Strong Product People: A Complete Guide to Developing Great Product Managers
Tags: #business #technology #product management #leadership #teams #coaching #development
Authors: Petra Wille
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Overview
This book is a comprehensive guide for Heads of Product (HoPs) on how to build, nurture, and lead high-performing product organizations. It’s all about the people! I provide frameworks and actionable advice for everything from defining what ‘good’ looks like for a PM in your organization, to coaching and developing your team, recruiting and onboarding new PMs, creating a healthy performance culture, and fostering an agile mindset. I cover a wide range of topics, including product vision and strategy, hypothesis-driven development, balancing discovery and delivery, time management, effective communication, teamwork, and conflict resolution. I believe that investing in people development is the most important thing an HoP can do. By creating a supportive environment where PMs can learn, grow, and thrive, you’ll create a virtuous cycle that benefits your entire company. Your product organization will become a magnet for top talent, and your teams will deliver better products that solve real user problems. And everyone will be happier and more fulfilled along the way! I also share insights on how to navigate the challenges of working within a larger organizational context - influencing change, building alignment, and advocating for the needs of your product team. This book is your go-to guide for everything you need to know to become a truly ‘strong’ product leader.
Book Outline
1. Your Role in This Game
My role as Head of Product (HoP) is to build and nurture a thriving product organization, not to directly create products. It’s a leadership role focused on people, product, and processes. This means empowering my team of product managers, making sure they understand company goals and strategy, and providing them with the resources and support they need to create truly valuable products. Think of it like building a well-equipped shipyard - my job is to create the environment where the best products (ships) can be built.
Key concept: Leadership is about recognizing that there’s a greatness in everyone, and your job is to create an environment where that greatness can emerge.”
2. A Quick Team Assessment
The GWC Assessment is a quick and powerful tool to evaluate the current state of your product team. Ask yourself: Does this PM understand their role and expectations (Get it), are they passionate about the work and aligned with their career goals (Want it), and do they have the skills, resources, and support to do the job well (Capacity to do it)? The answers will highlight both individual strengths and areas for improvement.
Key concept: GWC stands for get it, want it, and capacity to do it.
3. The Role of Product Managers
The role of the Product Manager (PM) is multifaceted. Beyond just managing all aspects of product development, it’s about finding the sweet spot where a product delivers real user value, is technically feasible, and makes business sense. It’s crucial to clearly articulate this role to my PMs so we’re all on the same page.
Key concept: It’s the product manager’s job to come up with a product solution that is valuable to the user, usable by the user, buildable by our engineering team, and still viable from a business perspective.
4. Define Your Good
To cultivate excellence, you need a clear definition of what ‘good’ looks like for a product manager in your organization. This definition should be more than just ‘success of the product’. It must encompass personality traits like curiosity and emotional intelligence, essential product management skills and know-how, and alignment with company values. I’ve created a tool called the PMwheel that you can use to map and assess these key elements for each of your PMs, providing a solid framework for hiring, onboarding, coaching, and feedback.
Key concept: The PMwheel…measures eight key PM activities: Understand the problem, Find a solution, Do some planning, Get it done!, Listen & learn, Team, Grow!, Agile
5. Being a Great Boss
Becoming a great boss, like building a great product, is a journey of continuous improvement. It requires embracing our human side - showing empathy, building strong relationships, and valuing our employees as individuals. It means being opinionated but adaptable, leading by example, fostering a healthy work-life balance, and having a positive impact on the organization as a whole. And most importantly, it means being open to feedback from your employees and peers, and actively seeking guidance from mentors and coaches.
Key concept: “Effective leaders are made, not born. They learn from trial and error, and from experience.”
6. Identifying and Closing Product Manager Gaps
To help your product managers reach their full potential, you must learn to identify and address their gaps in skills and knowledge. Sometimes these gaps are obvious, but often they are hidden - related to motives, attitudes, or values. As HoP, it’s my job to guide them towards recognizing and working on those hidden gaps, broadening their horizon and helping them grow into even better product people. Remember that this is an ongoing process, and adapting your expectations and support as your PMs grow and mature is key.
