There are 3 beautiful trios that a Product Manager participates in
1. Product Manager, Product Marketer, Data Scientist
2. Product Manager, Product Designer, Engineering Manager/Engineers
3. Product Manager, Support, Sales
When these 3 trios are firing on all cylinders - the magic starts happening.
Are they too interested in tinkering with technical challenges? Do they over-estimate and under-deliver? Are they making technical choices that don't scale or aren't fault-tolerant?
The first thing to do is take maximum accountability. You need to improve the context and constraints inside which they work to improve their priorities and decisions.
Specifically...
Ensure they are organized into mission-driven, long-lived, cross-functional squads (Product managers, Engineering Managers and Engineers working together) rather than an amorphous "engineering team" or "core platform team".
Ensure each squad is led by a strong engineering manager with the right balance of technical credibility and business acumen
Ensure each squad has a strong Product manager who is setting priorities and creating lean, thin slices of minimum viable releases.
Ensure that Squads set ambitious outcome-driven OKRs. Key results with user adoption metrics or funnel conversion metrics are best. Launch dates are much less ideal. Unmeasurable Key Results are a fail.
Establish effective engineering-specific cultural values. How they should interact with each other, product, and other functions.
Establish high-quality technical principles that define how to approach problems. Testing, performance criteria, and more.
Develop principled performance review rubrics that operationalize the cultural values and technical principles. Without these, your values and principles are just words on a wiki.
Develop onboarding and professional development programs that educate on the values, principles, performance review process, etc
Hold people accountable. FIRE low performers
Hire better people - especially PMs that can push back on engineering (with better requirements, leaner scope, smaller iterations etc) and EMs that know how to encourage business-focused outcomes from engineers
Are you moving fast, or moving carelessly?
If it's the latter then you're not actually moving fast - you're just breaking things you have to keep fixing.
I’ve learned at least as much about product and product management from my recent obsession with exotic cars that I have from working in digital products for 20+ years.
Particularly the way Porsche can create 15 flavors of the 911 and 718 - one for each use-case and point along the spectrum of price and road/track focus.
It’s the kind of precise product/market you see from only the very best tech companies.
Be careful not to dismiss principles as "academic". They are essential foundations for consensus-building that drive alignment and improve behavior.
Avoid dismissing ideals because "we're not there yet". You will never get there until you agree on the ideals and make the decision to change your behavior/goals.
You're there when you decide to be there. If you never decide you will never get there.
As a founder, how you deal with conflict, misalignment and sub-optimal behavior from employees or vendors is more important than how you deal with things going well.
To be an effective operator you need to...
1. Take maximum accountability for other people's misunderstandings, underperformance, or confusion, and correct your own behavior before blaming others.
2. Have hard conversations and establish new boundaries before things reach a failure state.
3. Set clear goals and use carrots and sticks to encourage changes in behavior.
4. Provide fair and reasonable pathways for remediation.
5. Treat people respectfully and ensure they are compensated well even while you might need to move them out of the business. This might include agreeing on a new/different role (with different titles and terms) to better reflect their abilities or contribution.
6. Do most of these things a) in private b) on the phone or in-person rather than via email (document actions in an email afterward).
Juniors in a function should report to senior members of the same or similar function.
For example: Designers should report to Group Design Leads who report to Head of Design. Engineers should report to Eng Managers who report to Group Eng Managers and so on.
There are exceptions where functions are similar. E.g. it makes sense for designers to ultimately (toward the top of the org) Product. It makes sense for Data Scientists to ultimately report into Engineering.
Stated in the negative, Product shouldn't report to Engineering. Design shouldn't report to Marketing.
Why?
This is because it's essential that managers can be of service to their direct reports. They must be in a position to provide guidance about their craft, perform fair performance reviews, nurture their career during 1:1s, and help them resolve interpersonal issues that might be unique to their particular area of responsibility.
But what about when individuals are deeply embedded in a department (as they should be)? For example, what happens when designers are working closely with Marketing. They need to be able to heavily influence the work the designers are focused on, right?
