Leading PMs (drafting)

Sean Horgan

“It makes no sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do” — Steve Jobs

The leap from a product manager serving as an individual contributor to a Manager of PMs can be very challenging.

Fareed Mosavat⁠

and Casey Winters laid out the challenges in this great article:

Crossing the Canyon⁠

⁠

Principles

A first principle is a “basic, foundational proposition or assumption that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or assumption.”

A manager of PMs needs to focus on:

Clear roles & responsibilities

Autonomy, mastery & purpose

Manage by objectives

Questions to constantly ask

Lean stack mindset: who are the customers, what are their problems, how are we solving them, what’s our unique value problem?

How are we managing risks?

Viability - business success

Desirability - users love it

Feasibility - developers can build it

Are the objectives clear?

How are we different?

What’s our secret? What makes us special/different?

Does the impact matter?

⁠

Brandon Chu’⁠

framing of Managing PMs as an Investor-Entrepreneur⁠

relationship strikes a chord:

⁠

On Ownership (drafting)

On Decisions

⁠

Making Good Decisions as a Product Manager⁠

⁠

On Growth

As a leader of PM you need to think about a PM’s career beyond your team and the company. It’s rare for the product they onboarded to or created to continue to present exactly the challenges and opportunities necessary for their growth. You either help them find the next best thing or someone else will...and it’s better for it to be you.

You should have honest conversations with your team members about their career goals. This should be both 1:1 and as a team.

What is the perfect environment for them? Do they see themselves as a founder or a CPO at a 10K+ Fortune 100 company?

NewCo - start their own company, incubators like

⁠

https://www.c10labs.com/⁠

⁠

Finding the right startup

⁠

https://www.joinprospect.com/⁠

⁠

Pitchbook

BigCo