Why The Product Manager To CEO Pipeline Is The Underrated Crash Course For Leadership In Tech
Traditional research on CEO career paths tends to focus on titles such as COO, CFO and divisional president. But the skills developed in product management may be just as relevant, argues Paysend CEO Ben Chisell. In this guest column, he makes the case that aspiring leaders should focus less on collecting prestigious titles and more on taking ownership of measurable business outcomes.
Key Takeaways
- Guest Author By Ben Chisell The road to the top rarely runs in a straight line, but there are less circuitous routes to becoming CEO.
According to one of the largest ongoing studies analyzing every CEO succession in the S&P 500 since 2000, there are four feeder roles: COOs, divisional CEOs, CFOs, and "leapfrog" leaders promoted from below the C-suite.
- Product management doesn't appear in the CEO-pathway research, likely because none of the major studies breaks the role out as a separate category.
It's a relatively newer function, and it tends to get folded into general management or engineering in career datasets.
- Sundar Pichai joined Google in 2004, leading product management for the Google Toolbar, years before he became CEO.
Neal Mohan spent eight years as YouTube's chief product officer before taking the top job there in 2023.
- But scope isn't the same as skillset.
The job gets bigger, but the muscles you exercise remain the same: setting a vision under uncertainty, prioritizing ruthlessly, making calls with incomplete information, and getting people who don't report to you to deliver anyway.
- And it's that version of the job that shapes how PMs get perceived, and why few are inspired to make the leap.
Guest Author By Ben Chisell The road to the top rarely runs in a straight line, but there are less circuitous routes to becoming CEO. According to one of the largest ongoing studies analyzing every CEO succession in the S&P 500 since 2000, there are four feeder roles: COOs, divisional CEOs, CFOs, and "leapfrog" leaders promoted from below the C-suite. But a separate 10-year study called the CEO Genome Project suggests that the fastest climbers ± "sprinters" who reached the CEO seat well ahead of the 24-year average - didn't get there by climbing the corporate ladder to the top.
They got there through bold, often unconventional career moves, such as taking on a failing division or building something from scratch. In fact, what set them apart wasn't pedigree but building a specific skillset that made them CEO material: decisiveness, reliability, adaptability, and the ability to engage people around a plan. Product management doesn't appear in the CEO-pathway research, likely because none of the major studies breaks the role out as a separate category.
It's a relatively newer function, and it tends to get folded into general management or engineering in career datasets. But once you look at what the job demands - ownership of a tangible outcome, obsession with what customers value, the willingness to make tough decisions - it maps directly onto the traits the CEO Genome Project found in its sprinters. I've spent my career leading product and technology at companies including Amazon , eBay , Starling Bank and OakNorth .
For more details please read the original article at Crunchbase News.
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