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Product Therapy
Coaching Product Leadership with Shreyas Doshi | Understanding the Role and Hiring the Right Fit
00:43:11
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome back to Product Therapy. Today, I am thrilled to be joined by Shiraz Doshi, one of the most insightful minds in product and product leadership. Shiras has lead teams at Stripe, Twitter, Google, and Yahoo. He's earned a global following for his thoughtful writing on what makes good product work possible and also on what gets in the way. This episode, I really want to spend time unpacking a bold idea that nearly every product problem is actually a product leadership problem. And I mean everything from. From decision making and prioritization to team dysfunction and providing clarity. We go deep to explore the role of product leadership in shaping outcomes. Shiraj, this is an honor. Welcome to prolap Therapy.
- [00:48]
B
Thanks, Christian. I'm glad we could finally make this happen.
- [00:52]
A
Indeed. This is really a fun conversation, you know, and every time I hear you talk about production, product problems, challenges, people have you kind of ball it down in a way that resonates well with me. One of the things that I've often said is all problems are people problems, and if they are people problems, they are leadership problems. And I learned this early in my career just kind of observing all the different types of problems a company will have, really oriented around people. And then when I started to break down, what is the role of leadership, I'm thinking to myself, okay, I see three big buckets. Context, you know, providing clarity of where we're going, how we plan to get there, what's important right now, how we measure success, all of those aspects of context, and then culture, the environment in which people do those things, you know, the language, the behaviors, and then finally getting people better at their job with coaching. And often when I think about all of this, I have not found a single problem in any product organization that cannot be addressed by better leadership because it kind of falls into one of these buckets. So that's always been in the back of my head of why I think all problems are leadership problems. But I want to kind of have you unpack what it means to you, why you kind of still feel your same way, that most product problems are leadership problems. And maybe what prompted that realization for you.
- [02:12]
B
I think it starts with identifying, you know, what kind of leader or leadership philosophy you follow or resonates with you. I really think it needs to start with that. Now. The leadership philosophy that has resonated most with me is that ultimately I, as a leader, I am responsible and I am accountable for everything that happens, both within my team and outside of my team, as far as being able to ensure the success of the products that my team is Building and to be able to ensure the success of the people on my team. So if one subscribes to that philosophy, then it naturally and very logically, it's not a matter of faith. It's simply a matter of logic that if there is a problem, then it is either I am responsible for it in the sense that I need to take ownership in order to fix it, or if I cannot solve it for some reason, I'm responsible for working with the rest of the organization to figure out a solution. Or the third case is if I cannot solve it myself and I cannot work with the rest of the organization and my team to solve it, then I must recognize that this is a problem. I must recognize that there isn't a great solution to this problem. And you know, we have tried, we've looked into it and we must still make our team and our product successful despite the existence of this problem. Yeah.
- [03:43]
A
Okay, let's. We'll start with the first mental objection because you are actually describing this high order ordeal of what leadership is this idea that by definition of me being a leader, if I subscribe to this philosophy, I'm responsible and accountable for the team and outcome regardless of what those outcomes are. Now the very first objection for many leaders mentally is, come on. I mean, outcomes are hard. Are you saying I'm responsible for growing revenue? But Chiraj, I don't control sales, I don't control marketing. You know, they find all the things that are outside their direct control as reasons they cannot sign up for outcomes. Maybe say a little about in your philosophy you mentally rationalize this.
- [04:25]
B
So I think we need to again look at it very logically. There are two parts to this objection. One part is the idea of signing up for an outcome. Okay, so like if we're using that verb signing up, signing up for an outcome. Okay, cool. That's one part. The second part is how responsible do I feel within myself as a leader for the outcome and depending on the organization's culture, the company culture, how wonderful it is or how messed up it is or anything in between. If you tell me, Shreyas, it is just implausible for me to sign up for outcomes. I understand. Like, ultimately I don't want you to get fired because of following some ideology. We have to live in the real world. And operating in the real world requires us to like, faithfully and accurately understand the challenges of this real world.
- [05:24]
C
Right.
- [05:25]
B
By no means, like do I want you to sacrifice yourself and sacrifice your career because oh, look at this, this is a wonderful ideology.
- [05:33]
C
Right?
