Hiring product talent in early stage companies
Making early stage product hires work
Ever seen a job ad for a product manager/owner from an early stage company that looks more like a laundry list than a real product role spec?
It may mention the words ‘agile’, ‘backlog management’ and so on. After talking to the hiring manager it is evident that they (or anyone in the company) don’t understand what product management is about. They copy-pasted a job description from the internet and intend to place the new hire under the head of engineering or the head of operations.
Plus there is no outcome based goal setting for the role, no metrics approach and a lip-service focus on the customer (or no focus at all). People who sign up for the job often end up being the backlog manager, plus do whatever else feels product-y and no else wants to do (however not actual customer driven product management).
Why does this happen?
This is caused when there is no understanding about what product management really is and how it contributes to a company's success. And in turn, the root cause is because there is no product leadership talent internally to drive such understanding.
Experienced product leaders are necessary to build the product function. It cannot be done based on assumptions, 'what seems to make sense' and ideas from blogs or books alone. You would not set up the finance department without having someone in charge with good knowledge of the finance domain, would you? Why do it for product management?
This is a complicated role, with much (much!) nuance and people need to have experienced it if they hope to be good at it. Same as all specialized roles. To become a great product leader people need to have worked alongside more experienced product leaders in their careers, to have seen things done correctly, to have tried and failed and learned from those mistakes before trying again.
What the impact is
Hiring a mid-level product manager without proper product leadership guidance, usually results in them ending up as demotivated project managers with a different title. It is a lose-lose situation for everyone. Consider the following effects from the lack of product leadership:
The company cannot execute on a clear product vision and falls back on opportunistic methods like the idea circus, the HiPPO planning (the Highest Paid Person's Opinion) and other merry but not-fun acronyms. With no one on the ground to drive a cohesive product vision, teams cannot execute with focus and the product ends up being a messy collection of features.
Eventually there is high turnover among builders in the company, as people feel like task-pushers without understanding the greater picture of what they build. They will soon accept a slightly more competitive offer in another company, but the real reason for leaving is not the money.
Executive leadership is not happy: From their perspective, they brought product talent in-house and he/she failed to do their job. Executive leaders lose faith in the existing product people and will often:
Place someone they trust and is already in the company in the product leader's position, without necessarily having job specific experience. The reasoning is that "he/she did well on X, so he/she will probably do well here too". Personally, I have never seen this work well, as the skill-set required for product leadership is rather specific and nuanced and smarts alone don't cut it.
Try to do the product leader's work themselves. Usually the worst option, given that they have no expertise (that's why they hired a product manager in the first place). Not only that, but they often succumb to confirmation bias of their own views and have the organizational weight to see them through anyway.
Eventually bring in a product leader from outside to fix things, but precious time has been lost (the opportunity cost is huge) and it usually does not work well with the existing product people who get layered.
Some context setting
Andy Grove, the former CEO and co-founder of Intel talked about the notion of 'task relevant maturity' in his book 'High Output Management' (a great book, you should read it if you haven't already). He describes it in terms of the level of supervision that an employee should get based on how familiar they are with the task they have been given. In simplified terms, what he proposed is that if the employee is experienced with the task given he should be allowed to execute with minimal supervision, whereas if they aren't, the manager should closely supervise to ensure that the task is correctly executed.
I would like to use the task relevant maturity framework in the current discussion from another angle. Consider that you are a company that wants to hire a product person but does not really understand what product management is. The question becomes: 'Given that there is no product leader internally to supervise, how probable is it to hire someone that needs supervision (mid-level roles) and have them succeed in their job?'
Andy says: not probable at all.
So the product manager in such situations ends up being the stakeholder idea gatherer, the backlog manager, the dependency handler and the sprint planning story-point-counters (“sooo, can we push for 3 more points in this sprint?”). And that is because they don't have the necessary experience to establish what good product management looks like in the org. Mind you, I don't criticize the tasks (they definitely need to be done), I support that having product managers do them is not how you build successful products (who is going to talk to customers?).
Suggestions for companies
You can see where I am going with this. When a company wants to hire product talent then they should start with bringing in an experienced product leader before hiring product managers.
Now, if there is already a product manager/owner onboard, then things are a bit more complicated. Before bringing any more product talent in, the company needs to assess whether the existing person is capable of taking the product leadership reins and building the right product culture and processes.
This is a key assessment that must be done with a proper competency framework specifically tailored for product management and not just say that ‘he does well so far, let’s give him a chance’. Full transparency will also help the employee being assessed on what their strengths and improvement areas are.
If the assessment is that the capability is there (or almost there), then the employee will need support. Proper training and/or coaching are essential if the product manager is to have a chance of succeeding in their expanded role.
If the assessment is that they don't have product leadership expertise, then the company will need to look for an experienced product leader before hiring more product managers or setting up product teams.
From the candidate’s angle
Looking at this from the candidate's angle, the most important thing that you need to do when interviewing in an early stage company is to speak to the product leader. You need to assess whether they are experienced enough to set the product function for success in the company and also help you become a better product manager.
If there is no product leader present and you are going to be the first product person in the company, then you need to understand that you will need to eventually take on the product leader’s role - whether it is stated or not. If it is stated, then good, things are more straightforward. If not, then it gets tricky as you will be expected to deliver on the product leader’s responsibilities (i.e. enable the product function to succeed in the org), in addition to your other tasks.
The best thing you can do is to openly discuss this with the company leaders to create a common understanding of how it is going to work in practice. For example, are you the first product hire who will then hire more product managers to create a product function? Are you here to take the CEO's detailed direction and write user stories for the team? Are you here because the investor said so? And so on. Be honest about what you can bring to the company and ask for clarity on the expectations.
Parting thoughts
Building products is hard and can be even harder in early stage companies. Bringing product talent to build is a critical step in a company’s life and one that must be made with prudence and clear understanding of the role, if it is going to be successful.