Empowered: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products

by Marty Cagan

Leadership is about recognizing that there's a greatness in everyone, and your job is to create an environment where that greatness can emerge.

we look to leadership for inspiration and we look to management for execution.

If you want to have truly empowered product teams, then your success depends very directly on these first‐level people managers.

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

Most people think that staffing begins with sourcing, but as you'll see, in strong product companies staffing begins with active recruiting. In an HR‐driven approach to hiring, a hiring manager might provide a job description, but things don't really get going until HR starts providing resumes (known as sourcing). In fact, one of the obvious symptoms of this problem is when the hiring manager complains that she's not getting enough high‐quality resumes. Yet for strong managers, it's the opposite. The hiring manager identifies what she wants, and then she goes out and recruits. It's analogous to a college or professional sports team.