- [05:33]
B
Like that doesn't make any sense. That's like up to you, Right? So we've got to separate signing up for outcomes and feeling responsible for outcomes. Signing up for outcomes. I'm fine if you say that the culture is such or the setup is such or the organization is such that it is just not possible. It will cause tremendous harm to my career, et cetera, et cetera. Nobody can make a better choice here than you. You are wiser and smarter than you think. You should make the choice there.
- [06:05]
C
Right.
- [06:05]
B
However, the second one, feeling responsible for outcomes, requires no permission from anyone else. It is permissionless. And so that's where I would ask people who are objecting to this idea, I would ask them to focus on that, which is what is getting in the way of you feeling responsible for outcomes. Again, this is very logical. And how it manifests in practice is time and again I have seen that people equate the signing up for outcomes and feeling responsible for outcomes. So when they equate that and for whatever reason, if it's not possible to sign up for outcomes, they then necessarily assume that means they don't need to feel responsible for outcomes. And so when they just wash their hands away. The term I use is product success. When they wash their hands of feeling responsible for product success. Now, their actions, their priorities, their leadership style is very different from a leader who feels responsible for outcomes or responsible for product success.
- [07:07]
C
Right.
- [07:08]
B
So that's the distinction I want to draw when we look into this. And this is such a wonderful topic. And I feel like one of the challenges I see in our industry is, like, people talk at, like, very high levels, number one, and number two, like, people talk in, like, very theoretical terms. And number three, people talk in, like, all or nothing terms.
- [07:25]
A
Right.
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B
Like, and I always like to sort of bring it back to what works in your context and a way for you to think about what you can make work in your context.
- [07:37]
A
I really love that framing. In some ways, being a product leader doesn't mean you have to sign up for outcome. It means you have to feel responsible for outcomes or product success and the nature of what that does in changing behavior. Now, I want to get your definition in its clearest sense when you think about a product leader. I mean, and you've written about three archetypes too, of the operator, kind of craftsperson and visionary. But maybe give me your cleanest definition in your mind of when I think of product leadership. This is what I'm describing.
- [08:08]
B
Particularly if we are talking about PM leadership. I define the role as make successful products via others and build self managing teams. And so that's really like the specific kind of PM leadership role. Now, you know, sometimes we kind of conflate PM and product leadership. And like, I suppose my view is that especially these days, a product leader can be somebody who's kind of responsible for a product, but doesn't have to be a PM themselves or doesn't have to be exclusively managing PMs. They could be, you know, leading a team of PMs and engineers and designers. They themselves could be an engineer or a designer or some other role, right. Maybe even on the business side. Again, this is my own sort of approach to the vocabulary is like product leader is one thing and then PM leader is something else. And they can sometimes overlap but can also be different. I also think it's useful to sort of think about what are the key tasks that you may be responsible for, right? Like what are the kinds of tasks, again particularly in a PM leadership context, you might be responsible for. And to me, I like to kind of think about a leader who's kind of responsible for a product or a product area as like their main job is to create clarity, right? And it's to create clarity at the macro level and the micro level and it's to create clarity on what product we need to build, to how we will build it, to how we will expand it, et cetera, et cetera, right? And the manner in which a leader in this capacity ends up doing that is by being somebody who leads the strategy and the vision. Now they might not be the sole formulator of those things. Sometimes they might be, other times they might not be. But ultimately, again, it's on the leader, this product leader. It has to be something that they feel like they own. So that's like one factor I think about. And sometimes by the way, that ends up being, if it's a smaller company, it's actually the CEO, not the cpo. The ultimate product leader sometimes is the CEO, right? Especially for earlier stage startups. So we have to keep that in mind too. But some other things that I think are very essential for a person in this leadership capacity to get right is product editing, right? So you are not creating product proposals yourself. You are not directly working necessarily always with a specific team to build out and execute on that product. But you need to be a great editor, right? You need to be a great editor of whatever it is that the team is building and creating, right. Another one is just meta execution. And by that I mean you're not actually responsible in most Cases for day to day. How is this sub team executing? Right, that's probably somebody on your team who's responsible for that. But what is the structure you have created for your team such that they can operate with the right efficiency and effectiveness?
- [11:00]
C
Right.