Key concept: The Spencer & Spencer iceberg model
7. The Power of Coaching
Coaching is one of the most powerful tools we have as leaders to drive employee retention, engagement, and performance. It’s about helping our PMs become the best versions of themselves. This involves understanding where they are now, where they want to be, and developing a clear action plan to get them there. Remember that effective coaching involves asking the right questions, providing guidance when needed, and maintaining a constant dialogue to support your PMs throughout their journey.
Key concept: The Four-Part Coaching Cycle: Gain clarity, Create a strategy for success, Act, Evaluate progress
8. Monitoring Performance and Giving Feedback
Creating a healthy performance culture is essential. This means finding a balance between demanding high performance and preventing burnout. It’s important to have clearly defined roles and expectations, provide the support employees need to succeed, and give regular feedback - both praise and constructive criticism. Continuous feedback is key to driving improvement, but it’s only effective when delivered in a psychologically safe environment where people feel comfortable admitting mistakes and receiving constructive feedback.
Key concept: High-performing teams share nearly six times more positive feedback than average teams.
9. Motivation Do’s and Don’ts
One of the biggest myths in management is that it’s a manager’s job to motivate their employees. In reality, people are already motivated when they come to work; our job is to avoid demotivating them! I encourage my fellow HoPs to adopt a Theory Y mindset - believing that people are inherently self-motivated and enjoy the challenge of work. By creating an environment that fosters autonomy, mastery, and purpose, we can unleash our team’s full potential and help them achieve great things.
Key concept: Theory X and Theory Y
10. Building Individual and Team Alignment
To ensure everyone is pulling together in the same direction, alignment is key. This requires two types of clarity: directional clarity, provided by leadership, and situational clarity, which emerges from ongoing communication within teams. Encourage your PMs to clearly articulate their intent and plans, facilitate open discussions on tricky questions, and make the results of the alignment process transparent to get everyone on the same page. Conflict can actually be helpful here, but only positive friction, where people debate ideas constructively without attacking each other.
Key concept: Clarity = Transparency + Understanding
11. How to Find the Time
People development is one of the most important responsibilities of an HoP, and it’s often the one we struggle to find time for. My advice is: make it a priority. Investing in your people will pay off in the long run - increasing retention, engagement, productivity, and results. You can use my “Why I Should Care” Canvas to connect the dots between people development and your overall product and business goals. And remember: you need to guide your PMs to make time for their own development as well!
Key concept: The “Why I Should Care” Canvas
12. Where to Find Great Product Managers
To attract great PMs, you need a two-pronged approach: passive sourcing (using job boards and your company website to attract active candidates) and active sourcing (reaching out directly to passive candidates who aren’t actively looking for a new job). Both require having a clear understanding of what makes a ‘Good PM’ in your organization. Craft compelling job ads, build your employer brand, and consider unconventional sources for finding great candidates. Think outside the box!
Key concept: Active Sourcing vs. Passive Sourcing
13. Interviewing, Assessing, and Hiring Candidates
Hiring the right product people is crucial, and having a well-defined process for interviewing, assessing, and hiring candidates is key. Don’t simply rely on resumes and CVs - take the time to get to know your candidates through phone interviews, take-home cases, and structured formal interviews. Involve your team in the process, but make sure the final decision rests with you. Aim for STRONG HIRE candidates who are a great fit for your team, your product, and your culture.
Key concept: The PM Interview Day Schedule
14. Effective Onboarding
Effective onboarding is crucial for setting new PMs up for success. Invest as much time in onboarding as you did in hiring - it pays off! First impressions matter, so create a structured onboarding program that’s more than just paperwork and IT setup. Help your new PMs get up to speed quickly, connect with their team and customers, and make their first ‘educated decision’ as soon as possible. Remember that onboarding can take a full quarter or more - be patient and supportive!
