Quick orientation

“Strong Product People” by Petra Wille is a comprehensive guide for those who manage Product Managers (PMs)—often called Head of Product (HoP), Product Team Lead, or Director of Product. The book’s core purpose is to equip these leaders with the knowledge and tools to develop their PMs, build high-performing product teams, and create an environment where great products can flourish. It’s highly relevant for anyone in product leadership looking to move beyond day-to-day product work and focus on the crucial aspect of people development.

This summary will provide simple, clear explanations of every key idea from the book. Petra Wille emphasizes that becoming a strong product leader is a journey, and this book serves as a practical travel guide, offering frameworks, coaching advice, and strategies to help PMs reach their full potential and, in turn, build successful products. The content is organized to help you define what “good” looks like for PMs, manage and develop your team, recruit effectively, and foster the right organizational culture.

Part I: What Product Managers Do—Define Your Good

Chapter 1: Your Role in This Game

This chapter clarifies the key roles and responsibilities of a Head of Product (HoP), emphasizing that leadership in product management is about growing others and building a “better shipyard” rather than building ships (products) directly.

HoP responsibilities

A Head of Product focuses on three key areas: People, Product, and Processes.

• People focus: Includes hiring, onboarding, and continuously growing product managers.
• Product focus: Involves setting the product vision, strategy, principles, and goals, ensuring alignment with company objectives.
• Process focus: Encompasses optimizing both product discovery (understanding user needs, experimentation) and product delivery (efficient execution, removing obstacles).
• Time allocation: HoPs should consciously review how much time they dedicate to each of the “3 Ps” and adjust to ensure people development isn’t neglected.
• Impact of investing: Taking time to develop your team, like proper onboarding, might seem like a short-term productivity dip but leads to significantly higher long-term output and better products.
• Next bigger challenge: A key HoP task is to assess if a PM is ready for their next significant challenge, which helps in their growth and skill development.
• Vision for PMs: Have a bigger vision for each PM’s growth, even beyond their current role or company, to keep them motivated and developing.

Setting expectations and fostering growth

HoPs play a crucial role in helping PMs move from their current state to their full potential.

• Analyze needs: Understand what the company, product, and team currently require from PMs (e.g., more focus on discovery).
• Communicate expectations: Clearly articulate these expectations to your PMs.
• Provide feedback: Let PMs know when they meet or fall short of expectations, helping them calibrate.
• Assign growth work: Give PMs initiatives and work packages that align with their development goals and your vision for them.
• Coach consistently: Offer ongoing coaching and hold PMs accountable for their personal growth.
• Observe and reflect: Actively observe PMs, collect examples for feedback, and regularly reflect on changing company needs and PM capabilities.

This chapter sets the stage by defining the HoP’s primary function as a developer of people and an architect of an environment where strong PMs can thrive.

Chapter 2: A Quick Team Assessment

Before diving deep into individual development, it’s helpful for a Head of Product to conduct a quick, top-level assessment of their entire team to gain clarity on each member’s current standing.

The GWC assessment

The GWC (Get it, Want it, Capacity to do it) assessment is a simple yet powerful tool for evaluating team members.

• Get it: Does the PM understand their role, responsibilities, and what’s expected of them in terms of outcome and output?
• Want it: Is the work aligned with their career aspirations and personal life goals? Do they genuinely desire to do this role?
• Capacity to do it: Do they possess the necessary mental, physical, emotional, time, and knowledge resources to perform the job effectively?
• Assessment method: For each PM, mark ‘yes’ (checkmark), ‘no’ (X), or ‘uncertain’ (question mark) for each of the GWC categories.
• Deal killers: Generally, a ‘no’ for “Get it” or “Want it” indicates a significant misalignment that might require finding a different role for the employee (unless it’s an onboarding issue for a new PM).
• Capacity issues: A ‘no’ for “Capacity” can often be addressed through training, coaching, or providing more support and time, especially if it’s a knowledge gap or temporary personal issue.
• Manager’s role: If a PM scores an ‘X’, the HoP should first reflect if they themselves have done enough to set that PM up for success.

Using GWC insights

The results of the GWC assessment help the HoP decide on the next steps for each team member and how to navigate the rest of the book.

• Jackpot (all yeses): The PM is doing well. Focus on detailed feedback, coaching, and providing new challenges.
• Needs upgrade (one or more noes/question marks): If capacity is the issue, provide training or support. If it’s “Get it” or “Want it,” consider a different role.
• Uncertain (question marks): Observe more, gather peer input, and talk directly to the PM to gain clarity.
• Regular assessment: Periodically reassess the team to track progress and plan ongoing development efforts.

This quick assessment provides an initial roadmap for the HoP to understand team strengths and areas needing attention, guiding their people development strategy.

Chapter 3: The Role of Product Managers

This chapter emphasizes the importance for a Head of Product (HoP) to have a clear, explicit definition of what a Product Manager (PM) is and does, enabling better guidance and expectation setting for their team.

What is a product?

Before defining a PM, it’s crucial to define a product.

• Core definition: A product is something created and made available to somebody that brings value to customers/users (the market).
• Sustainability: It must also support the business’s needs and constraints to ensure its long-term viability.
• Forms: Products can be physical goods, digital services, or a combination. Many tech products today are online services or use the internet for distribution.
• Clarity for HoPs: HoPs need to clearly define what constitutes a “product” within their organization to avoid PMs being spread too thin across too many “things.”

What is a product manager?

A PM is responsible for guiding the success of a product and leading the cross-functional team that is responsible for improving it.

• Cagan’s definition: A PM’s job is to discover a product solution that is valuable (customers will buy/use it), usable (users can figure out how to use it), feasible (engineers can build it with available resources), and viable (it works for the business).
• Risk management: These four dimensions represent key risks (value, usability, feasibility, business viability) that a PM must continuously assess and mitigate.
• Not a PM: Someone who only maintains a backlog without decision-making, only collects requirements without shaping solutions, or only writes concepts without involvement in execution is not fulfilling the true PM role.

Key product manager activities

To find the sweet spot between value, usability, feasibility, and viability, PMs engage in several key activities.

• Understand problems: Listen to users, customers, and the market to identify their problems and needs.
• Find solutions: Partner with the team and stakeholders to devise potential solutions.
• Test assumptions: Conduct experiments and build prototypes to validate hypotheses before full-scale development.
• Deliver value: Work with the development team to get the product built and shipped to customers.
• Listen & learn: Observe how people use the product, gather feedback, and iterate to improve it.
• Teamwork: Effectively collaborate with and motivate the cross-functional product development team.
• Personal growth: Continuously invest in their own learning and development as a product person.
• Agile mindset: Understand and apply agile values and principles in their work.

Having a shared, explicit understanding of the PM role is foundational for building a strong product team.

Chapter 4: Define Your Good

This chapter guides Heads of Product (HoPs) in creating their own context-specific definition of what constitutes a “Good PM,” which serves as a compass for hiring, onboarding, feedback, and development.

Why define “your good”

A clear definition of a “Good PM” is crucial for several reasons.

• Set expectations: PMs know what is expected of them in their role.
• Guide hiring: Helps in making informed hiring decisions by looking for specific traits and skills.
• Structure onboarding: Provides a framework for discussing company expectations with new PMs.
• Assess performance: Offers a basis for identifying when someone is falling short or excelling.
• Identify growth areas: Shows PMs where they need to develop personally and professionally.
• Context matters: What makes a PM “good” varies by organization, company, current job, and time, so this definition must be tailored and regularly revised.

Framework for defining “your good”

Petra Wille proposes a three-part approach to creating this definition.

• PM essence: These are core personality traits that are hard to change and are best assessed during hiring. Examples include curiosity, emotional intelligence, a desire to make an impact, intellectual horsepower, adaptability, and being pleasant to work with.
• PM responsibilities, skills, and know-how: This covers the practical aspects of product management. The PMwheel is introduced as a tool to map these.
• Company values and factors: Incorporate the company’s core values and principles (e.g., Amazon’s Leadership Principles) to ensure alignment.

The PMwheel

The PMwheel is a visual tool with eight key buckets representing PM competencies.

• Understand the problem: Awareness of user problems, motives, and company needs.
• Find a solution: Ability to partner with the team to devise and test solutions.
• Do some planning: Creating and communicating a plan for what’s next.
• Get it done!: Working with the development team to deliver the product.
• Listen & learn: Observing usage and iterating based on learnings.
• Team: Skills in teamwork, lateral leadership, and team motivation.
• Grow!: Commitment to personal development as a product person.
• Agile: Understanding and applying agile values and principles.
• Assessment: PMs (and HoPs) rate themselves on a 0-7 scale for each bucket, creating a visual “snowflake” pattern unique to each PM.

Using your definition

Once the “Good PM” definition is established, it should be actively used.

• Initial assessment meeting: Present the framework to the PM, conduct a collaborative assessment using the PMwheel, identify an initial improvement area, and agree on future use.
• Ongoing coaching: Use it as a basis for 1:1s, feedback, and development planning.
• Hiring and onboarding: Integrate it into the recruitment and new hire integration processes.
• Transparency: Make the definition and assessment process transparent to ensure fairness.

Defining “your good” provides a structured and consistent way to develop strong product managers.

