While many individual contributor PMs thrive on being scrappy and avoiding rigid process, a director's effectiveness is measured by their ability to create scalable systems and consistent practices. Overcoming an "allergy to process" is a mandatory step in the transition to a leadership role.
Refusing to engage in organizational politics is a career-limiting choice. To advance to a director level, you must understand the "game" of influence, stakeholder management, and strategic communication. The choice isn't whether to play, but how you play, as it's an unavoidable part of leadership.
What made you a great PM will not make you a great director. The journey into leadership is a process of being humbled, recognizing your worldview is incomplete, and adapting your thinking. If you are not humble enough to change your mind, you will struggle to grow in your career.
Newly promoted directors often fall into the trap of "hero syndrome," trying to solve every problem themselves as they did as individual contributors. True leadership requires letting go, redirecting stakeholders to your team, and finding satisfaction in their success, not your own visibility and praise.
A simple mental model to distinguish between a Product Manager and a Director is altitude and time horizon. PMs operate at a low altitude (tactical, user-focused) with a short horizon (sprints, weeks). Directors operate at a high altitude (strategic, portfolio-level) with a long horizon (quarters, years).
A fundamental shift from PM to Director is where you derive professional satisfaction. As a PM, joy often comes from shipping products and solving user problems. As a Director, your primary source of joy must come from seeing your team members succeed, grow, and have an impact.
Unlike PMs, directors make objective, portfolio-wide decisions, which may include defunding or shelving a product. A critical mental shift for aspiring directors is to stop tying personal and professional value to the success of one product and instead focus on the overall health of the business.
The desire to be a popular boss is a trap. Prioritizing being liked often means avoiding boundaries and tough feedback, which creates an unsafe, unproductive environment. Leadership requires earning respect by providing clear direction, setting standards, and trusting your team—which is what they actually value.
In times of strategic ambiguity, teams can become paralyzed. An effective director doesn't wait for perfect clarity from above. They step into the vacuum, interpret available signals, and create a clear line-of-sight connecting their team's work to broader business objectives, even if it's imperfect.