What are your top accomplishments from the past year? What were the 2-3 things for which you were recognized? This is an excellent time to summarize your achievements. It is easy to forget the challenges you overcame!
What are Your Top Moments?
Many product leaders are measured by:
Ability to communicate at all levels: speaking and writing simply so all can understand
Execution: getting out your deliverables in a dependable manner
Prioritization: deciding the most urgent tasks among a group of tasks
Your top moments are those times when you mastered these together. When you had a simple message, you delivered on your commitments and picked the right priority for your focus. Another way to distinguish a top contribution is by looking back on the past few months.
By reflecting on the year in terms of your accomplishments and your recognition, you are able to perceive your own top moments. After your reflection, you probably have 3-5 major moments and a bunch of minor moments. Now, what do you do with this?
Getting Benefits from Your Top Moments
There are three ways to get the most benefit from your top moments:
Use it in your self-assessment for your annual performance review
Use it to document accomplishment stories for job interviews
Use it to focus on skill improvements
These are useful whether you are employed, job hunting, or on a break from employment.
Benefit 1: Self-assessment
Studying what you did in the past year is helpful in surfacing your major moments. When you are employed, you have a few key items to include in your performance review. If you are job hunting or taking a break from a job, then you have notes on major accomplishments that you can use for interviews and networking.
Benefit 2: Writing Your Accomplishments
For long-term usage of your accomplishments, you need to put your accomplishments into story format. An accomplishment story is short - it fits on a single notecard. Each of these elements is covered in 1 sentence:
Situation: the background to your accomplishment
Actions: what you did
Obstacles: what you overcame to deliver
Results: quantification of the result from your effort
Doing this for each of your top moments helps you communicate succinctly about your accomplishment in many situations.
Benefit 3: Focus on Skills to Improve
By doing the exercise of finding a few top moments, you notice there are areas to improve in communication, execution, and prioritization. While there are many opportunities for learning such as mentoring, classes, webinars, and books, your time is best used by focusing on a few skills. Also, for new learning to stick, you need to learn a little and then apply it to your daily activities.
Conclusion
Taking the time at the end of the year to consider your accomplishments prepares you for whatever comes your way. You are ready to:
Justify your contributions
Be considered for a promotion
Apply for a new opportunity
You are ready for anything!
Links for More Information
A good article on the skills of the top 1% of product managers:
Excellent podcast with the author of the Top 1% of product managers:
Product Manager's Resume checklist - My checklist for using your top moments in your resume and on LinkedIn.