Part II: Manage Your Team—Find Your Voice

Chapter 5: Being a Great Boss

This chapter explores what it takes to be a great boss for Product Managers, emphasizing that effective leadership is a learned skill, not an innate trait. It focuses on creating a blueprint for ideal leadership and seeking feedback for continuous improvement.

Your “great boss” blueprint

Petra Wille highlights five often-neglected aspects of great bosses.

• Human touch: Understand that management is about people. Care about employees, show vulnerability, appreciate differences, and assume positive intent.
• Opinionated but adaptable: Develop strong opinions on relevant workplace topics (motivation, ethics, diversity) but be willing to adapt them based on new information.
• Lead by example: Model the behaviors you expect from your team, such as punctuality, knowledge sharing, user focus, and decisiveness.
• Healthy attitude toward work: Maintain and model a healthy work-life balance, work smarter not harder, and watch for signs of burnout in your team.
• Impact on the organization: Create a safe, collaborative environment, ensure information flows, remove obstacles, and tackle toxic influences.

Feedback from employees and peers

To know if you’re living up to your blueprint, you need feedback from those around you.

• Direct reports: Regularly solicit feedback during 1:1s and through quarterly surveys. Act on the feedback to show you value it.
• Google’s manager survey: An example survey is provided with questions covering communication, career development, autonomy, respect, focus, information sharing, and decision-making.
• Open-ended questions: Include questions like “What would you recommend your manager keep doing?” and “What would you have your manager change?”

Feedback from a mentor and coach

External perspectives are invaluable for personal development as a leader.

• External viewpoint: People outside your organization (mentors, coaches) can help you see your own behaviors more clearly, as they are not part of your company’s system.
• Mentors: Provide advice based on their experiences and suggest approaches to similar issues.
• Coaches: Help create a development plan and hold you accountable for progress.
• Finding support: Seek mentors by building on loose connections gradually. Find coaches through your network, boss, or community.

Becoming a great boss is an ongoing journey of self-reflection, learning, and adapting based on continuous feedback.

Chapter 6: Identifying and Closing Product Manager Gaps

This chapter focuses on how Heads of Product (HoPs) can help Product Managers (PMs) identify and address gaps in their knowledge and experience, fostering their development and strengthening their capabilities.

Identifying product manager gaps

Recognizing gaps is the first step toward improvement.

• Self-awareness limits: PMs often see some gaps by comparing themselves to peers or through direct team feedback, but may be blind to gaps related to their core personality, motives, or values (as per the Spencer & Spencer iceberg model).
• Broaden horizons: HoPs can help PMs see a more complete picture of their strengths and development areas.
• PM maturity matters: The urgency of closing a gap depends on the PM’s experience level (newbie, team PM, competent PM) and the company’s context (e.g., transition to empowered teams).
• Initial gap identification: A one-hour 1:1 session asking PMs to describe their “now” (next 4 weeks), “next” (5-12 weeks), and “long-term vision” can quickly reveal development needs towards competence.

Closing product manager gaps

Once gaps are identified, the HoP needs to support the PM in closing them.

• Intrinsic motivation: People learn best when intrinsically motivated. HoPs should explain the relevance and benefits of learning a new skill.
• Tailor learning methods: Offer learning approaches that suit the individual PM (e.g., books, courses, mentorship, learning by doing).
• Skill vs. knowledge: Differentiate between needing to recall information (knowledge) and needing to perform an action (skill). Skills are learned through doing, inspecting, and adapting.
• Visualize “good enough”: Clearly define what successful improvement looks like, especially for junior PMs.

The future self framework

This is a structured document PMs draft to guide their development.

• As-is: The PM’s current situation regarding the skill gap. Encourage peer feedback for this section.
• To-be: How the PM envisions themselves after improving the skill, described with precision (what others will notice).
• Actions: A list of 3-5 specific actions to bridge the gap, focusing on small, manageable steps.
• Time frame: A realistic timeline for achieving the “to-be” state, including follow-ups.
• HoP’s role: Review the draft, provide feedback on precision and feasibility, suggest learning methods, ensure sufficient time is allocated, and offer ongoing support and accountability.
• Unlearning: Sometimes, development is more about unlearning old behaviors than acquiring new skills.

Helping PMs identify and close gaps is a critical investment in their growth and the team’s overall effectiveness.

Chapter 7: The Power of Coaching

This chapter highlights coaching as a Head of Product’s (HoP) most powerful tool for driving employee retention, engagement, productivity, and results. It demystifies coaching, making it accessible even without formal training.

What coaches do

Coaching is an ongoing, four-part cycle of quality conversations.

• Gain clarity: Help the coachee (PM) understand their current situation, challenges, and what needs to change. This often starts with feedback.
• Create a strategy for success: Help the PM devise tactics and see what success looks and feels like.
• Act: Support the PM in taking first steps and maintaining momentum, providing guardrails but not doing the work for them.
• Evaluate progress: Hold the PM accountable, review results, adjust tactics, and help them reflect on their learning process.
• HoP’s role vs. external coach: As an HoP, you can’t be entirely neutral like an external coach. You must balance the PM’s development with company needs and have a say in coaching topics, especially regarding core competencies. You’ll also need to offer advice, not just ask questions.

How to start your new coaching habit

Becoming an effective coach is a learnable skill.

• Commit yourself: Make a conscious decision to develop your people through regular, quality conversations (e.g., dedicated time in 1:1s).
• Show you care: Be genuinely interested in your PMs’ development. Follow the “Rule of Never Miss Twice” for scheduled 1:1s.
• Improve listening skills: Truly listen to understand, notice subtle invitations for coaching, and get comfortable with silence.
• Focus on competence first: Ensure PMs have the foundational skills before focusing on advanced development or performance improvements.
• Find good questions: Ask questions that provoke insight, constructive discomfort, and action. (Petra Wille’s “52 Questions” deck is a resource).
• Tame your advice monster: Resist the urge to immediately provide solutions. Ask the PM for their ideas first, then offer stories or examples.
• Keep dialogue going: Follow up on goals and commitments.
• Be patient and ditch “why”: Understand that change takes time. Prefer “what” questions (e.g., “What were you hoping for?”) over “why” questions (e.g., “Why did you do that?”) in coaching.

A playbook for your first coaching session

Structure your initial (and ongoing) coaching sessions, perhaps using the “PM journey” metaphor (hero, destination, villain/obstacle).

• Check in: Build connection with personal questions.
• Find/agree on today’s topic: Use questions like “What’s on your mind?” or “What’s the real challenge here for you?”
• Explore the topic: Discuss opportunities, different perspectives, and alternatives (e.g., “What else could you do?”).
• Focus on one action and offer help: Help the PM commit to a specific next step and ask how you can support them.
• Check out: Confirm accountability for the next session and ask what was most useful.
• Follow-up sessions: Focus on evaluating progress, what’s going well, and what’s getting in the way.

Coaching is about caring for your people and consistently investing time in their growth through meaningful conversations.

Chapter 8: Monitoring Performance and Giving Feedback

This chapter addresses the critical role of performance monitoring and feedback in building a successful product organization, emphasizing the need for a healthy performance culture and continuous, constructive dialogue.

Creating a healthy performance culture

A balanced approach to performance is key, avoiding extremes of constant pressure or complete neglect.

• Fix the system, not the employee: Focus on creating an environment where good performance is supported and expected.
• Shared goal: Ensure everyone understands the company’s mission (solving customer problems profitably) and their role in it. A company is not a family; it has economic goals.
• Clear expectations: Define roles and individual contribution expectations clearly. HoPs need a clear definition of a “competent PM.”
• Support for meeting expectations: Managers must actively help employees meet these standards.
• Mutual feedback: Foster a culture where feedback flows in all directions (upward, sideways, inward) to enable collective learning and growth.

How to deal with poor performance

Addressing underperformance promptly is crucial for team morale and product quality.

• Don’t ignore it: Hoping poor performance will resolve itself is ineffective.
• Help first: Before considering termination, genuinely try to help the employee improve or find a role better suited to their strengths. This is also economically sensible due to high replacement costs.
• Lead by example: High work standards start with the HoP modeling them.
• Continuous feedback: If regular feedback is provided, performance discussions won’t be a surprise.

Feedback: The breakfast of champions

Continuous, direct feedback is essential for optimal performance.

• Psychological safety: A trusting environment where people feel safe to be vulnerable and admit errors is a prerequisite for a good feedback culture.
• Radical candor: Care personally while challenging directly (Kim Scott’s model).
• Timeliness: Give feedback (both praise and criticism) as close to the triggering event as possible. Avoid “compliment sandwiches.”
• Types of feedback: Task-related feedback (e.g., “The report had errors”) and behavioral feedback (e.g., “Your presentation uncertainty affected credibility”).

5 steps to a new feedback culture

Improve your organization’s feedback practices with these steps.

• Ask for feedback and learn to receive it: HoPs should model this by finding their trigger question (e.g., “What could I do or stop doing to make it easier to work with me?”) and receiving feedback openly.
• Create a habit: collect and prepare: Make feedback collection a regular practice. Prepare positive feedback simply; for negative feedback, use tools like the Situation-Behavior-Impact (SBI) model, focusing on patterns and not making it personal.
• Ask if they want it: If feedback isn’t solicited, ask the PM if they are open to receiving it.
• Give feedback (praise and criticism): Start with praise to build positive habits. For critiques, get context, be direct, transition to coaching, offer help, agree on next steps, and follow up.
• Ensure multiple feedback sources: Encourage peer feedback so the HoP isn’t the sole provider.