Key concept: A good onboarding program will shorten the amount of time it takes to get your new PM up to speed and fully functioning in their new role.
15. Help Your Product Managers Create a Product Vision and Set Goals
Product vision, strategy, goals, and principles provide a framework for making better decisions faster. They bring alignment and clarity, allowing everyone to focus on what matters most. It’s your job as HoP to lead the effort in creating this narrative, not a committee or consultant. Ensure your PMs understand how to create a compelling product vision that captures the ‘why’ of their product, a solid strategy for achieving it, specific goals for measuring progress, and guiding principles for making decisions. And don’t forget to share and communicate all of this widely!
Key concept: Clarity = Transparency + Understanding
16. Hypothesis-Driven Product Development and Experiments
Product discovery is all about minimizing risk and maximizing value. I encourage you to move beyond just ‘doing user research’ and embrace a hypothesis-driven approach. Help your PMs understand the power of working with assumptions - make them explicit, prioritize them based on potential impact, and then create clear hypotheses that can be tested and validated or invalidated. Remember that the goal is to learn as quickly as possible and to focus on outcomes - not just doing discovery for discovery’s sake.
Key concept: The Hypothesis-Driven Approach: Make observation, write down assumptions, prioritize them, and formulate hypotheses.
17. Balancing Product Discovery and Product Delivery
Balancing product discovery (figuring out what to build) and product delivery (building it) is an ongoing challenge. It’s crucial to get this mix right, and the ideal balance will depend on your organization, your people, and the products you are building. Encourage your PMs to regularly reflect on how they are balancing these two essential activities and provide guidance when necessary. Remember that building the right thing is far more important than simply building a thing.
Key concept: “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”
18. Time Management for Product People
Time management is a crucial skill for all product people, but it’s one that many struggle with. Help your PMs overcome the paradoxes of time - Parkinson’s Law, the Stock-Sanford corollary, the Pareto Principle, flow, and the time fallacy - by introducing them to powerful time management tools and techniques. These include learning to say ‘no’, having more effective meetings, distinguishing between manager and maker schedules, using the Eisenhower Matrix, and applying the Rock, Pebbles, Sand time management framework.
Key concept: The Rock, Pebbles, Sand Time Management Framework
19. Working with the Cross-Functional Product Development Team
High-performing teams are the foundation of a successful product organization. Help your PMs understand what makes teams effective, how to create a shared sense of purpose and commitment, and the importance of empowering teams to find their own solutions. Coach them on their role as lateral leaders - influencing without authority. You can also help by removing roadblocks and fostering an agile mindset across the entire organization to help ensure your cross-functional teams work well together.
Key concept: Tuckman Stages of Group Development: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing
20. Communicating Directly and Openly
Clear and effective communication is essential for everything we do in a product organization. It’s more than just exchanging information - it’s about building relationships, persuading and influencing, expressing emotions, brainstorming and problem solving, and aligning everyone on shared goals. As HoP, model good communication practices, provide your teams with the tools and training they need to become better communicators, and foster an environment of open, honest, and transparent communication.
Key concept: Who communicates what via which channel to whom with what reason and effect?
21. Planning and Prioritization
Planning and prioritization are essential for ensuring your product teams are working on the right things at the right time. Help your PMs understand that prioritization is the most important skill here, and guide them to set clear priorities based on well-defined criteria. Remember that there can only be one #1 priority at any given time, and killing ideas that aren’t winners early on is critical. Make sure your PMs can clearly explain and defend their priorities and provide them with tools and frameworks that support effective planning and prioritization.
Key concept: Truth: There will always be more work than there is capacity to do it.
22. Increments and Iterations
Help your PMs understand the power of working in increments and iterations - shipping early and often to gather learnings and improve their product over time. While the idea of an MVP is widely used in the product world, there’s a lot of confusion about what the acronym stands for. I suggest you define what MVP means for your organization, explain it to your people, and encourage them to use the definition that best fits their needs and context. Whether it’s Minimum Viable Product, Minimum Valuable Prototype, or something else entirely, the key is to start small and iterate your way to success.