This is solved by splitting "management" into two separate parts:
Part 1: Management of people, culture, and craft: This is performed by your "manager". They help you understand HOW to do your work. They are the "solid" line on the org chart.
Part 2: Management of workload and priorities: This is performed by your "colleagues". They help you understand WHAT work to prioritize. They are "dotted" line on the org chart.
By splitting it this way, you get the best of both worlds and unlock the potential in your team.
Are you failing to find product-market fit?
A pivot might be in order.
However, be careful.
When thinking about and researching your pivot, you might be a little gun-shy. Having failed to hit it out of the park the first time, you might be tempted to try to achieve 100% conviction about your new direction.
This isn't going to happen.
Get to 80% and pull the trigger.
Endless indecision is worse than a sub-optional decision. Move fast, ship, learn, iterate. Risk is part of the game.
Also, when making a Pivot; don't half-ass it.
There's nothing worse than making some changes in your roadmap or marketing but not going all the way to align everything in your business with the new direction.
Don't hedge. Don't leave things out of your pivot. It's likely everything needs to be reviewed, adjusted, or completely changed.
In short:
Get to 80% conviction
Pivot 100%
There's a fine line between Elizabeth Holmes, Travis Kalanick, and Steve Jobs.
They all bend the universe to their will. They all inspire people with vividly drawn and compelling visions of the future.
The difference between them, however, is the degree to which they know which rules/constraints to break (many), which to manage through (most), and which to respect (some).
When it comes to managing through constraints, they know how to dig in and pragmatically solve problems instead of constantly reverting back to big-picture nonsense. They don't avoid the details - they crush them.
Try to avoid "Stretch goals" or "Second" Priorities on your Roadmap.
Stuff is either important - in which case it's on the roadmap - or it's not. In which case it's not.
A roadmap is a linear, opinionated sequence of stuff you're going to deliver. Not a universe of possibilities. It should allow you to communicate hard decisions and tradeoffs about what gets done next and what might get pushed back if new priorities are added.
This makes it distinct from a backlog and other tools you might use to triangulate your future workload.
Moving from engineering to engineering leadership requires that you start using different tools.
The priority becomes scaling yourself, aligning stakeholders, and inspiring action. As such...
You end up writing less code and start writing more values, principles, and patterns.
The elegance of your architecture becomes less important than the eloquence of your words.
The things you say become less important than the sound of your voice when you say them.
I often find people working with young startups who are not quite sure how to position themselves, their equity holding, their influence, and their accountability in the business.
It's essential to label people's roles and responsibilities correctly. It has many benefits including a) smoothing out day-to-day operations by making areas of responsibility and accountability clear b) accelerating fundraising by helping investors understand whom to talk to and whom they're investing and c) helping key employees feel valued and incentivized to give their blood, sweat, and tears to the business by ensuring they have the right title, responsibilities, and equity.
Here are some key roles that are often conflated and confused.
Operational (co)Founder: Someone who's played an instrumental role in the formation of the company (likely taking on significant risk at the beginning by working without pay) and (crucially) will continue to play a full-time operational role in the business moving forward. This person should have a meaningful equity position.
Non-operational co-founder: Someone who may have contributed to the initial formation of the business but has other commitments that limit their availability to participate in an operational capacity. They might play a role on the board or provide capital as an investor (see below for definitions) but are not involved day-to-day. This person should have a minor equity position for their initial founding contribution (+ any additional equity they earn through capital investment).
CEO: (Very) Ideally a (co)founder. Plays a full-time key operational role in the company. Makes key decisions. Leads essential operational workstreams such as fundraising, hiring, vision/goal setting, etc. Once capital is raised, is (very) ideally only involved in running the given startup and has no other operational roles in any other business. Must have meaningful equity.
Investor: Provides capital and some non-operational support (advice, intros, reputation, industry connections etc). Collectively all the investors can have meaningful equity in the business but must not have a larger position than the operational founders.