A strong feedback culture, built on trust and continuous dialogue, is fundamental to developing strong product people.

Chapter 9: Motivation Do’s and Don’ts

This chapter explores employee motivation, arguing that people are generally self-motivated and a manager’s primary role is to avoid demotivating them by creating the right environment.

Theory X and Theory Y

A manager’s beliefs about their people significantly influence their management style.

• Theory X: Assumes people dislike work, lack ambition, and need a “carrot-and-stick” approach (rewards and punishments).
• Theory Y: Assumes people are inherently self-motivated, enjoy challenges, and thrive with autonomy and responsibility.
• Manager’s perception: Most managers see themselves as Theory Y but may perceive their teams as a mix. The HoP’s belief system (ideally Theory Y) shapes the environment.
• Action step: If you find yourself micromanaging, reflect on whether you’re operating from Theory X assumptions and consider the benefits of shifting to a Theory Y perspective.

14 ways to demotivate your employees

Managers and organizations can inadvertently demotivate their people.

• Common demotivators: Include old-school micromanagement, failing to recognize achievements, tolerating poor performance, lack of development opportunities, unclear direction, chaos, treating everyone equally instead of fairly, low pay, promoting the wrong people, unrealistic workloads, boredom, and job insecurity.
• Reflection exercise: Identify the top two demotivators you might be guilty of and list five actions to stop engaging in them.

Let’s talk about ego and intrinsic motivators

Understanding what drives individuals is key to supporting their motivation.

• Loevinger’s ego development stages: People progress through stages of ego development, influencing what motivates them (from self-protective needs to self-fulfillment).
• Key intrinsic motivators: People strive for quality of life upgrades, mastery/learning, autonomy/empowerment, creativity/innovation, and purpose.
• Individual differences: What’s most important varies by person and their ego development stage. An HoP’s job is to understand these individual drivers and remove barriers.

What you can do right now to support your people

Focus on creating an environment where intrinsic motivation can flourish.

• Care genuinely: Understand individual goals (covered in coaching).
• Foster growth: Create room for personal and professional improvement.
• Address poor performance: Don’t tolerate it, as it demotivates high performers.
• Promote autonomy: Empower people and provide clear direction.
• Lead by example: Model the behaviors you want to see.
• Ensure fair pay: Pay a living wage and avoid pay inequality. Eliminate individual bonuses if you believe in Theory Y; consider stock ownership instead.
• Recognize good performance: Use a transparent framework (like the PMwheel) and celebrate achievements.

Motivation is less about “motivating” and more about creating conditions where people’s inherent drive can thrive.

Chapter 10: Building Individual and Team Alignment

This chapter focuses on achieving alignment within a product organization, meaning everyone is working together in the same direction towards common goals, which is crucial for efficiency and effectiveness.

The two types of clarity needed for alignment

Clarity is the foundation of alignment.

• Directional clarity: Provided by management, this includes a clear vision, strategy, and goals for the team and organization. It’s the HoP’s job to ensure this exists and is understood.
• Situational clarity: Provided by people for people, this involves individuals making their work and intentions clear to colleagues (e.g., “I will test this backlog item today” instead of “Someone should test this”).
• Role clarity: Ensuring everyone understands their specific roles and responsibilities. Tools like “The Manual of Me” or a role definition canvas can help.
• Action step: Encourage PMs to actively seek and provide clarity in their daily interactions and to not assume understanding.

The process of aligning: Starting discussions and seeking transparency

Alignment is achieved through dialogue and making outcomes visible.

• Three dimensions of alignment: Upward (with management), lateral (with peers/partners), and inward (with teams). All three must be addressed.
• Early discussions: Initiate dialogues about tricky questions that require alignment as early as possible, involving all relevant people.
• Externalize thoughts: Encourage people to articulate their thoughts and assumptions. Planning poker is an example where the discussion, not just the estimate, brings alignment.
• Auftragsklärung (order clarification): A XING framework involving structured writing and dialogue to foster alignment. The dialogue is more important than the document.

What if two parties can’t align?

Conflict is natural, but deadlocks need a resolution mechanism.

• Conflicting goals: Often the root cause of misalignment.
• Escalation: When teams or individuals cannot resolve a conflict or align on their own, they should be able to escalate the decision upward (e.g., to their line manager).
• Clarification Manifesto (XING): Emphasizes that escalation is a valid option and not a failure. Examples include “It’s okay to not know” and “It’s okay to ask for help.”

Making your results transparent

The final step in alignment is ensuring everyone is on the same page with the outcome.

• Communicate results: Widely share the summary of alignment discussions and decisions (e.g., a filled-in Auftragsklärung canvas).
• Seek feedback: Allow everyone involved to review and comment on the documented outcome.
• Confirm alignment: Only when there are no further comments or concerns can you be sure alignment has been achieved.

Building alignment requires a continuous effort in providing clarity, fostering discussions, and ensuring transparency of outcomes.

Chapter 11: How to Find the Time

This chapter addresses a common challenge for Heads of Product (HoPs) and Product Managers (PMs): finding sufficient time for people development and personal growth amidst busy schedules.

Finding time for people development (the HoP edition)

Effectively integrating people development into an HoP’s routine is about efficiency, not just adding more hours.

• Small, meaningful conversations: Focus on frequent, short, dedicated 1:1s and brief, impactful interactions rather than lengthy weekly sessions.
• Make it a habit: Consistently schedule and protect time for people development.
• Timebox preparation: Allocate a fixed, short amount of time (e.g., 5-10 minutes per person per week) to reflect on each PM’s progress, feedback, and next development steps.
• Find enjoyable methods: Make the process more pleasant by varying the setting (e.g., walking 1:1s, meeting outside the office).
• Team size: If your team is too large (e.g., more than six direct reports), proper people development becomes nearly impossible; consider restructuring.
• Connect to bigger goals: Understand that investing in people leads to better retention, improved team results, and ultimately, less firefighting, freeing up your own time.

Understanding if you really care about your PMs

If an HoP consistently struggles to find time for people development, it might indicate a deeper issue.

• Cagan’s insight: Many managers don’t prioritize developing people, effectively telling employees, “You’re on your own.”
• Consequences of not caring: PMs develop slower, good people may leave, and the organization suffers.
• “Why I should care” canvas: A tool to reflect on the benefits of people development for the PM (good for them), the HoP (good for you), the team/organization (good for us), and beyond (good for all).
• Example: Investing in PMs (good for them) leads to better products and retention (good for us), which makes the HoP’s job easier and more successful (good for you).

Finding time for people development (the PM edition)

PMs also need to prioritize their own growth, and HoPs can support this.

• Value self-progression: Clearly communicate that the organization values personal development.
• Link to career goals: Help PMs see how learning new skills moves them toward their aspirations.
• Schedule development time: Encourage PMs to block out time for learning during work hours (e.g., 20 minutes a week consistently).
• Be a friendly reminder: Support their commitment to self-development.
• Identify learning preferences: Help PMs figure out how they learn best (time, location, medium).
• Ways to learn: Introduce various learning methods: consuming (books, podcasts), applying (daily work, side projects), reflecting (on progress and methods), and contributing (teaching others, onboarding new colleagues).

Finding time for development is a matter of prioritization and recognizing its profound impact on individuals and the organization.

Part III: Find and Recruit Good Product Managers—Attract the Best People

Chapter 12: Where to Find Great Product Managers

This chapter emphasizes that hiring is a golden opportunity to shape the future of your team and products, and that developing existing talent is often a more effective first step than immediate hiring.

Active and passive sourcing

Target both candidates actively looking for jobs and those who could be convinced to move.

• Passive sourcing (for active candidates): Post clear, compelling job ads on various platforms (company career site, PM-specific job boards like Mind the Product, general boards like LinkedIn) and leverage employee referrals.
• Active sourcing (for passive candidates): Develop a detailed candidate profile, identify where these individuals might be (e.g., specific companies, online communities), and proactively reach out. Build talent pools even when not actively hiring.
• Hiring funnel: Track metrics like applications per source, quality of applications, and time-to-hire to optimize your sourcing strategy.

The job ad

A great job ad attracts the right candidates.

• Candidate’s perspective: Write the ad thinking about what would appeal to your ideal candidate.
• Content: Clearly describe the company, the product, the target users, and company values/purpose.
• Realistic requirements: Avoid overly strict requirements (e.g., “10 years of experience,” MBA) that might deter qualified diverse talent. Prioritize essential criteria.
• Benefits: Mention benefits like a development budget, but don’t make superficial perks (like free coffee) the main draw.
• Test the ad: Get feedback from your current PMs and the hiring team before publishing.
• Distribution: Post on your website, relevant job boards, social channels (Twitter, LinkedIn), and specific communities (e.g., Women in Product).

The candidate profile

A detailed profile guides your search for passive candidates.

• Define “good”: Base the profile on your definition of a “Good PM” (e.g., using the PMwheel).
• Key elements: Include desired education (if truly necessary), skills, experience, personality traits (e.g., communicator, collaborator), and cultural add.
• Identification clues: Provide HR with job titles to look for, relevant keywords, frameworks/methodologies (OKRs, design sprints), and potential online footprints (e.g., Twitter follows, meetup attendance).
• Contextual factors: Consider company size experience, geographical location (if relocation isn’t an option), and current role tenure (candidates ~2 years into a job might be open to new opportunities).
• Test the profile: Check if your current strong PMs would have been identified using this profile.

