First Time Director- Inherited a team. Needs advice.
I have direct reports, sr/staff/principal levels. I only previously had couple of senior level pms. but new responsibilities. I am planning to get some guidance from vp too.
But i was curious how do you differentiate responsibilities and challenges of sr/staff/principal level pms.
LIke when i had sr level pm, i always challenged them to think in terms of workflows and systems rather than just features, breakdown initiatives across ssytem, some operational processes, customer workflows.
But now I’m realizing I need much clearer frameworks myself around:
- Senior vs Staff vs Principal expectations
- ownership boundaries (features vs initiatives vs product lines/platforms)
- stakeholder management expectations at each level
- how customer conversations evolve by level
- what “strategic influence” actually looks like in practice
- when someone is ready to move from Senior → Staff → Principal
- how to structure progression plans and mentorship paths
how do define good frameworks and boundaries for each levels including , stakeholder management, customer conversations, initiatives, product lines etc. Anything other factor i might be missing?
and how do i create progression plans for sr->staff-> principal. And for principal levels, some of already doing good. I can maybe see in future putting couple of sr or staff under principal level to help them grow and maybe avoid burnout myself.
I'm def planning to get some advice internally from leadership as well as my mentors. But curious if you have gone through something like this. i would like to get some opinions.
What frameworks, patterns, or lessons ended up mattering most for you?