Key concept: MVP: Minimum Viable Product vs. Minimum Valuable Product vs. Minimum Viable Prototype vs. Minimum Viable Platform vs. …
23. Product Evangelizing and Storytelling
Good storytelling is an essential skill for all product people, and it’s especially crucial for effective product evangelization. To convince others to support their vision, your PMs need to learn to tell compelling stories that capture hearts and minds. Help them understand the key elements of a good story: paint a desirable future, explain why it matters, acknowledge challenges, and present a shared goal. Encourage them to try different storytelling structures - such as the hero’s journey - and coach them to create and deliver their stories in different lengths and formats - written, spoken, and illustrated.
Key concept: “The hero’s journey…starts in the ordinary world with a call to adventure…and progresses through a succession of challenges, tests, and trials before reaching the ultimate destination where the hero has achieved her goal and is transformed, sharing what she has learned with others.”
24. Keep the Senior PMs Engaged
Senior PMs are a valuable asset to any product organization, but they need your attention too. While junior PMs are focused on closing their knowledge and experience gaps, senior PMs often face a different challenge: boredom and a lack of recognition. It’s your job as HoP to make sure that your senior PMs feel challenged, appreciated, and recognized. Find ways for them to continue to grow and develop their expertise, and provide them with opportunities to mentor others, share their knowledge with the community, and influence the direction of the product organization.
Key concept: Individual Contributor Progress Vacuum
25. The Product Organization’s Location in the Company’s Org Chart
The product organization’s location within the overall company org chart plays a critical role in its success. To avoid bias and ensure balance, the product organization should be on an equal footing with other key departments, such as engineering and marketing. This allows for ‘healthy friction’ - a productive tension that emerges when PMs consider diverse perspectives and make informed decisions that are in the best interest of the company and its customers. If your current org structure gets in the way of this balance, you’ll need to use your powers of persuasion to make change happen.
Key concept: Healthy Friction
26. Change from Within
Change happens most successfully when it comes from the bottom up, not the top down. It often starts when a team experiments with a new way of working, achieves success, and inspires others to adopt the same approach. Keep an eye out for emerging trends and initiatives within your product organization, then provide support and guidance to help promising innovations spread. Create success stories, find allies, and help your PMs convince the rest of the organization to embrace new ways of working. And remember that you can’t force change to happen - you need to create a pull, not push.
Key concept: “Leading does not mean building pressure, but creating a pull.”
27. Foster the Agile Mindset
An agile mindset is essential for companies to succeed in today’s VUCA world - a world that’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Help your entire organization embrace agile values and principles, not just the product and development teams. This requires assessing your organization’s current state of agility, crafting a compelling story to explain why agile is essential, and determining the best areas to focus your efforts - mindset, structures and processes, or methods and tools. An agile mindset is not just for tech companies - it’s for everyone!
Key concept: The Agile Manifesto
28. Handling Conflict
Conflict is a natural part of any product organization, and learning to handle it effectively is key. Encourage your teams to resolve conflicts on their own, but provide coaching and support when necessary. You can help by creating a shared understanding of the nature of conflict, by proactively minimizing the drivers of conflict, and by providing training for everyone in the organization on conflict management tools and techniques, such as Nonviolent Communication.
Key concept: Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication Framework
Essential Questions
1. How can I define what ‘good’ looks like for a Product Manager (PM) in my organization, and why is this important?
Building a thriving product organization requires a strong foundation, which starts with a clear definition of what “good” looks like for a product manager in your specific context. This involves not only understanding the core responsibilities and skills of a PM, but also identifying the personality traits and values that align with your company culture. Having a clear “Good PM” definition will guide hiring, onboarding, coaching, and performance management, ensuring everyone is on the same page and working towards a common goal.
