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So here’s a minor issue that could have real meaning for all product managers: what do you put on your business card? Yes, yes, I know we live in the age of Facebook and LinkedIn, but business cards are still what we exchange when we meet people face to face. What this means is that business cards are still important. What’s on your business card?
At this point in my career, I must have had no fewer than 20 different business cards. Every once in a while I see a collection of them piled up at the bottom of a drawer somewhere and I have to smile when I realize how much my description of myself and what I do has changed over time.
I will never forget when I had my first chance to sign up for business cards. This was it, he had made the big time. Despite being a humble software engineer, he was finally going to have a “grown-up” way of communicating to others how important he was. As with all large companies, most of the business card format was preset. However, I was given free rein to add my job title just below my name. Hmmm what to put? The first time I walked out the door I put what the company told me to in the corporate directory: “Software Engineer IV” or whatever.
Turns out this was a big mistake. Aside from the people who worked for my company, no one else in the real world knew what an IV software engineer was! He would receive polite smiles and then the card would quickly disappear into someone’s pocket to probably be thrown away when it was time to do the laundry.
A few business card iterations later, I started getting smarter. By this time I had moved into the world of product management, so I changed my job title to “Product Manager”. This was much better. I don’t think many people knew what a product manager was or did, but they sure thought they knew what a manager did, and upon receiving my card, they put me in as a mid-level manager and left it at that.
Promotions came over time, and even though I wasn’t a VP or CIO yet, I became a senior product manager. The next time around, I updated the business card title to read “Senior Product Manager.” This seemed to earn me a little more respect when I handed over the card. Again, I don’t think many people knew what I did; however, they seemed to believe that he was now in the upper echelons of mid-level managers.
I still found that since people didn’t really know what a product manager does, they struggled to pigeonhole me based on my title. The catch here is that if people can’t quickly figure out where you fit on the responsibility totem, they’ll end up not even bothering to try. I felt that one more evolution was required. I ended up dropping the “Product” and today my business card simply says “Senior Manager”.
Although less descriptive, I have found this title to be very useful at trade shows and when meeting with vendors. No, they don’t really seem to know what I do for the company yet; however, they can easily figure out that a “Senior Manager” is someone who must be very important. This means that they treat me like someone important because they have no reason not to.
One final note, with my obtuse title, the first question I get asked is “what do you do for a living?” This is a decisive question. If I identify myself as a Product Manager, this will cause me to be classified as a low-level worker bee because no one really knows what a Product Manager does. In countless encounters like this, I’ve honed my response to respond with a quick “I make problems go away.” In most cases, this leads to quiet respect and no further probing questions.