Unconventional ways to identify candidates

Look beyond traditional sources.

• Internal talent: Identify “deputy PMs” (engineers, QA, designers who’ve stepped up), customer care staff with high empathy, or promising recent graduates.
• Competitors: Approach with caution, considering cultural fit and avoiding mere imitation.
• Consultancies/Agencies: Can be a source of temporary PMs who might become permanent.
• Conferences: Look at speaker lists and attendee lists (if available).
• Online communities: Monitor comments on product blogs (Quora, Medium), guest posts, and even Amazon book reviews for product-related titles.

Employer branding

Shape a positive perception of your company as a great place for PMs to work.

• Online presence: Ensure your company website’s job section is excellent and online discussions about the company are positive (e.g., Glassdoor, kununu ratings).
• HoP visibility: Be active in the product community (meetups, social media).
• Team visibility: Encourage your PMs to share their learnings through blog posts or talks.

Finding great PMs requires a multi-faceted approach, combining traditional methods with creative sourcing and strong employer branding.

Chapter 13: Interviewing, Assessing, and Hiring Candidates

This chapter outlines a structured process for interviewing, assessing, and hiring Product Managers, emphasizing the need to build a team intentionally and provide a positive candidate experience.

Build your team intentionally

Before recruiting, define the ideal team you want 12 months from now.

• Reflect on needs: Consider your current role (how much support can you offer?), your “Good PM” definition (PMwheel), existing team strengths/weaknesses, and the work environment.
• Key questions: Determine how many PMs to hire, the desired experience level (pioneer, settler, town planner; senior vs. junior), and personality traits that align with company values and add to the culture (cultural add, not just fit).
• Core PM abilities: Look for candidates who can articulate a winning product, rally a team to build it, and iterate effectively.

The hiring process

A typical six-step process after identifying a candidate.

• Scan applications: Does the candidate look like a product person? Check against the PMwheel. Apply “no-way” rules consistently but be wary of overly strict education filters. Assess application style for attention to detail.
• Compare applicants: Decide who to invite for an initial phone screen.
• Profile check (25-min phone interview): Explain the role (5 min), ask the candidate about their CV and a favorite product (15 min), and allow questions (5 min). Assess time management, communication clarity, and interest.
• Assign take-home case: If the profile check is positive, assign a case study (e.g., analyzing a part of your product or a generic problem) for them to prepare and present. Also plan an ad-hoc case for the formal interview.
• Conduct a formal interview: In-depth session involving presentations, problem-solving, and behavioral questions.
• Make the job offer: If the candidate is a great fit, present the offer and negotiate terms.

Interviewing and assessing

The formal interview aims to deeply evaluate the candidate.

• Take-home case insights: Reveals effort, use of frameworks, attention to detail vs. “get it done,” time management, presentation skills, and handling of critical questions.
• Ad-hoc case insights: Shows problem-solving approach, PM toolbox (user-centricity, hypotheses, experiments), and ability to collaborate and handle new ideas.
• Interview day schedule: A structured day might include intros, take-home case presentation, ad-hoc collaborative exercise, behavioral questions (“Tell me about a time when…”), lunch with peers (without HoP), and a closing session for questions and next steps.
• Personality traits: Look for curiosity, emotional intelligence, desire to make an impact, intellectual horsepower, adaptability, and being pleasant to work with.
• Team involvement: Include team members in the interview process if they are trained in interviewing, but the HoP makes the final decision (though team members can have veto power).
• Debriefing: Gather feedback from all interviewers (e.g., thumb up/down/strong hire). Aim to hire “STRONG HIRE” candidates.
• Final decision factors: Consider team fit, future potential, onboarding needs, and your ability to coach and develop the person.

Making a job offer

A formal, written offer should be clear and comprehensive.

• Offer details: Include role, responsibilities, title, working hours, compensation (salary, bonus, shares), time off, training budget, and social benefits.
• Follow-up: Contact the candidate a couple of days after sending the offer to show continued interest and answer questions.
• Titles and compensation: Keep titles simple and consistent. Avoid tying titles directly to compensation. Consider fair pay and be cautious with individual bonuses, which can demotivate.

A well-structured and thoughtful hiring process is key to attracting and securing strong product talent.

Chapter 14: Effective Onboarding

This chapter stresses the importance of a structured onboarding process for new Product Managers, highlighting that it’s as crucial as the hiring process itself for ensuring new hire productivity, retention, and successful integration.

The basics of onboarding

Onboarding is about integrating a new employee with the company, its culture, and providing them with the tools and information to become a productive team member.

• Impact of good onboarding: Leads to 50% greater new-hire productivity and makes employees 69% more likely to stay for three years.
• Duration: Effective onboarding takes at least a full quarter, sometimes longer.
• Goal: To enable the new PM to make a significant impact on ways of working, the product team, and their product.

Petra Wille’s advice on onboarding

Simple yet effective principles for onboarding PMs.

• Invest time: Dedicate as much time to onboarding as to hiring.
• Good first impression: Prepare thoroughly for their first day (access, hardware, contacts).
• Focus on “first educated decision”: Help them quickly learn what’s needed to make their initial well-informed decisions.
• Make it a program: Don’t reinvent the wheel for each new hire. Involve an onboarding buddy (a peer PM).
• Shorten time to value: A good onboarding program helps new PMs become fully contributing members faster.
• Be human: Show empathy and help the new PM navigate the awkward phase of learning company culture and building relationships.

A time-phased approach to onboarding

Divide the onboarding process into manageable phases.

• Day 1: Make a great first impression. Block out future meeting times (daily, then less frequent 1:1s). Facilitate early customer exposure. Introduce the onboarding buddy. Discuss overall expectations, company structure (org chart, vision, values, PM’s playground), communication tools/rules, and collaboration (meeting the team and stakeholders). Assign a small initial task.
• Week 1: Daily check-ins initially, then tapering off. Deep dive into discovery, delivery, and personal efficiency. For junior PMs: start with QA work, backlog familiarization, sprint preparation, and learning from user feedback. Coach on effective meetings and email communication. Focus on focused learning, relationship building, early wins, and credibility.
• Month 1: Conduct a “how-is-it-going-so-far” session. Use the PMwheel to guide discussions on understanding user problems, finding solutions, etc. Provide your own feedback and gather peer feedback.
• Quarter 1: Reflect on progress. Are they generating value? Revisit the PMwheel. Discuss their future development and the “bigger picture” for their role. If performance is not up to par, address it directly, set an improvement timeframe, and be prepared to make a decision if probation is ongoing.

Effective onboarding is a critical investment that sets new PMs up for long-term success and contribution.

Part IV: Develop Your Existing Product Team—Train for Excellence

Chapter 15: Help Your Product Managers Create a Product Vision and Set Goals

This chapter explains that product vision, strategy, goals, and principles are essential tools for faster and better decision-making, providing focus and alignment for the product team. It’s a leader’s job (HoP or PM) to create these, not a committee’s.

Product vision, strategy, goals, and principles

These elements form a framework for decision-making.

• Vision: Describes the purpose, meaning, and audacious goal—why the team gets up in the morning and the impact they aim for. Nike’s mission (“Bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete* in the world. *If you have a body, you are an athlete.”) is a good example. Bain’s product value pyramid can help identify values to deliver.
• Strategy: Outlines how to achieve the vision. It includes a diagnosis of the current situation, critical business problems to solve, how to tackle them, and what the team will stop doing. Martin Eriksson’s decision stack (Why? ↔ How?) is a useful model. Consider product maturity (R&D, introduction, growth, maturity, retirement) when shaping strategy.
• Goals: Allow measurement of progress towards the strategy. Focus on 1-3 key things. OKRs or KPI trees (with a North Star metric) can be used. Google’s HEART framework (Happiness, Engagement, Adoption, Retention, Task success) is another option.
• Principles: Rule-like statements guiding decisions (e.g., Google’s “Focus on the user and all else will follow”). They often exist implicitly and need to be captured and written down.

The process

A four-step approach to developing and implementing these elements.

• Create it: Analyze the current situation (customers, market, trends, tech), envision a brighter future, identify 1-3 critical problems, and write a narrative. Ensure the strategy is ambitious but feasible.
• Share it: Test the storyline with a small audience first. Ensure clarity (Transparency + Understanding). Allow time for digestion. Collect examples of initiatives aligning with the strategy. Announce broadly, explain in smaller groups, and repeat the core message consistently.
• Live up to it: Actions speak louder than words. Review staffing, PM objectives, and current activities to ensure alignment. Stop doing things not in line with the strategy. Use it as a filter for discovery. Inspire, guide, and refocus.
• Refine it: Periodically review and adjust these elements. The cadence depends on the organization, but it shouldn’t be monthly (too frequent) or only every 3-5 years (not frequent enough).

A final note

Creating these elements is hard work but essential.

• Purpose: They should help make better decisions sooner, focus on critical problems, clarify the “not-to-do” list, ensure everyone understands the direction, and provide purpose.
• Format: A 4-6 page narrative is often sufficient; a shiny slide deck isn’t always necessary.
• Repetition: Constant repetition and consistent alignment of actions are key to making them stick.