2. How can I best support the development of individual product managers on my team?
Effective people development involves more than just giving feedback or sending your PMs to training. To help your product managers reach their full potential, you must understand their individual needs, aspirations, and career goals. It’s about identifying their skill gaps, both obvious and hidden, and providing them with the right opportunities, support, and coaching to help them grow and excel. Investing in people development is the most valuable thing an HoP can do, as it not only benefits individual PMs but also drives the success of the entire product organization.
3. What are the key elements of a healthy performance culture in a product organization, and how can I cultivate them?
Building a high-performing product team requires more than just finding talented individuals - it’s about creating a culture that fosters collaboration, innovation, and continuous learning. This involves promoting open communication, psychological safety, and trust. Effective HoPs empower their teams by providing clear direction and goals, fostering autonomy, and removing roadblocks that hinder progress. By creating the right environment, you enable your product teams to reach their full potential and deliver exceptional results.
4. How does the organizational structure impact the success of the product team, and how can I navigate these challenges?
The organizational structure of your company significantly impacts the success of your product team. Ideally, the product organization should be on an equal footing with engineering and marketing, allowing for healthy friction and balanced decision-making. When the product team reports to a different department, it often results in bias, power imbalances, and frustration. As HoP, you may need to advocate for structural changes that enable your team to thrive.
5. How can I keep senior product managers engaged and prevent them from feeling stuck or looking for opportunities elsewhere?
Senior PMs are a valuable asset, but their need for growth and recognition should not be overlooked. Unlike junior PMs, who are focused on gaining basic skills and experience, senior PMs may feel stuck or bored if they don’t have opportunities for further development and advancement. To prevent knowledge drain, HoPs must find ways to keep senior PMs engaged by providing them with challenging new responsibilities, opportunities for mentorship, and a clear career path that recognizes their contributions and potential.
Key Takeaways
1. Invest in Your People
The book consistently emphasizes the importance of treating your PMs as individuals, understanding their aspirations, and investing in their development. This involves regular coaching, providing tailored support, and creating a culture of continuous learning where they feel valued and empowered.
Practical Application:
For example, when onboarding a new PM for an AI product team, don’t just focus on the technical details. Spend time understanding their personal goals, learning style, and work preferences. This will allow you to tailor your onboarding program and coaching approach to best support their individual needs and help them quickly become productive members of the team.
2. Coach Your Product Managers
The book provides numerous frameworks and actionable advice on how to coach and develop PMs in specific product management skills. This includes defining ‘good’, identifying and addressing skill gaps, giving feedback, fostering motivation, and improving time management.
Practical Application:
For example, if you observe that your AI product team is consistently struggling with prioritization, don’t just tell them to ‘do better’. Instead, use the PMwheel or another framework to assess their current approach, identify the gaps, and then coach them on how to use specific prioritization techniques that align with your company goals and values.
3. Foster an Agile Mindset
The book stresses the importance of fostering an agile mindset across the entire organization, not just within the product team. This involves promoting transparency, collaboration, continuous learning, and adaptability to change. An agile mindset is crucial for navigating uncertainty and responding quickly to new challenges.
Practical Application:
If, for example, your company is considering developing a new AI-powered product, create a shared understanding of the ethical considerations and potential societal impact. Engage stakeholders from across the company - product, tech, design, legal, and ethics - in open discussions to ensure everyone is aligned on the values and principles that will guide the development and deployment of this technology.
4. Empower Your Teams
Empowering product teams to make decisions and work autonomously leads to better outcomes. This means providing them with the necessary context and information, trusting their expertise, and allowing them to experiment and learn. Empowered teams are more motivated, engaged, and produce better work.
Practical Application:
For example, when leading a complex AI project, don’t overload your PM with all the decision-making. Delegate responsibility to the team, encouraging them to use their expertise and make decisions based on data and user feedback. This will empower them, speed up decision-making, and lead to better outcomes.
