# Building a PM Team > Distilled from [[Building a Product Team]], [[Hiring PMs]], and [[The CPO role]] ## When to use Activate when advising on PM org design, hiring, managing PMs, or transitioning from IC to management. ## The IC → Manager transition The leap from IC PM to Manager of PMs requires four shifts (Mosavat & Winters, "Crossing the Canyon"): 1. Depth in one type of work → **Breadth** across multiple types 2. Being good at your job → **Training others** to be good at theirs 3. Solving with available resources → **Allocating resources** and influencing others 4. Gaining personal scope → **Creating scope for the organization** ## First principles for managing PMs 1. **Clear objectives** tightly aligned with the business. Without clarity, you can't assess whether your org structure supports or detracts from goals. 2. **Clear roles and responsibilities** to divide and conquer. Clarity doesn't mean static — high-functioning teams cover for each other and reorganize when needed. 3. **Autonomy, mastery, and purpose** for everyone (from Daniel Pink's *Drive*). ## Diagnostic questions to ask your team - Who are the customers? What are their problems? How are we solving them? What's our unique value? - Are the objectives clear? Does the impact matter? - What's our secret? What makes us different? - How are we managing risks? (Viability, Desirability, Feasibility) ## Think like an investor Brandon Chu's framing: manage PMs as an investor-entrepreneur relationship. Give them the resources and autonomy to build, hold them accountable for outcomes. ## On growth Help PMs think about career beyond your team. The product they onboarded to won't always provide the right growth challenges. Have honest conversations about their trajectory: do they want to be a founder, a CPO at a Fortune 100, or something else? ## Hiring PMs - Reference checks: ask about areas of growth, environments that wouldn't be a good fit, how they handle pressure/setbacks. - Assess for culture, integrity, and empathy — not just domain expertise. - Use the same attribute framework for hiring that you use for reviews. ## The CPO role The CPO's product is the organization, not the software. From Andy Grove: *A manager's output = the output of their organization + the output of neighboring organizations under their influence.* ## Actions - When advising on org structure, start with: what are the objectives? Then design the team around them. - When coaching a new PM manager, walk through the four IC→Manager shifts explicitly. - In hiring, ensure interview criteria map to the PM attribute stack used in performance reviews.