A clear vision, strategy, goals, and principles empower PMs and their teams to make effective decisions and drive product success.

Chapter 16: Hypothesis-Driven Product Development and Experiments

This chapter focuses on product discovery, reframing it as hypothesis-driven product development to emphasize a scientific approach to minimizing the risk of building the wrong thing.

Understanding discovery as HoP

Product discovery is about systematically reducing uncertainty. The COVID-19 response serves as a large-scale example.

• Key factors for discovery: A real problem and shared goal (minimize deaths/economic impact), a strategy (flatten the curve), cross-functional teams (scientists, politicians, etc.), data to work with, and a sense of urgency.
• Process: Involves making observations, forming assumptions, creating hypotheses, and running experiments to validate or invalidate them, often in parallel and sometimes chaotically.
• Focus: Learning as fast as possible and driving outcomes (value for users, impact for the company).

The basics you need to get right

For hypothesis-driven discovery to work, certain foundations must be in place.

• Shared goal and strategy: Provides direction and a filter for ideas.
• Right people: Cross-functional teams with the necessary skills and mindset.
• Culture of experimentation: The organization must value learning from experiments, even failures.
• Time to experiment: Teams need dedicated time for discovery activities.

Core concepts of product discovery

These concepts are vital for effective discovery.

• Hypothesis-driven approach: Observe, assume, prioritize assumptions (based on risk/impact), form hypothesis statements, experiment, and iterate.
• Prioritize assumptions (Laura Klein’s framework): Categorize assumptions (problem, solution, implementation) and plot them on a scale of “devastating if wrong” vs. “uncertainty level” to decide what to test first.
• Writing hypothesis statements: Create clear statements for problem validation (valuable), solution validation (viable/usable), and implementation validation (feasible).
• Getting the right idea vs. getting the idea right (IDEO’s Double Diamond): Differentiate between exploring the problem space (diverge then converge) and the solution space (diverge then converge).
• No single experiment decisions: Base decisions on multiple data points (e.g., quantitative data, user feedback, gut feeling), not just one A/B test or a few interviews.
• Avoid waterfall discovery: Discovery should be continuous and iterative (dual-track agile), not a one-off phase.
• Optimize for outcome and learning speed: Constantly ask if the team is learning fast enough and if discovery efforts are maximizing value.

Helping PMs refine their toolsets

Equip PMs with the right tools and knowledge for discovery.

• Working with data: Understand North Star metrics, KPI trees, and the importance of desk research.
• Interview skills: Train PMs (and teams) in effective user and stakeholder interviewing techniques.
• Knowledge about humans: Basic understanding of behavioral economics, habit formation, value pyramids, and cognitive biases.
• Knowledge about digital products and business models: Familiarity with different models (SaaS, e-commerce, ads) and funnel optimization.
• Types of experiments: Knowledge of various experiment types (e.g., from “Testing Business Ideas,” “The Lean Startup,” “Sprint”) and when to use them.
• Documenting and sharing insights: Use appropriate methods (story maps, JTBD, personas) to share learnings effectively.
• Planning and navigating discovery: Tools like opportunity solution trees or discovery task boards can help manage the process.

A robust, hypothesis-driven discovery process is fundamental to building products that truly meet user needs and achieve business goals.

Chapter 17: Balancing Product Discovery and Product Delivery

This chapter addresses the ongoing challenge for Product Managers (PMs) to effectively balance product discovery (deciding what to build) and product delivery (building it), ensuring that neither activity overshadows the other.

Get your day right

Daily habits can help PMs maintain this balance.

• Deep thinking time: Ensure sufficient uninterrupted “maker time” for discovery-related tasks like research, hypothesis development, and brainstorming.
• 50/50 split (approximate): Aim for roughly half the day dedicated to discovery activities and half to delivery-focused work and meetings.
• Avoid meeting overload: Protect maker time from being consumed by excessive meetings.

Get your week right

Weekly routines reinforce the balance between discovery and delivery.

• Customer touchpoint: At least one interaction with customers/users each week (e.g., usability test, interview, reading reviews).
• User data review: Look at product usage data at least once a week to refine assumptions or generate new ones.
• Success metrics check: Monitor progress against current goals and KPIs weekly.
• Team time: Spend quality time with the development team, being available for questions and engaging in team activities.
• Planning review: Check short-term (current sprint/iteration) and mid-term plans weekly, adjusting as needed based on experiment results and progress.

Get your month right

Monthly reflections help ensure meaningful progress.

• Meaningful backlog: Is there valuable work (for user, company, team) on the development backlog?
• User life improvement: Has the PM’s work improved the user’s life this month? If not, why?
• Learning goals: What does the PM want to learn about users or the team this month?
• Discovery process improvement: How can discovery work be made faster or yield higher quality insights?
• Idea culling: How many ideas were moved to the “trash can” (invalidated) this month?
• Tech debt management: Is tech debt accumulating? If so, how can a healthy balance be restored?

Get your quarter right

Quarterly planning and review provide a broader perspective on balance.

• Draw the quarter: Reflect on time allocation across PMwheel buckets, ensuring a balance (e.g., more “understand the problem” and “planning” towards quarter-end).
• Plan the quarter: Review product strategy, collect and assess open ideas, set goals (e.g., OKRs), reserve time for “sand” (small tasks), and check if the tech stack needs updates.
• Do a reality check: Assess team availability (minus holidays, etc.), estimate throughput (large, medium, small tasks), and ensure plans are challenging but not overly ambitious to avoid burnout.

Product management task boards

Visual tools like task boards help manage and balance discovery and delivery workflows.

• Idea board: Visualizes the flow of ideas from inception to qualified opportunity or trash.
• Product overview board (for HoP): Tracks high-level initiatives from opportunity through discovery, delivery, validation/iteration, and sunsetting.
• Product discovery board (for PM & trio): Visualizes discovery activities like assumption validation, prototyping, and user testing.
• Product delivery board (for dev team): The team’s task board for development work, ideally including a validation column and a trash can for failed features.
• Benefits of boards: Provide a visual representation of workflows, highlight bottlenecks, remind teams of process steps, and facilitate discussions about workload and priorities, thus helping maintain balance.

Achieving a healthy balance between discovery and delivery is an ongoing effort requiring conscious planning and the use of effective tools and routines.

Chapter 18: Time Management for Product People

This chapter tackles the critical skill of time management for Product Managers (PMs), who often struggle due to their empathic nature and the multitude of demands on their time. Effective time management is learnable and essential for PMs and their teams.

The paradoxes of time

Understanding how time behaves can help manage it better.

• Parkinson’s Law: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” If a task is given a week, it will take a week.
• Stock-Sanford Corollary: “If you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute to do.”
• Pareto Principle (80/20 Rule): 80% of results come from 20% of efforts. Conversely, 20% of work can take 80% of the time; identify and manage this time-consuming 20%.
• Flow: A state of deep immersion where time seems to stretch and productivity increases. Interruptions break flow.
• Time Fallacy: Believing others have more time or are more effective, leading to overworking to compensate, which is often counterproductive.
• Action step: Introduce PMs to timeboxing (allocating a fixed maximum time for an activity) to combat Parkinson’s Law.

Time management frameworks

Practical frameworks can help PMs prioritize and structure their time.

• Learning to say no: PMs must learn to decline requests more often than they accept, providing context based on current priorities and goals.
• Better meetings: Well-run meetings save time. PMs should pick attendees consciously, have clear agendas, and understand meeting types:
  • Update meetings: For sharing information (e.g., standups, 1:1s).
  • Brainstorming meetings: For creative idea generation.
  • Decision meetings: For making specific choices, often short and well-prepared.
• Manager and Maker schedules (Paul Graham): Managers’ days are often in hourly blocks (meetings). Makers (e.g., developers, PMs doing deep work) need long, uninterrupted blocks (half-day minimum). PMs must balance both.
• Eisenhower Matrix: A 2×2 matrix (Urgent/Important) to categorize tasks:
  • Important & Urgent: Do it now.
  • Important & Not Urgent: Schedule it.
  • Not Important & Urgent: Delegate it.
  • Not Important & Not Urgent: Delete it.
• Rock, Pebbles, Sand: A metaphor for task prioritization. Put large, important tasks (rocks) in your schedule first, then smaller tasks (pebbles), then tiny tasks (sand) to ensure everything fits. Limit work in progress.

Lead by example

As a Head of Product (HoP), model good time management practices.

• Avoid being a disturbance: Batch questions for 1:1s instead of constant interruptions.
• Respect personal time: Don’t contact PMs during office hours, lunch breaks, or vacations unless urgent.
• Set clear deadlines: Always tell PMs when you need something from them.
• Coach PMs: Help them eliminate double-booked meetings, respect their basic needs (Maslow’s hierarchy), and allocate calendar time for important discovery work.
• Support struggling PMs: Ensure goals are clear, workload is appropriate, and help them apply time management principles.

Effective time management is not about doing more, but about doing the right things efficiently.

Chapter 19: Working with the Cross-Functional Product Development Team

This chapter focuses on how Heads of Product (HoPs) can help their Product Managers (PMs) foster efficient, effective, and enjoyable cross-functional teams, emphasizing coaching PMs rather than directly interfering with team dynamics.