5. Communicate Clearly and Often
Effective communication, both within the team and across the organization, is crucial for success. The book emphasizes the importance of clarity, transparency, and frequent communication. Good product leaders know how to craft compelling stories, articulate their vision, and ensure everyone understands the ‘why’ behind the work.
Practical Application:
For example, when discussing the development of a new AI feature, ensure the PM can articulate not only the technical details but also the user value, the business impact, and the potential ethical considerations. This helps to build understanding and buy-in from stakeholders and ensures the team is building something truly valuable.
Suggested Deep Dive
Chapter: Chapter 16: Hypothesis-Driven Product Development and Experiments
Given the focus on AI product engineering, a deeper dive into hypothesis-driven development and experimentation is particularly relevant. The chapter provides valuable frameworks and practical advice on how to apply these concepts in a fast-paced, data-driven environment. This is crucial for minimizing risk and maximizing value when developing AI products.
Memorable Quotes
Foreword by Marty Cagan. 7
“Leadership is about recognizing that there’s a greatness in everyone, and your job is to create an environment where that greatness can emerge.”
The GWC Assessment. 31
“GWC stands for get it, want it, and capacity to do it.”
What Is a Product Manager?. 37
“It’s the product manager’s job to come up with a product solution that is valuable to the user, usable by the user, buildable by our engineering team, and still viable from a business perspective.”
The PMwheel. 48
“The PMwheel…measures eight key PM activities: Understand the problem, Find a solution, Do some planning, Get it done!, Listen & learn, Team, Grow!, Agile”
Define Your Good. 43
“The only true measure of the product manager is the success of his or her product.”
Comparative Analysis
While “Strong Product People” shares common ground with books like Marty Cagan’s “INSPIRED” and “Empowered” on the importance of strong product teams and user-centricity, its unique contribution lies in its laser focus on the people development aspect. Unlike books that primarily focus on product frameworks or company-level strategy, “Strong Product People” dives deep into the specific challenges and opportunities HoPs face in developing their PMs. This includes practical guidance on coaching, identifying and addressing skill gaps, giving feedback, and fostering motivation. Wille’s book also distinguishes itself by addressing the often-overlooked needs of senior PMs and advocating for organizational structures that promote healthy friction between product, tech, and business functions.
Reflection
While intensely focused on building strong product teams, “Strong Product People” could be considered a handbook for leadership in any field that values innovation and user-centricity. Its focus on coaching, feedback, and motivation resonates beyond product management. However, a skeptical reader may question the feasibility of some idealistic suggestions, particularly those that advocate for significant organizational restructuring or widespread adoption of agile methodologies. The author’s opinions on bonuses and performance reviews may also diverge from common practices in some companies. However, the book’s core strength lies in its emphasis on the human side of leadership and its call for HoPs to invest in their people. This timeless message resonates in a world increasingly driven by technology, reminding us that ultimately, it’s the people who drive innovation and create truly valuable products.
Flashcards
What is the GWC Assessment?
A quick, top-level assessment used to evaluate the current state of a product team by asking: Does the PM ‘Get it’, ‘Want it’, and have the ‘Capacity to do it’?
What are the four risks a Product Manager must address and overcome?
Value, Usability, Feasibility, and Business Viability
What is the PMwheel?
A tool that allows you to graph the extent to which someone has what it takes to be a Good PM in your organization. It measures eight key activities: Understand the Problem, Find a Solution, Do Some Planning, Get it Done, Listen & Learn, Team, Grow, Agile.
What is Onboarding?
The process of integrating a new employee with a company and its culture, as well as getting a new hire the tools and information needed to become a productive member of the team.
What are the two types of clarity needed for team alignment?
Directional clarity (provided by management) and Situational clarity (provided by the team for each other)
What are Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team?
Absence of Trust, Fear of Conflict, Lack of Commitment, Avoidance of Accountability, Inattention to Results
What is a Product Management Task Board?
A visual representation of the product development workflow that helps teams balance discovery and delivery by visualizing the status and progress of tasks at various stages.