Board member: Either an external (wasn't involved in forming or investing in the company) key industry professional who can help steer the business or a key representative(s) from the investor group. Might also include a non-operational founder who has seniority, domain expertise, and perhaps provided initial capital.
1 person can perform multiple functions in the business and, as such, be attributed equity from multiple pools/reasons.
However, it is value destructive to the company for someone to have the title and/or the equity of another role but not properly and fully perform the duties of that role.
As such, it is against their best interest to do this since, whatever equity they hold, will be under-valued or ultimately be reduced to zero when investors and other operators choose to under-invest or walk away entirely.
#equity #fundraising #jobtitles #strartups
There is still so much confusion about what Product Management is.
I'm a film nerd. So let's use a film production team as a metaphor for the Product Manager.
Executive Producer = CEO. They have an idea. They have money. They might even have a script.
Set Decorator/Costume Designer = Brand and Product Designers. They design beautiful things.
Set Builders/Camera Operators = Engineers. They build amazing things.
However, if they were all sent to a movie set they'd fail to make a coherent movie.
They need a director.
Director = Product Manager. They have a vision for the story they want to tell. They have an emotional journey they want to take the audience on.
They work with the set builders to build the right kind of physical spaces that support the action.
They work with set decorators and costume designers to make sure there's a consistent color pallet and design language.
They work with the editor to make sure the story makes sense and key moments are emphasized.
They make sure all the amazing craftspeople are making the same movie. They help them stay aware and aligned around the key emotional beats of the story to ensure that the audience walks away with the intended catharsis - laughter, fear, excitement, delight, and more.
That's what Product Managers do for users.
When you become a bigshot founder of a scaleup, your every word and behavior is closely observed and acted on.
This gives you the power to do a lot of good, and the power to do a lot of damage.
I've started working with some incredible scaleups that are each, in their own right, changing the world.
Part of my work, however, includes working with founders to adjust their engagement with the expanding team so that their superpowers are used in the best, most constructive way possible.
As a founder in this position, you must move from "getting shit done" to "building the thing that builds the thing". This means that your primary strategic levers to drive change are not cutting code or running products, but rather explicitly defining a great culture, communicating high-level business priorities, establishing effective ways of working, and funding teams to succeed.
The primary way you tactically interact with individuals day-to-day moves from telling them what to do, towards reviewing work and encouraging everyone to be more aligned, more ambitious, and more effective in their decision-making.
By doing this, you show your team that it's their job to come up with bold answers that move the needle, and you give them the space to do their very best work.
It's hard to make the switch, but make it you must, or you will ultimately thrash your team and deliver sub-optimal results.
One of the secret advantages of startups is that they are founder lead.
This makes it possible for them to act faster and bolder than companies lead by non-founder CEOs.
Why?
Because founders enjoy nearly limitless authority to make bold bets and get the company to follow.
Non-founder CEOs have to build a business case and bring the rest of the org with them.
Founders tend to have a seemingly endless well of ambitious change they want to create in the world and in their company.
Non-founder CEOs tend to be incrementalists who count beans.
So many companies, so few competent product managers.
Why? Some reasons include…
A general scarcity of competent and experienced product managers in existence
Bad hiring practices
Lack of professional development investment in employees and a lack of service leadership in the team
A misunderstanding of the role of Product Management leading to…
Underinvestment in the function - spreading the PMs too thin
Assigning/attributing the responsibilities of product management to designers, engineers, marketing or “CTOs
Leadership that is too intrenched in their own domain expertise or too overindexed on revenue at all costs applying inappropriate pressure and prescriptiveness on the few PMs they have - sabotaging their efforts
Building an ecosystem/marketplace requires a broad range of considerations. Some that came to mind today when discussing the subject with someone...
1. Figure out your Personas/Stakeholders. Each one may (likely) require a different kind of marketplace, tools, messages etc.
2. If you're at an existing company, remember that you will essentially need to set up a company within the company. This is because all the functions at the company are likely focused on your traditional customers rather than your ecosystem stakeholders.
So you will need people/sub-teams in...
