Seeking Captain America & Not Captain Crap: Hiring Your First Product Manager
Captain America would make a pretty good product manager. Despite confidence in his own talents, he knew only a team could truly win. Cap was willing to throw himself in the face of danger and recoiled when the spotlight shone just on his shiny star. He also had an vibranium shield -- never discount the value of a good shield.
Recently, a talented engineer at a fast growing startup asked me whether it was time to hire their first product manager. He was confident they'd reached the point where a dedicated and experienced PM could help the engineers be more focused and efficient, plus reconcile differences of opinions across multiple stakeholders. But at the same time there was some trepidation of bringing the wrong person onto the team.
His three questions have been genericized a bit to preserve anonymity but I wanted to share my answers to get more feedback from the LinkedIn community. I'm not going to focus on hiring great product managers - the best blog post on that is from Ken Norton, startup dude and current Googler - definitely recommended reading.
1. Can a PM become dangerous to an organization? How?
Any teammember can become dangerous to an organization through attitude or ineptitude but beyond that here are more subtle ways a well-intentioned PM can endanger the longterm health of a team.
Centralizes decision making & micromanages
Product managers should be able to ensure a clear decision is made via consistent processes which fit the style and culture of the team. However this sometimes gets mistakingly translated to "the PM is the sole decider." This undesirable consolidation of ownership can result in a disempowered team and low morale, not to mention poor decisions.
Instead the PM should be putting forward statements such as "Given that we all agreed increasing user retention is our top goal this quarter what are some ways we can impact this metric?" From there a broad list of suggestions can be evaluated and ultimately prioritized by the PM and other senior members of the cross functional team. A PM needs to be aware and accountable of what occurs on their watch but avoid the desire to become a control freak.
Commits to crossfunctional stakeholders or customers without agreement from engineering peers
Want to alienate your engineering team? Start making a bunch of promises to customers without first discussing with the people on the hook to implement. This doesn't necessarily mean never push aggressively internally to help others understand the opportunity of a big partnership or going date driven on to meet a specific launch date, etc. But you need to be clear with the engineering team about the process by which customer needs will be gathered and discussed. You can get away once or twice with "but I already promised this to the customer" however it's a terrible approach to getting work done ongoing.
Everything s..l..o..w..s down
Paul Graham of Y Combinator describes the difference between manager schedules and make schedules. It's worth reading in full, but basically the takeaway is that if you're a manager, don't mess up your makers by preventing them from having large amounts of uninterrupted time.
A company who hires its first product manger runs the risk of seeing its culture and tempo slow. Meetings, debate and measurement become part of a previously lightweight decision making process. It can be incredibly harmful when these are the byproduct of a product manager trying to justify their existence by being 'busy.' A good product manager won't fall into this trap (or possess this insecurity) but the engineering team can help by collaborating on what sort of cadence works best.
Executives stop spending time w whole team
While a good product manager will protect their team from distracting conversations, they should also make sure the engineers and designers are still getting quality time with executives. You don't want to insulate the team from direct contact with the CEO - updates on progress or vision and even just the personal connection is incredibly important in young companies.
2. What can be done to improve the chances of a PM-facilitated team finding success?
Shared metrics and goal planning
Stay transparent and collaborative. Make sure metrics are updated consistently and visible to entire team. When decisions are made, communicate the why not just the what.
Trust and open communication
Everyone on the team should believe their coworker deserves to be at the company and is working to make the project more successful. Address personal misunderstandings or execution challenges openly. Trust that colleagues are making a decision they believe is correct and challenge the result, not the person. Emphasize smart failures as not just individual experiences but learning to be shared.
Engineer and designer career management
A little secret - some engineers and designers enjoy the product manager process. Hiring a PM into the org shouldn't mean the end of product-related skill development in the rest of the org. Have formal or informal ways for others to hone product, managerial and communication abilities.
3. In fast growth environment our team agrees on strategic priorities but not necessarily how to get there. Each stakeholder brings their own wants to the table and we're having trouble keeping our engineers coordinated on priorities. We know we'll have to skip, delay or trim some features for lack of time or resources. If we didn't bring on product manager what would be the best approach?
Product management is both a role and a skillset. Even if there's not a formal PM hire yet, the development process still needs stewardship. ID folks from eng and or design to play this role. Recognize that it means less functional contribution from those individuals due to management overhead. Product management by committee or serendipity doesn't work at scale but you're definitely not beholden to hiring a product manager in order to get some of the process benefits. That said, I think it's really hard to grow without a product manager. You risk the whole not being greater than the sum of its parts when you shard the role into individuals at the project team or feature level.
So that was my response - what advice would you give my friend?
Like what I have to say here? Then follow me on Twitter via @hunterwalk. More at hunterwalk.com.
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