PB 5/7: The Status Game for PMs

Status is both a motivator, and a critical currency when planning your next move. But don't get caught up in Status for its own sake...focus on Impact and good things will follow.

The urge for rank is ineradicable. It's the secret goal of our lives, to win status for ourselves and our game - and gain as much of it over you and you and you as we can. It's how we make meaning. It's how we make identity. It's the worst of us, it's the best of us and it's the inescapable truth of us..
Will Storr: The Status Game: On Human life and How To Play It

Let’s talk about Status. Because let’s face it, we all think about it enough. Even if we don’t admit it.

I was lucky enough to see Will Storr, Author of The Status Game: On Human Life and How to Play It, speak a few weeks ago (at the excellen† Off-Grid Sessions).

Since then the whole issue of status in the product world (and work generally) has been rattling round my brain. Two things in particular

• How it’s such a driver of so many of the things we do at work - even though we never want to admit to it

• The difference between the status we have inside a company and what we have outside us.

It’s amazing how much status can obsess us; and the pursuit of it can cloud our judgement. The only way to stay sane and get the success you deserve for you and your team is focus on impact and let status follow.

Micro status: the gamification of work

We don’t really admit to chasing status. But as Will Storr points out - we pretty much can’t help ourselves. It’s something that’s deep inside us. We might as well accept how much it drives us.

When you start to look at work through a status-shaped prism you realise Our day-to-day experience is an intricate (and often not very subtle) game of acquiring and using micro-status symbols.

These are the small things that cost a company little, but are all similar to the badges that boy scouts collect: they can range from what projects we get to work on, which meetings we go to, or lead; to where we get to park, who we have lunch with, or if we get mentioned in All hands.

Smart companies create micro status symbols to drive a desired behaviour. At Amazon, anyone who has a patent application submitted gets a big clear plastic jigsaw piece for their desk. If the patent is approved they get a blue piece. Even the most cynical of engineers couldn’t resist the status boost of a nice stack of jigsaw pieces.

This is classic gamification. Indeed you can think of work as one great big computer game where we go around gathering all these micro status symbols in the same way Mario collects coins.

When have accumulated enough of them we get to step up to the next level and trade them for a step up in our macro status: a move to a better team, a promotion; a pay rise.

Our careers are driven by both achieving and being able to demonstrate ‘macro-status’ symbols: Title, Level, Where you work and your Salary.

Macro status: The Top Trump version of you

When we put ourselves ‘out-there’ - and start job hunting (or seeking any other type of external approval) we’re all too often reduced to these factors: the Top Trump card version of ourselves.

Ex-Google CPO at FTSE 100 Corporate; VP Product at Series C Health Tech; Senior PM at a ‘traditional’ insurance company; PM at Series A B2B SaaS Reg Tech. These are all Top Trump status descriptions.

Whether we like it or not, we are all sifted and sorted according to these descriptions that simultaneously say absolutely nothing and absolutely everything about us.

But.. Internal status ≠ External status

If you want to get stuff done, and get ahead it’s essential to have your own stack of micro status, and to recognise it in others. But, so many of bits of micro status that matter when inside a company, have absolutely no value when you’re outside it.

They don’t make it onto your Top Trump Card.

Let’s say the CPO runs a monthly product review with the CEO and CFO. Each month she decides who is going to join from her team. This kind of thing is a major minor status indicator.

Product Manager A gets invited. Product Manager B isn’t.

From an internal perspective - PM A is riding high on a micro status endorphin rush; while PM B is now suffering from total FOMO.

But from an external perspective it’s irrelevant. If both were to apply for a job tomorrow this would make absolutely no difference.

OK, it’s a small example. But the broader point remains: much of what happens within a company - both good and bad - is irrelevant once you’re outside it.

Getting too caught up in its ebbs and flows and stressing about where you sit is seldom productive. Similarly getting complacent because you’re a big shot internally is dangerous. On the outside, 90% of it just doesn’t matter.

Better to keep your eyes on the bigger prize - and that means focussing on Impact.

Improving the Top Trump version of yourself: focus on impact.

So there is this ‘Top Trump’ version of yourself. This is basically the boiled down version of you that a recruiter will deduce from scanning your CV or LinkedIn profile for 30 seconds (and if you’re lucky having. quick conversation with you to find out your salary).

This is your vital statistics: where you’ve worked (this is worth a whole piece in itself); your title; what you’ve actually achieved (your Impact); how big a team you’ve managed; how much you earn; and whether you’re on the way up (your Trajectory) or flatlining.

Yes, we’re back to our friends Impact and Trajectory And Status is the connective tissue that sits between the two.

Impact - specifically the delivery of stuff that can be easily communicated outside your business (eg: I delivered £xm in value) - gets you status both directly (because it has value in its own right) and indirectly (because it drives bigger changes in level, pay etc). And trajectory is all about the rate of change of status.

So if you want real status, Top Trump card status, your best starting point is always going to focus on the key input: the impact you and your team are having. In particular, make sure it’s something that resonates both inside and outside your business.

It should be obvious..

I know this sounds blindingly obvious, but so many conversations I have people are caught up in micro status wrangles rather than thinking about the things that really matter.

They are thinking about how a particular job move might look or feel based on internal perception; or whether they’re up or down because they’ve got one or two more or less people in their team.

Instead you need to focus on one question: are you in a place where you can personally deliver something impactful that can be communicated easily outside ?

If the answer is yes - you’re just fine. You will be in the strongest possible place to succeed both internally and externally. If not, then all the micro status trappings in the world aren’t going to help you.