts by doing a personal retrospective. You’re probably used to doing these with your product teams at the end of a sprint. The same principles apply to you.
Take a moment to reflect on the past twelve months.
This will help you understand where your time is going and how you can make changes to improve your productivity.
Ask yourself these questions:
- What did I do well this past year?
- What could I have done better?
- What did I learn this past year?
- What did I do that I should stop doing in the future?
In case you missed it, check out my article on how to conduct an end-of-year retrospective.
Step 2: Decide your key area of focus for the coming year.
The next step is to consider where your career or key focus area will be in the new year. What will that look like?
Do a SWOT analysis on yourself, and identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
Gather feedback from those closest to you, such as colleagues, mentors, and peers.
If you’d like help with this assessment, consider working with me as your coach. I have a robust set of tools I provide to help evaluate product management skills.
Step 3: Set Your Goals.
To help set your product management career goals, here are a few questions to consider:
- Who are my product manager heroes who have achieved success and balance in their lives?
- What product management skills do I need to improve the most?
- What am I looking forward to learning in 2024?
- What about my work am I most committed to changing and improving in 2024?
- What is one under-developed talent I want to explore in 2024?
Whether you’re at the beginning of your product management career or you’re a seasoned product leader, I hope you find this goal-setting helpful exercise.
Step 4: Plan to review and tweak each quarter
Once you’ve set your goals, block out 2 hours each quarter so that you remember to review your progress throughout the year. Try scheduling these reviews for the same time each quarter, such as the first Monday of the quarter. The more you can get into a rhythm with setting and reviewing your goals, the more it will become a habit.
If you feel like you could use some help with goal setting and evaluating your performance, product manager coaching can help. You may benefit from product management coaching if you experience any of the following:
- You feel stuck in your product management career
- You lack confidence as a product manager
- You feel overwhelmed by specific product management tasks, such as prioritization or stakeholder management
- You find yourself procrastinating on product management projects
- You feel burnt out as a product manager
If any of this sounds familiar, I’d love to chat with you about how I can help. Click here to request a free coaching assessment call.