I’ve spent my career growing product teams and coaching product managers, and I’m continually drawn to leaders whose playbooks translate across company stages. One standout is Jiaona Zhang (she goes by JZ), whose journey offers an especially clear roadmap for moving from individual contributor to executive product leadership.
JZ is the VP of Product at Webflow. Before that, she was the Senior Director of Product Management at WeWork, a Product Lead at Airbnb, and a PM at Dropbox and at Pocket Gems. She teaches product at Stanford and mentors rising product leaders. You may also know her for the widely shared article, “Don’t Serve Burnt Pizza (And Other Lessons in Building Minimum Lovable Products).”
What resonates most with me is her framing of the product career path. Instead of a linear ladder, think of three distinct phases: contributing as a PM, managing PMs, and leading the function. I’ve used a similar model to guide my own teams, and I’ll walk through how I apply this framework in practice.
Phase 1 — The PM role: When you’re breaking into product, focus on environments that will compound your learning. I look for signs of strong product discovery, clear ownership of product roadmapping and sprint planning, and a culture that values outcomes vs output. In interviews, I ask how success is measured (OKRs, customer outcomes, adoption) and how PMs partner with engineering and design. Early mistakes are common: trying to own decisions without owning the problem, shipping features without a minimum lovable product mindset, and confusing velocity with value. To avoid these traps, anchor your work in customer problems, link every roadmap item to measurable outcomes, and practice crisp storytelling that connects strategy to execution.
Phase 2 — The managing phase: The IC to manager transition is a shift from doing the work to building the system that does the work. As you become more senior, zoom out from features to portfolios, from experiments to strategy. When hiring, I look for complementary archetypes across the team — the product creator who thrives in zero-to-one, the operator who scales repeatable playbooks, the analyst who brings rigor to prioritization, and the evangelist who aligns stakeholders. For first-time managers, my advice is to establish clear decision rights, define the bar for product quality, and coach toward autonomy. Balance mentoring with mechanisms: weekly product reviews, outcomes-driven OKRs, and lightweight rituals that reinforce clarity without micromanaging.
Phase 3 — The executive phase: At this stage, I treat the product organization itself as a product. Define a vision, clarify the customer (your CEO, exec peers, board, and of course end users), and build feedback loops. With the CEO, align on the narrative, business model bets, and the handful of company-level outcomes that matter most. With peers on the exec team, drive cross-functional planning so GTM, finance, and product are synchronized around impact, not just output. With the board, translate strategy into measurable progress and risk mitigation. The goal is to ship strategy: clear choices, intentional sequencing, and a portfolio that advances product-market fit and durable growth.
Whether you’re trying to break into product, grow into management, or step into the executive arena, this three-phase arc is a reliable compass. Invest in product discovery, tie work to outcomes, and develop the operating cadence that turns intent into impact. That’s how you accelerate from PM to VP — and lead with confidence at every step.
Inspired by this post on First Round.
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