- [11:01]
B
That structure is your responsibility again. And then PM coaching is another key aspect of the job. So that's really how I think about it. And then lastly in terms of skills, the kinds of things I like to call out, and again, skills can be varied and it's not like there is only one type of product leader. But I generally see that consistently successful product leaders tend to spike on critical thinking, which also includes analytical thinking, strategic thinking, product sense, influence, and particularly listening, how well they listen and cognitive empathy. Those are some skills that I also highlight that become very essential for you as a product leader if you want to be consistently successful across companies, across types of products, across domains, across stages of products.
- [11:47]
A
I love this a lot. And you talk about clarity and you know, I kind of always say contacts and I'm saying those are just the fancy words we use in our industry to describe clarity with like a vision and strategy and your objectives or okrs. And all of those things are designed to do the same thing, communicate clearly to people what is important, how we measure success, what we should be working on. Now I love that phrase product editing, the difference between being the creator and the editor and that skillset, that sense of you are working with many people kind of editing the choices. When you talked about meta execution, I was even thinking a little of that founder style leadership in the extent that is you're asking the right questions that probe the type of deep thinking and you know, enough of you have the product sense that you can actually discern what is good or not and but you kind of went to some of these sense or these human skills like I like to call them, with critical thinking, listening skills, influencing cognitive empathy. If you were hiring today for a product leader or you know, in any capacity, walk me through your mental model of like, all right, these are the things I'm going to look for versus the things I'm willing to develop or compromise on. On like what will drive your choices on how you decide the best type of product leader for a team.
- [13:07]
B
So it turns out you've asked a question on which I have a lot of thoughts and it also turns out that I have discussed this at length and in a high degree of depth with at this point over, I want to say easily over 50, maybe close to a hundred founders as part of my Advising work. This issue comes up a. And the way it usually manifests is a startup founder who's usually the person who's been driving the product forward thus far. As the company is now getting into growth stage, they are naturally getting advice from many places, including their board or their VCs, that like, you should go hire a head of product. You should go hire a product leader. That's what you need to do. So in those situations, I get a, you know, meaningful, significant outreach from founders who say, you know, I heard your name and like, I was just curious, like, what thoughts you have. Interestingly enough, Christian, like, usually the first interaction is framed via. This is usually via email or LinkedIn or something is framed as, do you know any great product leaders that I can speak with for this role? It's also followed by like, I'd love to get your perspective on how to hire, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, if they come in recommended through somebody in my network, then I'll take the call, right? Like, I enjoy these conversations. So I'll just take the call with the founder. And the moment it starts getting into it begins with like, okay, yeah, do you know some people? This is what I want. Like, I have to ask the founder to stop. And the reason I asked them to stop is like, yes, I happen to know many product leaders, fortunately, but that is not where we should be going just yet. We need to really figure out why we are hiring for this role. Let's get clarity on that. And as you very well know, the head of product role, the product leadership role, certainly in startups, but also in some modern larger companies, is a role with very poor longevity. You know, you can start a clock, right? Like when the person joins and it's like, okay, in 12 to 18 months, roughly about half of them are no longer in the job. So I do call out to executives and founders in general that like, you should assume that the default outcome of this process that you're going to run is the default outcome is failure, which you'll see 12 months to 18 months from now, right? And there's like, again, actual data to support that so you can just look it up. And so you should assume that that's the case. Now, the reason to assume that's the case is so that now whatever actions you take and whatever decisions you make need to prevent that from happening.
- [15:45]
C
Right?