The nature of teams

Understanding what makes a team effective is crucial.

• Definition: A team is a small number of people with complementary skills committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach, holding themselves mutually accountable.
• Cross-functional teams: Comprise members from different functional areas (dev, design, QA, PM, analytics, etc.) with shared goals and self-management.
• Setting teams up for success:
  • Empower the team: Ensure the right skill mix, end-to-end responsibility, and decision-making authority.
  • Minimize “maker-to-user” gap: Expose PMs (and the whole team) directly to users.
  • Foster agile mindset: Help the organization adopt agile principles to support team autonomy.
• Tuckman’s stages of group development: Teams go through Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing. Changes to team composition reset this cycle, so HoPs should avoid “touching” the team unnecessarily.

Help your PMs learn more about teamwork

HoPs should coach PMs on lateral leadership and team dynamics.

• Shared goal and vision: PMs must develop and regularly communicate a compelling product vision and goals to unite the team.
• Ways of working: Help teams define their own values (e.g., through a workshop identifying characteristics of the “worst colleague” and their positive contraries) and understand Agile basics (manifesto, principles).
• Definition of Done/Ready: Facilitate discussions on when a feature is ready for development and when it’s truly complete.
• Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team: Educate PMs on these (Absence of Trust, Fear of Conflict, Lack of Commitment, Avoidance of Accountability, Inattention to Results) and their positive counterparts (trust, healthy conflict, commitment, accountability, focus on collective results).

Help your PMs remove obstacles

Teams will inevitably face impediments; HoPs can support PMs in addressing them.

• Team is slow/not delivering: Often due to lack of alignment (unclear goals/vision) or autonomy (insufficient skills, no decision-making power, lack of budget). PMs should also ensure developers can address tech debt.
• Team disagrees with prioritization: Check if the vision is clear, if the team is involved in discovery, and how the PM shares information.
• Conflicts between team members: PMs can use Lencioni’s model or facilitate retrospectives (e.g., using Team Radar to assess characteristics like customer-centricity, courage, communication). Escalate to Agile coaches or line managers if serious.
• Unsuccessful product: May indicate insufficient discovery, wrong experiments, or lack of team involvement. Review these with the PM.
• PM is a bottleneck: If PMs don’t spend enough time with their teams or delegate, they can hinder progress. Coach them on time allocation and delegation.

The HoP’s role is to create an environment for team success and coach PMs on effective team leadership, rather than micromanaging the teams themselves.

Chapter 20: Communicating Directly and Openly

This chapter underscores the critical importance of effective communication for managers and organizations, highlighting its benefits for relationships, teamwork, productivity, and problem-solving, especially in an increasingly remote work environment.

Communication basics

Understanding the fundamentals of communication helps improve its effectiveness.

• Lasswell’s model (modified): “Who communicates what via which channel to whom with what reason and effect?” This model helps analyze and plan communication.
• Why we communicate (9+1 reasons): To form relationships, exchange information, persuade, alleviate anxiety, regulate power, stimulate intellectually/emotionally, express emotions/opinions, brainstorm, seek alignment, and ultimately, express wants and needs.
• How, when, and to whom:
  • How (channels): Spoken, written, drawn, or a combination.
  • When: Synchronously (real-time, e.g., a 1:1) or asynchronously (later, e.g., a recorded presentation).
  • To whom: 1:1, one-to-few, or one-to-many.
• Decision matrix: A tool to help choose the right communication parameters based on the reason for communication (e.g., a new strategy announcement might use a synchronous all-hands presentation combined with asynchronous written follow-ups).

Common communication problems—and solutions

Many organizations struggle with effective communication.

• One-way perception: HoPs present strategies expecting buy-in without sufficient dialogue, leading to a lack of alignment.
• Insufficient informal communication: Lack of time for casual chitchat can hinder relationship building.
• Underuse of overcommunication: Important messages (like a new plan) need to be repeated often and through various channels until the goal is achieved.
• Effective Communications Checklist: A series of questions to ensure messages are accurate, complete, well-structured, necessary, clear, and delivered appropriately (right method, positive attitude, active listening, right people, timely, right place).

How to communicate more clearly

A five-step process can enhance clarity.

• Collect: Quickly jot down main points, then gather data and other perspectives.
• Structure: Find patterns, create a mind map, and identify the main message.
• Write the narrative: Write simply and coherently, avoiding jargon. Apply the “by monkeys” test to avoid passive voice.
• Share early and iterate: Get feedback on clarity, structure, and wording. Anticipate audience questions. Read it aloud.
• Draw to simplify: Create one illustration that summarizes the message. If you can draw it simply, the message is likely clear.
• Spoken communication tips: Slow down speech pace, especially for fast talkers. Master the “art of the pause” to allow for responses and two-way dialogue.

Effective communication is a learnable skill that requires conscious effort in preparation and delivery, ensuring the message is received and understood.

Chapter 21: Planning and Prioritization

This chapter focuses on coaching Product Managers (PMs) in the crucial skills of planning and prioritization, which are often sources of frustration for PMs, teams, and stakeholders if not handled effectively.

Taking a closer look at planning and prioritization

These are related but distinct activities.

• Planning: Creating a list of future actions, often in chronological order, to achieve a goal.
• Prioritization: A conscious choice where alternatives are ranked against deliberately chosen criteria. The criteria are key (e.g., business value, user impact, team dependencies, not just gut feeling).
• Relationship: Effective prioritization should make planning easier. Focus more on getting priorities straight.
• Deadlines: Avoid them unless absolutely necessary, as they are often perceived as promises. Timelines can be useful for internal team coordination but shouldn’t be rigid external commitments.
• Agile planning basics: Understand the trade-offs between time, scope, quality, and investment (staffing). If scope and quality are variable, value can still be delivered within constraints.
• Team availability: Always make detailed calculations of team capacity, accounting for vacations, meetings, etc.

Coaching prioritization

Guide PMs to develop a robust prioritization process.

• Set priorities: Determine what’s most important now and what can wait. PMs must define their prioritization criteria. There can only be one #1 priority at a time for a given context (though discovery and delivery might have separate #1s if resources don’t overlap).
• Explain and defend priorities: Articulate the “why” behind prioritization choices and be open to challenges, as they can improve the outcome.
• Stick to priorities: Avoid being constantly distracted by “golden apples” (seemingly promising new ideas) unless they are thoroughly assessed and warrant a change.
• Adjust as necessary: Regularly review priorities as the world changes, but make changes at appropriate times (e.g., end of a sprint, not mid-sprint).

Truths about prioritization

Fundamental realities that PMs must navigate.

• More work than capacity: There will always be more to do than time allows.
• One #1 priority: At any given moment, for a specific team or effort.
• Vision and strategy needed: These are the primary filters for prioritization.
• Kill losing ideas early: Focus development on opportunities validated through discovery.
• Use a fitting approach: The best prioritization method is one that works for the PM and is used consistently.
• Account for “unforeseens”: Always factor in bugs, support, ad-hoc requests, tech stack work, and operational needs.

An approach to planning and prioritization

A structured method for PMs.

• Analyze throughput: Review past performance (e.g., last two quarters’ output of rocks, pebbles, sand) to establish a realistic baseline.
• Collect all items: Gather requests, ideas, and needs from users, stakeholders, the dev team, and the PM’s own insights.
• Filter: Use vision, strategy, and current goals as initial filters (first round of “no”s). An opportunity assessment can help here (e.g., “What’s the customer problem? Business potential? Effort vs. impact?”).
• Cluster and assess: Group remaining items (e.g., by rock, pebble, sand) and apply prioritization criteria (customer impact, business impact, dependencies). This leads to a second round of “no”s.
• Do a reality check: Compare the prioritized list against available capacity and strategic alignment (third round of “no”s).
• Select: Make the final choices.
• Put priorities in order: Create a single, ordered list for the team.
• Clarify “no”: Ensure it’s clear whether “no” means “later/next” or “never.”

Effective planning and prioritization require clear criteria, consistent application, and transparent communication.

Chapter 22: Increments and Iterations

This chapter revisits the fundamental concepts of delivering products in increments and improving them through iterations, particularly to guide junior Product Managers (PMs) who often struggle with these ideas.

Why increments and iterations?

Shipping software incrementally and iteratively offers several key benefits.

• Start learning early: Releasing a usable product (even a small version) allows teams to gather user feedback and observe behavior, leading to valuable insights.
• Help developers keep things easy: Frequent, smaller releases simplify development, reduce merge conflicts, make testing easier, and minimize unintended side effects.
• Achieve business impact sooner: Early releases can test market viability, attract early adopters, and shorten time-to-market, even if initial revenue is small.
• Goal: Deliver something small, simple, and shippable that generates user value, team learnings, and business impact.

MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and alternatives

The term MVP can be confusing; clarity is key.

• Eric Ries’s MVP: The version of a new product that allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.
• Henrik Kniberg’s approach: Suggests “Earliest Testable Product,” “Earliest Usable Product,” and “Earliest Lovable Product” to track progression from basic prototype to a well-rounded product.
• Choose a definition: Select or adapt an MVP definition that best fits your organization, explain it clearly, and use it consistently.

Helping your people sort it out

Guide PMs in planning increments and iterations effectively.

