Petra Wille - Strong Product People: A Complete Guide to Developing Great Product Managers

STRONG Product People

Copyright 2020 Petra Wille. All Rights Reserved.

Publisher: Petra Wille, Ritterstr. 8, 22089 Hamburg, Germany

Author & Illustrations: Petra Wille

Editorial office: Peter Economy

Cover Illustration: Kirsten Kaiser

Cover design: 1106design.com

Publishing house: Petra Wille, Ritterstr. 8, 22089 Hamburg, Germany

Printing: Amazon Distribution

ISBN: 978-3-9822351-0-3 (print)

978-3-9822351-1-0 (eBook)

The work, including its parts, is protected by copyright. Any use is prohibited without the consent of the publisher and the author. This applies in particular to electronic or other duplication, translation, distribution and making publicly available.

Bibliographic information of the German National Library:

The German National Library lists this publication in the German National Bibliography; detailed bibliographic data is available on the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de .

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOREWORD

BY MARTY CAGAN

O ne of the strongest influences on my professional development was the legendary coach Bill Campbell, known as the Coach of Silicon Valley. I was never personally coached by him, but I was fortunate enough to have met him, and to have worked directly for others who were personally coached by him, and so I grew up in my career learning his leadership principles.

Three lessons in particular made a lasting impression on how I think about my role as a leader in developing others:

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

Second, Coaching is no longer a specialty; you cannot be a good manager without being a good coach.

And finally, Work the team, then the problem. When faced with a problem, the first step is to ensure the right team is in place and working on it.

I have found that if you take these three lessons to heart, and sincerely and genuinely try to be true to these ideals, your people can and will do amazing things.

But I hope you dont think any of this is easy. Many people mistakenly believe this type of leadership is about simply hiring smart people and getting out of their way. Unfortunately, its not.

I have to explain to leaders all the time that strong product teams require stronger leadership, not less leadership.

• It takes much more effort to empower a product team, than it does to just give them a roadmap of features to build.
• It takes much more effort to provide weekly or when necessary even daily coaching, than it does to write up yearly performance evaluations.
• It takes much more effort to help a product manager create a strong written narrative, than it takes to review a few PowerPoint slides.
• It takes much more effort to provide critical but constructive feedback every single week, than it does to provide words of encouragement.
• It takes much more effort to personally make the case to senior leadership when your product manager has earned a promotion, than it does to simply send an email to HR.

If youre willing to put in this effort, then this book will help you do that.

Ive known Petra for more than ten years now. When I first met her, she was a new product manager, with a solid technology background, a strong mind and work ethic, and a clear desire to learn the craft of product management.

I watched her develop as a product manager, then as a senior product manager, and then on to product leadership roles at multiple tech companies. But ultimately, I believed her highest and best use in technology would be to help develop others, and indeed she has.

So, with this books help, I hope you go on to become a strong product leader, consistently developing strong product managers.

Marty Cagan
August 2020

FOREWORD

BY MARTIN ERIKSSON

L eadership. Its an odd word. It conjures up impossibly heroic images of military generals leading valiant charges from the front, or business leaders who set ambitious goals and drive their companies to achieve them through their own brilliance. The very word implies action, doing, getting out in front of your people, and showing how its done by doing it best.

And yet the best leaders dont lead from in front. They spend more time worrying about whether their people are ready for action and have all the information, skills, and tools they need to be successful in that action.

As I look back on the leaders who have enabled every successful step forward through my 25-year career in product, and consider the many leaders I admire around me who I interviewed for my book or get to interact with on a daily basis through Mind the Product, its clear that they all think like that.

And if its all about our people, then its all about building empowered, autonomous teams (and more and more evidence is piling up about the value of organizing ourselves this way), and its clear that the old leadership model is broken. We cant empower a team and tell them what to do at the same time. So, we need a new model that focuses more on equipping our people with the tools they need to succeed on their own. And that means that developing our people becomes a leaders most important job.

The good news is that there are a lot of ways to learn how to adopt this new way of leading. From Marty Cagans Empowered , through David Marquets Turn That Ship Around , and our own Product Leadership , there are more and more books on the value of empowering our teams. And yet none of us really tackled the hard work of how to develop our peoples skills and prepare them for that empowerment. But in many ways, Im glad we didnt, because who better to coach us through the art of coaching than Petra?

Petra has dedicated her life to helping others achieve greatness, and her insights and experience from doing just that permeates this entire book. In these pages you will find everything you need to know about how to develop your people and set them up for success. Something I wish more leaders had.

Martin Eriksson
London, September 2020

INTRODUCTION

STRONG

In what ways can you tell youre developing as a product management personality?

From the 52 Questions Card Deck

T here are a lot of books on product management out there right now, and new ones keep popping up all the time. Why? Clearly, because heads of product, product managers, product teams, and stakeholders are hungry to learn more about how to create great products that deliver real value to users. The rewards can be tremendousturning a startup that no one has heard of into a world-changing unicorn in just a matter of months.

Of course, as we all know, this is much easier said than done.

Creating great tech products takes much more than just having a great product idea. It takes competent, passionate, skilled product peopleand a cross-functional product development team that shares the same characteristicsto deliver a successful product.