- [15:46]
B
Need to prevent the default from manifesting. So let's look at it that way. When we start looking at it that way, it becomes really important to understand a few different things. First one, and again, I have a lot of thoughts on it, but like I'll say the, the most important consideration is what is the stage of product we are talking about. And I used to also have this misconception that like, well, any product leader should be able to manage any product, right? Like that's what any good product leader does. I found that in reality that is basically not true for most people. The stage of the product matters and that's where we can, you know, roughly say, well, there could be three stages. There's the very early stage, then there is the, you know, we just reached some version of product market fit and now we are growing and we are in the growth stage. And then maybe the third stage is the mature stage, right? Where we might still be growing, but we are not growing double triple digits quarter over quarter or year over year, but we are growing. We have a very good business that we want to sustain and we want to grow it at a reasonably aggressive, in this case, modest rates, low single digit rates. And that's the product leadership responsibility at that stage. Right, at that mature stage. Now it turns out, here is my core observation. It turns out that a leader who is excellent at that mature stage, sometimes their resumes look great because they have great brand names on the resume where they've led these very mature stage products and they've scaled them by hundreds of millions in revenue or hundreds of millions in users, et cetera, et cetera. So again, everything looks great. All of a sudden. Now you take this person who's basically is great at a mature stage product and you bring them to just as your product is about to hit that escape velocity, well, you're going to have some problems, right, Unless you go into it with intent. So I'll just describe like one specific problem that occurs. And again, this is in the startup context, the founder being coached by many people basically assumes that once they hire their head of product, this product leader, they have to delegate all of product because naturally you hired this product leader, so now you must delegate. That's what a good manager does, right? Like a good manager works through other people. So you know, they get this kind of advice all the time, sometimes even from their own executive coach. And so they follow the advice and they say, okay, you own the vision, you own the strategy, you own everything. And then this person is very enthusiastic, they're very energetic. I mean, the reason they are leaving, you know, the comfort of this mature company is because they have this itch of like owning everything end to end, which they did not have in this mature company. So the individual is very excited and it's not about background. But we forget that building a product and growing a product at this stage, at this early ish stage, is a matter of different skills than this person is used to employing. It could often be a case of skill gap. But even if we assume, again, it is all logical. Even if we assume that there is no skill gap, well, it is still true that through 5, 10, 15, 20 years of managing mature stage products, naturally I as a leader will have made some assumptions and some conclusions about what works. And what works is having a great OKR goal system, running great operations, having all the right review meetings, right. Like having the right staffing in the right places, et cetera, et cetera.
- [19:09]
C
Right.
- [19:10]
B
And having a fully staffed out, cross functional set of stakeholders and cross functional org, right. Like such that I can work with them and through them to kind of enable product success. That is something you would be quite used to in a mature stage product. Now if you try to replicate that in a growth stage, early growth stage product, well, what's going to happen is now there is largely no progress being made over quarters while we set up all the right systems. As a startup, a few quarters is like five years in a larger company. And so that's like just one example. But this permeates everything. This permeates goal setting, how you get work done, what kinds of PMs you hire, what kind of product people you hire. So when I saw this in my own work, I tried to express some observations in terms of archetypes. And we can think about it as hats as well. We don't have to think about it as a specific archetype that I can only be one archetype, it can be a hat.
- [20:06]
C
Right.
- [20:06]
B
But it's basically what I described is there are three types of product leaders. The operator, the craftsperson and the visionary. Even if we look at it as hats, such as the operator hat, the craftsperson had the visionary hat. I have found that each given product leader has one preferred hat. As experienced product people, we all feel like we can wear multiple hats. We can take off one hat, we can put another hat. And I agree. But if we're being honest to ourselves, we have a preferred hat. And that preferred hat, it's got two characteristics. One, it's usually our area of superpower, that is where our superpowers reside. And second, because it is our area of superpower, it's also the area we like to spend the most time in.
- [20:47]
C
Right?
- [20:48]
B
Like we prefer to keep that hat on naturally, because we want to do work that makes us feel good, that like, gives us a sense of sort of almost mastery over the work we are doing.
- [20:58]
C
Right.
- [20:58]
B
So that's very important. So it's useful to recognize that.
- [21:01]
C
Right.
- [21:02]
B
So. And like, just to briefly describe, the operator is excellent at scaling teams, at, you know, cross org, cross company alignment, at unblocking execution. The craftsperson is great at actually defining products and strategy and vision, and is also great at coaching PMs, whereas the visionary is excellent at inventing what's next.
- [21:25]
C
Right?
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B
Imagining and inventing what's next. So these are their core, kind of like, you know, what they're good at. And then the reason they're good at these things is because there is a superpower, right? So usually for an operator, the superpower is communication and influence. They are just excellent at that. That is how they manage these complex cross org situations. For the craftsperson, their superpower is product insight.
- [21:49]
C
Right?