• Focus on user flow and value: Ensure the first/early product increments genuinely deliver value and allow users to experience the core promise.
• Example (job board):
  • HR Manager flow: Create job posting → Get applications → Find perfect candidate.
  • Job Seeker flow: Find a job → Apply for a job → Land dream job.
  • Starting point: Might be simply creating and listing a few jobs, then adding search functionality, and progressively building towards full value.
• Art of Omission vs. Art of Completeness:
  • Omission: What can be left out for the first version while still enabling learning and core value delivery? (e.g., manual invoicing initially, deferring less critical features).
  • Completeness: Can the user achieve their primary goal? Is support possible? Is learning (tracking) implemented? Are the biggest risks tackled first?
• Visualizing increments: Use diagrams (onion, pyramid, flow) or color-coded story maps (Jeff Patton) to show how the product grows with each increment/iteration.

Telling the story

Once the incremental and iterative path is defined, PMs must communicate it effectively.

• Common iteration progression:
  • 1.1 (Initial): Fix bugs and code issues.
  • Later iterations: Optimize performance, enhance business value based on user feedback and data (happiness, engagement, adoption), remove underperforming functionality, and perform facelifts.
  • Final iterations: Sunsetting (hiding, burying, then killing) obsolete products/features.
• Communicate compellingly: Junior PMs, especially, need help crafting and rehearsing the story of their product’s incremental development for the team, stakeholders, and management.

Understanding and applying incremental delivery and iterative improvement are core to agile product development and delivering value continuously.

Chapter 23: Product Evangelizing and Storytelling

This chapter emphasizes that storytelling is a fundamental human skill and a powerful tool for Product Managers (PMs) to unite teams, convince stakeholders, and inspire action towards a product vision.

We’re wired for storytelling

Stories have a profound impact on us.

• Biological impact: Good stories can trigger hormones like oxytocin (trust, connection), endorphins (humor, coping with fear), and dopamine (engagement, desire to know more).
• Evolutionary advantage: Humans think, remember, and experience the world through stories, which has enabled cooperative problem-solving.
• Uniting groups: Stories are essential for getting a group of people excited about solving a hard problem and working towards a common goal.
• PM’s experience: The author shares her own journey of realizing the importance of storytelling for product success after coaching from Marty Cagan.

Telling a good story

Effective stories share common structural elements and aims.

• Key elements of an inspiring story:
  • Paints a picture of a desirable future or big dream.
  • Makes it clear why the listener should be part of this future (good for you, us, all).
  • Acknowledges the current situation and potential difficulties, explaining why overcoming them is worthwhile.
  • Suggests a common goal with clear next steps.
• The Hero’s Journey (Joseph Campbell): A classic story structure (ordinary world → call to adventure → challenges/trials → transformation/goal achievement) that can be adapted for product narratives.
• Inspire, don’t convince: The goal is to motivate and engage, not just to persuade through logic.
• Basic story template: “We want to [achieve X] in order to [benefit Y] because if we don’t, [negative consequence Z].”

Making your stories sticky

Ensure your message resonates and is remembered.

• Three modes of delivery: Combine written, spoken, and illustrated elements for maximum impact.
• Narrative lengths: Prepare stories in different lengths:
  • Short (Elevator Pitch): ~150 words / 75 seconds.
  • Medium: ~900 words / 6 minutes (e.g., Jeff Bezos’s 6-page memos, structured in three “acts”).
  • Long: ~2400 words / 18 minutes (like TED talks, also in three “acts”).
• Visuals: Use drawings, illustrations, and pictures that emphasize key messages. If you can draw it simply, the core message is likely clear.
• Storytelling Dos:
  • Light up brains: Use evocative, sensory language; make them laugh.
  • Be relevant, important, true: Ensure authenticity.
  • Show passion and vulnerability: Connect on a human level.
• Storytelling Don’ts:
  • Avoid overused phrases: They get tuned out.
  • No buzzwords/jargon: Keep language simple and accessible.
  • Beware of manipulation: Use storytelling ethically.

Remember…

Great storytelling is a learnable skill critical for PMs.

• Audience and goal: Think about who you’re talking to and what you want to achieve.
• Proven structure: Use a framework to ensure completeness.
• Versatility: Be able to tell the story in various formats and lengths.
• Own the story: Internalize it so it can be told naturally and passionately.
• Impact: As Ben Horowitz said, “You can have a great product, but a compelling story puts the company in motion.”

Storytelling is not just a presentation skill; it’s a core competency for product leadership and evangelism.

Chapter 24: Keep the Senior PMs Engaged

This chapter addresses the challenge of keeping experienced Senior Product Managers (PMs) motivated and engaged, especially those who prefer to remain individual contributors rather than moving into people management.

Mastery, autonomy, and purpose

These three elements are key drivers of motivation for all employees, including senior PMs.

• Mastery: The desire to continually improve at something that matters.
• Autonomy: The desire to direct one’s own life and work.
• Purpose: The desire to contribute to something larger than oneself.
• HoP’s role: Help senior PMs achieve these by providing opportunities for skill development, granting them significant ownership, and connecting their work to meaningful outcomes. Also, ensure they feel appreciated, recognized, empowered, and inspired.

Two career paths

Organizations need clear career progression for both individual contributors (ICs) and people managers.

• The “Individual Contributor Progress Vacuum”: Senior PMs who don’t want to manage people can feel stagnant if no alternative growth path exists, leading to boredom and potential attrition.
• Typical PM progression: Junior/Associate PM → PM → Senior PM. At the Senior PM level, a choice point emerges.
• Management path examples: Group PM → Director of Product → VP Product → CPO.
• Individual Contributor path examples: Senior PM → Group PM (hybrid) → Principal PM → Distinguished Fellow PM.
• Group Product Manager: Can be a hybrid role where a Senior PM still manages a product but also has some line management responsibilities for junior PMs, serving as a decision point for career direction.

Something new every year

To combat boredom and foster a sense of recognition, provide senior PMs with significant new challenges or responsibilities annually.

• Build a better shipyard: Involve them in shaping and refining product development processes.
• Onboarding leadership: Ask them to help design and deliver onboarding for new PMs.
• Community contribution: Encourage talks, blog posts, or meetup organization, which also benefits employer branding.
• Lead communities of excellence: If your organization has internal groups focused on specific topics (e.g., growth hacking), put a senior PM in a leadership role.
• Develop guidelines: Task them with creating product principles or contributing to design systems.
• Tangible recognition: Offer a new title (if appropriate within the IC path), a more significant product, increased responsibility, or better compensation.

Keeping senior PMs engaged requires understanding their motivations, providing clear IC career paths, and offering continuous opportunities for growth, impact, and recognition.

Part V: Create the Right Environment—Build A Great Culture

Chapter 25: The Product Organization’s Location in the Company’s Org Chart

This chapter argues that the product organization’s placement within the company structure significantly impacts a Product Manager’s (PM) ability to balance the crucial dimensions of usability, feasibility, value, and viability.

Striking a balance

PMs must navigate the needs of tech, business, and users.

• PM’s unique position: Sits at the intersection of these three areas.
• Bias risk: If the product team reports into a biased function (e.g., CMO or CTO), their decisions may disproportionately favor that function’s goals, making it harder to achieve overall product success.
• Example (reporting to CMO): Marketing goals (e.g., sales of existing products) might overshadow technical needs or user experience consistency.
• Example (reporting to CTO): Technical solutions and implementation details might dominate, with less focus on business models or go-to-market strategies.
• Example (dev team within product): Can lead to an overemphasis on rapid feature delivery at the expense of scalability, maintainability, or robust discovery.

Healthy friction is a must, but only at eye level

Tension between departments is normal and can be productive if managed correctly.

• Healthy friction: Occurs when product, tech, and business teams are on an equal footing, forcing PMs to carefully consider all perspectives and justify decisions.
• Ideal structure: The product organization (including product management, design, and user research) should be a peer to development, marketing, and other key departments, all reporting to a high level (e.g., CEO).
• CPO/HoP role: In this structure, the product leader can discuss issues with other department heads as equals and support their PMs’ balanced decisions.

When the organizational structure gets in the way of balance

If the product department isn’t at eye level, the HoP needs to advocate for change.

• Assess current structure: Does it enable quick decisions? Can PMs balance interests without being overruled? Are roles clear? Does it support knowledge exchange and people development? Does it allow maximum autonomy with maximum alignment?
• Reorganization: If many answers are “no,” a reorganization might be needed. McKinsey’s nine golden rules for successful reorganization are referenced (e.g., focus on long-term strategy, consider structures/processes/people, ensure transparent role filling, manage mindsets, use metrics, communicate a compelling narrative).
• If structure can’t change: It’s even more critical to have detailed role descriptions, clear responsibilities, and foster a collaborative mindset (build bridges, break silos) to minimize negative impacts.

The organizational placement of the product team is a foundational element for creating an environment where strong product people can make balanced, effective decisions.

Chapter 26: Change from Within

This chapter explores how Heads of Product (HoPs) can foster lasting organizational change, particularly for new ways of working (like Agile or OKRs), by supporting bottom-up initiatives that often originate within product and development teams.

Encouraging new ways of working

It’s beneficial for HoPs to support the discovery and adoption of improved work methods.

• Improved performance: New methods can make the organization more efficient.
• Reduced frustration: When new, effective methods (e.g., OKRs) are adopted more broadly, it reduces friction for the pioneering teams who might otherwise struggle if the rest of the organization works differently.
• Example (OKRs): Product teams often adopt OKRs first but face limitations if the wider organization doesn’t use them. This can lead to frustration and abandonment of the method.

