Empowered: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products

by Marty Cagan

the key to building strong product companies is having strong product leaders.

This book is intended for anyone interested in creating a strong product organization—from a startup founder to the CEO of a major technology‐powered company.

the book is aimed at product leaders and aspiring product leaders. Especially the leaders of product managers, product designers, and engineers.

this book focuses on the three core roles of product manager (PM), product designer (designer), and engineering tech lead (tech lead).

“product leader,” that is normally a manager/director/VP/CPO of product management, manager/director/VP/CDO of product design, or a manager/director/VP/CTO of engineering.

the advice in the book is aimed at product leaders.

Coaching is no longer a specialty; you cannot be a good manager without being a good coach. —Bill Campbell

Your company depends on successful products. And successful products come from strong product teams. Coaching is what turns ordinary people into extraordinary product teams.

Coaching might be even more essential than mentoring to our careers and our teams. Whereas mentors dole out words of wisdom, coaches roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty. They don't just believe in our potential; they get in the arena to help us realize our potential. They hold up a mirror so we can see our blind spots and they hold us accountable for working through our sore spots. They take responsibility for making us better without taking credit for our accomplishments. —Bill Campbell

if these meetings consist primarily of you allocating and prioritizing tasks, they are not helpful—and likely even harmful—as a coaching tool.

developing people is job #1.

If you are a manager, you should be spending most of your time and energy on coaching your team.

your product will never reach its full potential if the team is only asked to execute your ideas and actions.

Empowering means creating an environment where your people can own outcomes and not just tasks. This doesn't mean less management—it means better management.

Find someone that has been there and done that at a strong product company and engage them to coach you—and help you in coaching your people.

Good leaders know that they will get the best results when they are able to consider diverse points of view.

Many, if not most, people are not aware of their own potential. As a coach, you are in a unique position to help them see it.

As a coach, you are always looking for opportunities that encourage your people to stretch beyond their comfort zone.

It's through pushing through the discomfort that people overcome their fears and realize what they're truly capable of.

None of your coaching efforts will be effective without trust.

praise publicly but criticize privately.

Trust also comes from expressing a genuine interest in the person as a person, and not just a member of the team.

trust grows whenever a working relationship is humanized.

Coaching is about development, so you are necessarily looking at people's problems as opportunities to develop.

A new product manager typically requires two to three months to ramp up to speed on product knowledge, assuming she dives in aggressively and spends several hours per day learning.

New product managers are expected to know the basic techniques, but strong product managers are always developing their skills and learning new and more‐advanced techniques.

the difference between a product manager and senior product manager, for example, is captured in the expectations of where the level of skills should be (the expectations rating). As just one example, I usually rate stakeholder collaboration skills a 7 in expectations for a standard product manager‐level person, yet I consider this skill a 9 for a senior product manager.

expectations is always set by the manager, if not the organization as a whole.

the assessment of the product manager's capability level is done by the manager. However, there is no reason why the product manager can't also do a self‐assessment, and in fact I encourage that.

For the coaching plan, I like to limit the initial focus to the top‐three areas.

once an employee has successfully closed the gaps, it is the ideal time to show her how the expectation ratings move for the next‐level position, and she can set about developing and demonstrating the skills necessary for a promotion.

sit down with each of your product people no less than once a week to discuss progress on the coaching plan.

ongoing efforts to coach your employees to be ready for promotion are not the same as being able to grant that promotion.

product knowledge is where a new product manager spends most of her time in the onboarding process.

a product manager that does not have this level of knowledge has no business serving as product manager for her team.

There really is no substitute for getting out of the office and visiting users and customers.

user research team,

customer success or customer service team,

Product marketing

founders or CEO

visit 30 customers (and further, he insisted that half be from outside the United States) before making any meaningful decisions.

at least 15 customer visits as part of new PM onboarding.

With every interaction, at the very least, you're looking to learn: Are the customers who you think they are? Do they have the problems you think they have? How do they solve that problem today? What would it take to get them to switch?

how users interact with your product—user analytics.

data about the sales cycle for your product—sales analytics.

how this data is changing over time—data ware...

the product manager is expected to become competent on the domain.

The PM is not expected to become as knowledgeable about the domain as these experts, but she does need to learn enough to engage and collaborate effectively.

Key to industry knowledge is identifying which industry trends are expected to be relevant to the PM's product.

identify the trends,