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B
They are able to understand customer needs way more accurately and way more quickly than anyone else. And then they are able to translate that into creative product solutions. And so the craftsperson will obsess in product review about, like, what are the insights, both the qualitative and quantitative insights that are even informing your proposal. Whereas an operator in a product review will gravitate towards stakeholder validation. They will look around the team, who else agrees with this proposal?
- [22:21]
C
Right?
- [22:21]
B
They might even seek that first. Why? Because the operator does not have the skill to independently evaluate if this proposal is correct. So the operator uses stakeholder validation as a proxy for the correctness of the proposal. Whereas the visionary is like just excellent at seeing what others cannot. And usually founders, most founders, startup founders, are visionaries and usually visionaries. You see them being very frustrated at product reviews when something is presented to them because of this superpower. They can see what others cannot. So they know there is something missing, there is something wrong with whatever is being discussed or proposed. But sometimes they struggle with communicating that. Right? And that's when you end up with frustrated team members. They're like, well, you know, our founder, like they say things and I understand that they're very visionary, but like, it's not actionable, right? Their feedback is not actionable. So that's why sometimes you need the craftsperson to be that bridge between the visionary and the rest of the team. Because the craftsperson understands the visionary enough and agrees with the visionary enough that there is something missing here. But the craftsperson also has the skill to translate that to concrete insights, whether it's like, you know, insights on evaluation or insights on the creative side of things to say, okay, this is what we need to do, right? So this is the type of consideration that I feel like most executives and most CEOs are not making. Instead, they start working with a search firm. And I love search firms. I have friends at every search firm. But what ends up happening is that they are very focused on seeing certain profiles and they're looking at like, do I recognize the names? And that sort of thing. Whereas what they should be really looking at as they have conversations with people, they should be looking at like, what is the right archetype that makes sense for my product for what we are trying to do here? And then based on that, can I select the right candidate?
- [24:13]
A
There's so much goodness to unpack here because you're kind of calling out, I understand your product stage, whether it's early stage or you're looking for product market fit, you're in a growth stage or your enterprise looking for consistent innovation. Some people have this, I'm a 0 to 1 guy, or I'm a, you know, 1 to 100 or I like the scale. You kind of even clued in on the self assessment of what kind of hat your default is. You know, it's kind of can you identify which superpowers you have and where you like to spend your time? You know, the more you want to put on that hat is probably your default hat. Most people smartly interview like they can switch out the hat. Whose job is it on one end as a company to identify what primary archetype I need. And I'm trying to see how well can you plug and play. Is it easier to take an enterprise type of leader with experience into a startup or a startup person into an enterprise? Because you can imagine if I'm hiring for a product leader, I might be concerned that if I only get that person with that startup experience, while they might be good in a startup, they might not know how to take me to the next level. Right. And are you hiring for where you are and what you need, or are you hiring for where you want to go? So I'm throwing this out because as you were talking to, I'm like, all right, I'm here. But now I'm thinking of the top choices as an organization and how I navigate those things.
- [25:36]
B
Couple of observations. Number one, as you are talking to product leaders, I find that a lot is revealed in the questions they ask you about your company and about the team and about the role. And again, we are talking now like very senior level conversations, right? Like you're looking for somebody who's maybe going to come in as an executive of some kind or a senior leader within your company. Presumably that means you yourself are a senior leader or the founder or the CEO of the company. So we're talking in those types of conversations. Naturally they are conversations, right? Like they're not just like, you know, sort a link list on this whiteboard, right? Like that's not the conversation that is happening. So it is a two way dialogue. Especially in those kind of early days where in practice sometimes if it's somebody who's like really capable, has a great resume, et cetera, you need to even have a few conversations to convince them to interview with you.
- [26:31]
C
Right?