Product
Marketing
Ops
Support
Community
etc
3. Remember that ecosystems/marketplaces take more time to develop than you'd expect - so set expectations correctly with your leadership team.
This is because, unlike normal products, you can't just work with internal stakeholders to ship features for users. You need to ship features, then you need to work with partners to consume/act in a certain way, then you can give it to end-users. Then once you learn from user behavior, it takes yet more time to coordinate all 3rd parties in order to make changes and retest.
4. Ecosystems and Marketplaces need a wide range of key decisions and frameworks - including...
Clear definitions of stakeholders and per stakeholder:
Asset/use-case types
Distribution types
Policies/incentives/guardrails
Go to market/messaging
Community engagement programs (1:many),
Strategic partner engagement programs (1:few)
Generalized "Partnerships" and "Partnerships Teams" can really drive a lot of distractions for a company.
They will often find a wide array of interesting "Partnership Opportunities" that are either inappropriate, ill-timed or scattered across a wide range of possible strategic directions for the business.
It's far better and more effective for Product and Leadership to define specific areas where 3rd parties can add value and then develop APIs, programs, personas, pitches, and packages for those stakeholders.
The probability that your first product, value props, marketing messages, marketing automation, etc will work 100% effectively the first time is nearly zero.
Even if you spend endless time doing user research, gathering requirements, and so on (don't do that), you will have to pay close attention to real usage data and continue to optimize, optimize, optimize.
It's slow, painful, and thankless work. But it is essential.
It's beyond cliche to say that people are the most precious resource for any company.
It's also profoundly true.
Small teams of amazing people will out-execute large teams of mediocre people every time.
However, I’ve been spending more of my time with hyper-growth startups recently and they all have one thing in common right now: Massive hiring bottlenecks.
Here are some of my tips for accelerating your hiring process in these tough times.
Prioritizing
Discuss hiring as a priority at each all-hands meeting. Give an update on all of the subjects below.
Decentralize the problem. Encourage and empower each employee/team to source, interview and hire for their own team (as per tactics in this list)
Add hiring outcomes to performance reviews. Show your seriousness about making it part of everyone's job.
Add it to the onboarding education content for new hires (explain how to hire and why it’s part of their job).
Do lunch-and-learns to train existing employees on how to hire well.
Sourcing
Establish a great Careers page that explains the company's values, mission, and benefits.
Proactively target former colleagues and great candidates on LinkedIn. Pitch them hard. For example...
Great people often ignore recruiters. Have hiring managers send personalized, super leaned-in reach-out messages.
Invite candidates to come see the office or meet senior people in the company.
Invite candidates to have lunch with the team.
Do all of the above before the interview process even begins.
Incentivizing
Offer existing employees a meaningful bonus for successfully referring in their favorite former colleagues.
Make compelling offers to candidates. Recruiting is expensive. Losing a candidate over compensation packages is a very costly waste of time.
Interviewing
Do a quick hiring manager screen and as soon as they’re comfortable...
Don’t waste time. Do 1-day interview loop with all key functions followed by a debrief/decision meeting within 24 hours. You and the candidate should know the outcome within a few days.
Ensure the interview loop is well run so that the outcome is clear. The hiring manager should email all members of the loop and give them plenty of context about the role, the candidate and what specifically each person should be looking for (E.g. Sally, as Engineering Manager on the team, you're looking to understand how well this candidate will interact with your engineering team.)
Ensure the experience is great for the candidate - even for candidates who are failing during the interview process or fail to get an offer. Word of mouth should be awesome to encourage other candidates to interview too.
Closing
Get senior leaders to reach out and congratulate the candidate on getting an offer - perhaps even have the CEO do it.
Send “Love bombs”: The entire interview loop and the people the candidate would be working closely with should email and share their genuine enthusiasm about them potentially joining the team.
Maintaining
Don’t lower the quality bar. Ensure bar-raisers are part of the interview loop to mitigate bad hires for expediency,
Make sure that existing employees are engaged, motivated, and empowered to do their best work. Attrition is a killer. This might include firing low performers who are undermining team morale and effectiveness.