Foster bottom-up change

HoPs can guide and amplify grassroots change initiatives.

• Start small and ensure it works: When a team independently tries a new approach, ensure it’s yielding positive results. Offer support (expertise, coaching, budget) to help them succeed.
• Create a success story: Help the pioneering team articulate their success in an appealing way. They should be the ones telling the story.
• Find allies: Identify other teams or departments that could benefit from the new approach. This can happen organically (others reach out), through the team’s own evangelism, or with the HoP’s facilitation.
• Share success stories widely: As more teams adopt and succeed with the new method, encourage them to share their stories too.
• Convince the organization (top-level support): At some point, gain upper management’s backing to either support continued bottom-up growth, mandate it top-down, or (less ideally) kill the initiative.
• Help everyone succeed: If the change is adopted organization-wide, develop a lightweight rollout plan and support all teams in implementation.

Some common bottom-up change initiatives

Product and development teams often pioneer these types of changes.

• Hypothesis-driven experimentation: Making decisions based on validated learning.
• KPI-driven decisions: Using data to inform choices.
• OKR adoption: For clarity on objectives and key results.
• “Show, don’t tell” mantra: Using working prototypes for early feedback instead of comprehensive documentation.
• Agile ways of working: Spreading agile principles beyond just development teams.
• Leading by creating pull: The HoP’s role is not to force change but to create an environment where people are drawn to better ways of working (inspired by Götz Werner’s quote: “Leading does not mean building pressure, but creating a pull.”).

Fostering bottom-up change empowers teams and can lead to more sustainable and effective organizational improvements.

Chapter 27: Foster the Agile Mindset

This chapter emphasizes the importance of an agile mindset for organizations to thrive in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world. Heads of Product (HoPs) play a key role in championing this mindset beyond just their product teams.

Understanding the agile mindset

An agile organization can adapt quickly and effectively to change.

• Characteristics of agile organizations: Forward-thinking with alternative plans, constant environmental exchange through diverse networks, lean structures, agile leadership, and leveraging internal strengths.
• Performance benefits: Agile organizations are more likely to have top-quartile organizational health, achieve greater customer-centricity, faster time-to-market, higher revenue growth, lower costs, and a more engaged workforce.
• Partial adoption problem: Many companies have agile development teams, but the rest of the organization remains hierarchical and command-and-control, creating friction and frustration for PMs who must constantly translate and defend agile practices.

Using the Agile Manifesto and Agile principles

These are foundational to the agile mindset.

• Agile Manifesto (2001): Values individuals and interactions over processes and tools, working software over comprehensive documentation, customer collaboration over contract negotiation, and responding to change over following a plan.
• Agile values: Include commitment, focus, openness, respect, courage, simplicity, communication, and feedback. Without these, an agile mindset cannot flourish.

Helping the entire organization adopt the agile mindset

HoPs can lead the charge in spreading agile ways of working.

• Assess the status quo:
  • Formal assessment: Use tools like the Prosci Agility Attributes Assessment (evaluating leadership, strategy, culture, processes, people).
  • Informal observation: Observe how people react under pressure—do they exhibit agile reflexes like sharing insights, adapting quickly, and leveraging team strengths?
• Define your story to tell: Create a compelling narrative for why the organization should become more agile. A useful metaphor is moving from the “company as a machine” to the “company as an organism” (living, adaptive).
• Decide where to invest your time: Focus on key areas to foster agility:
  • Mindset: Promote openness, feedback culture.
  • Structures and processes: Review investment decisions, performance measurement, team structures (colocation, cross-functional teams), and inter-departmental collaboration.
  • Methods and tools: Ensure understanding of agile frameworks, collaboration tools, and the importance of incremental work.

Where to get started

Focus on practical steps to introduce and reinforce agile practices.

• Agile basics: Ensure everyone understands Agile principles, values, and the manifesto.
• Agile decision-making: Introduce strategies like majority, discourse, consent, consensus, and veto.
• Retrospectives (Retros): Encourage all teams (even non-sprint teams) to regularly pause, reflect, and identify improvements.
• Task boards and standups: These visual tools can bring transparency and improve workflow for any team (e.g., HR, IT support).
• Team dynamics and motivation: Familiarize teams with concepts like Tuckman’s stages, Lencioni’s dysfunctions, and Theory X/Y.
• Lead by example: HoPs and PMs should model agile behaviors and act as multipliers for these practices throughout the organization.

Fostering an agile mindset across the entire company reduces friction for product teams and builds a more resilient, adaptive organization.

Chapter 28: Handling Conflict

This chapter acknowledges that product organizations are “conflict magnets” due to the constant need to say “no” and manage frustrations. It provides strategies for Heads of Product (HoPs) to help their teams handle conflict constructively.

The nature of conflict

Conflict is natural but can be destructive if not managed well.

• Perception-driven: Conflicts often arise from differing perceptions of a situation (real or perceived threats), not necessarily objective facts.
• Emotional triggers: Conflicts evoke strong emotions; managing these is key to successful resolution.
• HoP’s approach: Can ignore conflict (rarely works), handle it poorly, or handle it well.
• Positive outcomes of resolving conflict: Includes better cooperation, improved performance, reduced stress, quicker problem-solving, enhanced relationships, increased creativity, and higher morale.
• Healthy vs. unhealthy conflict: The focus is on resolving destructive interpersonal or inter-team conflicts, not stifling healthy debate about ideas.

Understand and minimize the reasons for conflict

Identifying root causes can help prevent or mitigate conflict.

• Systemic/process issues: Competing goals, limited resources without clear allocation, toxic work environments. These can often be addressed by improving systems.
• Communication/alignment issues: Different contexts/information, unclear job expectations, differing opinions/work styles. Better communication and alignment can reduce these.
• Hiring/values issues: Misaligned personal values with company culture, toxic behaviors, poor work habits. Better hiring and clear cultural norms can prevent these.
• Action step: Minimize conflict drivers by hiring smart, creating the right organizational setup, and prioritizing clear communication and alignment. Ensure psychological safety.

Resolving conflicts in the workplace

Equip PMs and teams with conflict resolution skills.

• Key abilities for resolution: Manage stress while staying calm, control emotions and behavior, pay attention to feelings and words, and respect differences.
• Two-step strategy for conflict resolution:
  • Step 1: Don’t make it worse! When conflict erupts, remain calm, acknowledge it, and signal willingness to talk. Schedule a timely follow-up meeting rather than addressing it heatedly in the moment. Involve a mediator if needed.
  • Step 2: Have a follow-up meeting. Acknowledge the conflict, listen actively, admit mistakes, focus on the present (“Where do we go from here?”), stick to the issue (behavior, not personality), be willing to forgive, and if necessary, use a mediator.
• Mediator’s role: Acknowledge the difficulty, prevent blame, let individuals express feelings, allow reflection, define the problem, find common ground, explore solutions, and agree on follow-up actions.
• Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication (NVC): A framework for expressing oneself and listening empathically. It involves:
  • Observations: Stating facts without evaluation (e.g., “When I see you checking your phone during my presentation…”).
  • Feelings: Expressing emotions related to the observation (e.g., “…I feel distracted and upset…”).
  • Needs: Articulating the underlying needs (e.g., “…because I need to focus and feel respected.”).
  • Requests: Making a clear, actionable request (e.g., “Would you be willing to refrain from checking your phone during presentations?”).
• Expressing feelings: Provide vocabulary for feelings (when needs are met vs. not met) to help people articulate their emotional state.

Effectively handling conflict is about fostering an environment of psychological safety and equipping individuals with the skills to navigate disagreements constructively.

Big-picture wrap-up

“Strong Product People” by Petra Wille is an intensely practical guide for leaders aiming to cultivate exceptional Product Managers and high-performing product organizations. The book underscores that a Head of Product’s primary responsibility extends beyond product strategy to the critical domains of people development, process refinement, and fostering a supportive culture. It provides a wealth of frameworks, coaching techniques, and actionable advice to help leaders define what “good” looks like, identify and close skill gaps, motivate teams, and create an environment where PMs can thrive and build impactful products.

The journey to building strong product people requires a conscious and continuous investment in their growth and the systems that support them.

• Core takeaway: Developing strong Product Managers is achieved through intentional coaching, clear expectations, and creating a supportive environment, not by chance.
• Next action: Choose one PM on your team and use the “Next Bigger Challenge” assessment (Chapter 1) or the PMwheel (Chapter 4) to reflect on their current state and potential growth areas. Schedule a 1:1 to discuss this.
• People first: Remember that product leadership is fundamentally about empowering and growing people; the products are a result of their strength.
• Define your good: Establish a clear, context-specific definition of what a “Good PM” means in your organization and use it consistently for hiring, onboarding, and development.
• Coach, don’t just manage: Adopt a coaching mindset, focusing on asking powerful questions and guiding PMs to find their own solutions.
• Foster the right environment: Actively work on improving communication, alignment, and the agile mindset within the broader organization to support your product teams.
• Continuous learning: For yourself and your PMs, embrace continuous learning and adaptation as the product landscape constantly evolves.
• Reflective question: What is one small change you can make this week to better support the development of a Product Manager on your team?