Empowered: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products

by Marty Cagan

Promotions, compensation, and equity are obvious ways to recognize someone, but beyond that, I'm a big fan of more frequent and more personal forms of recognition, especially once I've come to know their interests: A nice bottle of wine A book I think she would enjoy A ticket to an industry conference or event A gift certificate for a nice local restaurant A weekend getaway for two

There are many managers out there that work crazy hours yet try to tell their people they don't need to. It's the “do what I say not what I do” approach to management. But, of course, many people feel pressured to work at least as hard as their manager, which of course can lead to this silly spiral of getting in early, leaving late, and responding to emails at all hours.

if you truly care about the happiness of your people, you know your actions speak louder than your words. The manager needs to be sensitive to this, and in fact go out of her way to share how and when she's personally recharging, being conscious about when she's sending emails, and how she's managing her time.

Courageous leadership is going forward despite the discomfort.

the best product companies hire competent people of character, and then coach and develop them into members of extraordinary teams.

effective staffing begins with realizing that a successful outcome requires that the hiring manager step up and take responsibility for this.

When I talk to executives and managers that don't trust the people on their product teams, I find that they often have very antiquated, and I believe harmful, views on what types of people to recruit and hire.

having a 10X employee does not necessarily translate into having 10X results. That's because results in product companies come from product teams, and in fact if that 10X employee brings along toxic behaviors, they will likely cause far more damage to your organization than good.

Trust is a function of two things: competence and character. Competence includes your capabilities, your skills, and your track record. Character includes your integrity, your motive, and your intent with people. Both are vital.

there's nothing wrong with hiring based on potential—but if and only if the hiring manager is willing and able to sign up to actively coach that person to competence.

rather than narrowing a very large pool of people to the small subset that are perceived as a cultural fit, I argue to instead keep the pool very large and just filter out the relatively few assholes.

many companies and managers hire either people who are cultural fits but not competent, or they justify hiring an asshole because they believe the person is exceptionally skilled.

It's not that the way we think is bad, it's that what we really need are people that think differently from us. This is one of the most tangible and immediate benefits of adding diversity to your team. The chances of solving hard problems goes up substantially if you can approach the problem from several perspectives.

While a coach might get an occasional “walk‐on” (the rough equivalent of someone sending in their resume), mostly the coach actively works to recruit the necessary talent: visiting prospects, getting to know them personally, and working to persuade the desired talent to join their team.

recruiting rather than sourcing is the fastest way I know to improve diversity. Especially when the hiring manager understands that innovation thrives in a team where each person thinks differently.

The truly strong manager knows that, through recruiting, she is crafting product teams, and not just a collection of people.

Another great technique is a company blog written to demonstrate your dedication to the craft of great product.

You might say that you think you'll save money by hiring some low‐cost, offshore firm. I promise you that you will end up spending much more and getting much less for it. The amount of overhead in terms of time and communication—and even more important, the opportunity cost of losing your ability to innovate—makes this a very poor investment.

Just remember that a smaller group of missionaries will always outperform a larger group of mercenaries, especially if you consider the need for both discovery and delivery.

the hiring manager should very carefully select and curate the interview team. Each person should be selected both for her competence and for her character. These should be people that a strong candidate would be proud to work with and would also enjoy getting a beer with.

many hiring managers make the mistake of hiring primarily for domain knowledge, but for most positions—if you are hiring the right person with the right skills—she will be able to learn the domain much faster than someone with the necessary domain knowledge can learn the necessary product skills. In fact, in many cases, too much domain knowledge is more of a liability (they make the mistake of thinking they are the customer).

My Favorite Interview Question The question comes late in the interview. The setup goes like this. Now that I know you a bit, I'd like to give you a list of four broad work attributes. You're a product person, so I already expect that you're strong in each. But I highly doubt that you consider yourself equally competent in all of them. So, I'm going to ask you to stack rank them in order of strongest to weakest.

One of the most important goals of a reference check is to try to identify candidates that are going to prove toxic due to their personality. Most such people can hide the problematic parts of their personality during an interview, but their previous employers know.

Ratios So, how many people should report to you as a manager?

The smallest span of control (within the broader tech product organization) is typically a group product manager, which is a player‐coach role where the GPM is responsible for at most two or three other people.

Most fall in between, somewhere on the order of five to seven direct reports.

there are two major types of activities in every empowered product team: discovery and delivery. When people talk about the magic of co‐location, they are mainly talking about discovery, as in the Bezos quote above.

I find teams with remote employees do quite well in delivery, occasionally even better than when the team is co‐located.

The real challenge of remote employees is when we consider the discovery work. The overall methods and mechanics are not really very different when working remotely versus co‐located for discovery work.

As soon as you separate the product manager from the product designer from the tech lead, a very common anti‐pattern arises. Instead of the three sitting down together to discuss the question “How do we solve this problem?” there is a nearly gravity‐like pull to start producing artifacts for one another.

Very soon, the new remote work process has reverted back to waterfall‐like passing along of artifacts. And not only will innovation suffer, but the entire discussion will quickly move back to output rather than outcome.

It may feel less efficient to discuss these topics in a video call between the three of you, but it's essential that you return to the “How do we solve this problem?” discussion. During discovery, the main artifact should be prototypes.

most people are not assholes—at least not in person. Unfortunately, it's no secret that when people are separated from one another, and you're not speaking directly to someone's face, the normal filters and sensitivity can fade. More than a few people have shared with me that they are seeing a different side of their colleagues, and it's not always a good look.

it may seem like it would be more efficient to send an email or Slack message. But if a poorly phrased message breaks the trust and requires hours of damage control, it maybe wasn't so efficient after all.

After her first 60 days. Has she scored a public “win” that helps establish her value to the company?

when I invested in the onboarding of my new hires, it saved me countless hours of grief and damage control. In fact, some of my biggest regrets as a manager are the times I did not put in the necessary time and effort.

for medium and larger companies, I often encourage the company to set up an APM program for their very high‐potential product managers.

I have found this program to be a very effective way to improve diversity in the product organization. This is because, unlike most hiring, you're not selecting people into this program based on their experience. You're selecting them based on their potential.

every tech product company needs strong product managers, and the leaders of the company must constantly seek them out and work hard to develop their most promising people to reach their full potential.

I considered the biggest problems product people were facing, along with what they needed to be successful: How are decisions made? How have they been made in the past? What is important to the company now? What are we working toward? How can I get people to trust me? What's the most important thing to do right now?

This is how we empower product people—by providing them with the information they need to succeed and then trusting them to do the right thing.

we're not hiring smart product people to tell them what to do—we're hiring them to solve hard problems in ways our customers love, yet work for our business.

The annual review is far too little, far too late. Our primary feedback tool is the weekly 1:1, if not daily interactions. And please remember the primary purpose of the 1:1 is not for the manager, it is for the employee.

The bottom line when it comes to performance reviews is to do what is necessary for compliance, but make sure your primary feedback mechanism is your weekly 1:1.

I've found that removing the toxic person was the right thing to do, and that others in the organization would rise to the occasion and the broader organization was grateful for the improvement in the workplace atmosphere.

When I first became a people manager, I was taught that the most visible and tangible sign of success as a manager was when your people were promoted.

I like to give each person a clear path to her next career goal. I do that by performing an assessment of her current knowledge and skills against what is required for the new role.

“Leaders don't create followers, they create more leaders.”

a mission statement typically says nothing about how we plan to deliver on this mission.

A good product vision keeps us focused on the customer.