This month’s roundtable brought together a powerhouse panel to explore one of the biggest challenges in product careers today: How do you grow, scale, and stay effective across radically different company environments?
Before we dive into the highlights…
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We were joined by:
- Chris Butler, Director of Product Operations at GitHub
- Smita Patil, Product & Leadership Coach, Founder of Product Forge
- Lorenzo Mazzo, Fintech Product Lead at KttiPay
Together, they tackled real questions product leaders face every day:
- How do you navigate the career ladder at a giant org without getting stuck in process?
- What changes when you go from startup chaos to enterprise strategy, or vice versa?
- Where do PMs fall flat when trying to scale their impact?
Highlights from the Roundtable
This conversation surfaced the key tradeoffs and growth tactics product managers need to succeed in any environment.
Career Navigation in Large Orgs
In large organizations, promotion is rarely just about performance. It’s about visibility, alignment, and the ability to operate within complex systems. High-performing PMs know how to:
- Make their impact seen and felt. You can do great work, but unless others understand it and feel its value, you won’t move forward. Visibility is not self-promotion. It is strategic storytelling backed by outcomes.
- Drive their own advancement. Waiting to be noticed does not work. The best PMs proactively shape conversations around their contributions and career path, aligning their efforts with organizational priorities.
- Navigate the ambiguity of growth definitions. What qualifies as a senior PM at one company might not translate elsewhere. Panelists emphasized the importance of calibrating your growth against the actual expectations of your organization, not external checklists or job boards.
Shifting Between Startups and Enterprises
Moving between startup and enterprise environments is not a promotion. It is a pivot. The skills that make you successful in one can actually create friction in the other. Here’s what came up:
- Understand process debt versus governance bloat. Startups move fast but often ignore foundational elements like QA, analytics, and stakeholder processes. Enterprises offer structure, but too much of it can stall velocity. PMs must learn to identify and navigate these extremes.
- Redefine what ownership means. In a startup, ownership might mean doing everything. In an enterprise, it often means enabling others and driving alignment. Control gives way to influence, and that is a key maturity shift.
- Know when to lead, follow, or reframe the system. Scaling your impact means reading the room. Some situations require assertive leadership. Others require quiet influence. And sometimes, you have to push for new rules entirely.
Organizational Strategy and Product Leadership
Product leadership is about more than managing a backlog. It is about shaping how the organization works, and doing so in a way that matches its stage and structure.
Strategy is portable. Whether you are managing five people or five product lines, the fundamentals of good strategy such as clarity, tradeoffs, and alignment stay the same. The best PMs know how to flex their approach without compromising their principles.
Strategic PMs impact the organization, not just the roadmap. PMs at the top of their game influence decision-making systems, planning rhythms, and cross-team collaboration. They shape operating models, not just features.
Adaptability is the modern superpower. Panelists described context switching not just as a tactical skill, but a leadership necessity. As your organization grows or shifts, your methods must evolve with it, or you become a blocker instead of a driver.
Watch the Full Roundtable
📺 The full video of this session is now available. Watch the full conversation on coaching, discovery, and what it takes to build learning-driven product teams.
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The detailed recap includes exclusive execution frameworks and product strategies that go beyond what was discussed in the roundtable and designed to help you apply what was discussed.
As a member of the Product Practitioner tier and above, you’ll unlock:
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📅 Coming Up Next
Our next TPG Live is happening on July 10. You can also join The Product Way Patreon to submit your questions in advance and shape the discussion.
Topic: Shaping Product Success: Cultivating Curiosity and Navigating Uncertainty
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💬 Keep the Conversation Going
Which idea from the roundtable stuck with you? Want to be part of a future panel or just share what you are thinking about?
Email me directly at jeremydhorn@gmail.com. I would love to hear from you.
The Product Guy 