- [26:32]
B
Again, I'm all about like actual practice rather than theory, right? So in practice, this is what is happening. So what I advise founders and leaders is as you are having these conversations, pay close attention to the questions they ask you to learn more about the role. That will reveal more than anything else what hat this individual prefers. For instance, if I'm talking to some individual, and sometimes for some companies, I'll even like do a few later stage interviews for them just to kind of like validate if we are getting the right person. So say if I'm talking to the individual, you know, their questions are about, so how will you measure the success of this person that you are hiring in this role? Or the questions are, can you tell me about the team structure? Like their first questions, right? We are not talking about like questions like you know, over the course of a three month hiring process, I'm saying what are their first several questions, right? So if they're asking about like what is the team structure? Help me understand that if they're asking about success criteria for the person in the role, like how do you do goal setting, how do you do planning? If most of their questions are in that direction, then it is very likely that this candidate has revealed themselves as preferring the operator hat. Okay? And again, no doubt they might actually wear the craftsperson hat and they might wear the visionary hat. All I'm saying is now it's established that they prefer the operator hat because we as human beings, we gravitate towards what interests us most. So that's like one example. If on the other hand, the first several questions you get are about the core product and not the core product as a system, but like, okay, help me understand what problem your product is solving, help me understand what segments you're going after, help me understand what Segments it's resonating with versus not resonating with. Help me understand, like, what is working in the product versus not working so well in the product. Help me understand, like strategically, how are you positioning or counter positioning versus other players in the market? If those are the questions, okay, now all of a sudden I can have very high confidence that this individual likes wearing the craftsperson hat. And then instead of either of these, if my first few conversations end up being about ideating about what this product could be, and there's that, like, excitement on both sides. I'm the founder CEO and this is a prospective product leader. And there's excitement on both sides of like, you know, this is where we are heading bigger picture. And over time we are going to take over this entire market in this manner. And these are the steps and this is how we're going to talk to the press about it. And if it's like those types of things, then I'm dealing with a visionary hat, somebody who likes the visionary hat. And that's more rare, but it's like among the three, that's the more rare one. But again, that becomes clear, right? So. So that is what I advise people, is just like, pay close attention to that conversation play. Pay close attention to the questions they ask. The other related thing I also tell every hiring manager who's hiring leaders, I always tell them, you have to pay close attention to the degree to which this individual's understanding improves and grows as you go through the entire process. Because again, any practical process for a senior leadership role is at least two to three months. You're not hiring a senior leader in like two weeks. That just usually doesn't happen. So what I ask for is, has this individual's understanding significantly improved and has the depth and quality of their questions also significantly gotten finer?
- [30:18]
C
Right.
- [30:18]
B
Like, they're asking better, deeper questions and they're also making interesting observations and insights about your product. Now, if that understanding has most improved in the product itself and the understanding of the customer, et cetera, et cetera, again, likely we are dealing with a craftsperson. If that understanding has improved more in terms of the systems and the structure and you know, the various personalities involved, and you know, how many times you were meeting with the board and like, what does the executive team look like? And now this person has established great relationships already with my CMO and my CRO, et cetera, et cetera, and like, that's where their understanding has evolved, which is like, you know what, the first thing you need to do is to fix this process, because over time, like, a prospective leader is also offering suggestions. So where are they offering suggestions?
- [31:05]
C
Right?
- [31:05]
B
Like, where is their understanding? Then we're likely dealing with an operator, right? Whereas if they are now giving you finer feedback on what's on your website and they're saying, you know what, like, you need to really describe the product vision more clearly on the website, or you need to really appeal to this type of customer, right? Like, whatever the case might be, we're probably dealing with evision. Now, obviously, there's a lot more to it than the examples I'm sharing. So don't just go by the specific examples. It's like, actually much wider than that. But again, for smart people, like, this gives them enough to then kind of like, find their way.
- [31:38]
A
It is a fantastic model. I mean, what questions I initially asked? What has improved or evolved over time in terms of the questions they're asking? First of all, an organization needs to identify what kind of archetype they need the most for where they are. And how do you avoid, like, you know, if I'm a visionary CEO and I'm talking to you and you're a visionary, I'm like, that guy gets me. You know, like, most people kind of gravitate to people that think or approach the world like them, even if it may not be the complimentary skill that, that they need. How do you avoid that of like, you know, I'm an operator, you speak my language, you know, and so he's the best candidate versus we have a whole army of operators, but no real craftsmen here helping us. Maybe say a little about those two parts. And then I want to go over to some metrics and meaning.
- [32:25]
B
Yes, this is one of the bigger traps in hiring. And I would say, like, I've made this specific mistake myself when hiring individuals because, you know, when I didn't have an appreciation for some of these finer points, I would just like, you know, gravitate more towards individuals that were the same archetype as myself in a way that was a way for me to validate to myself that I am very good at the job.
- [32:51]
C
Right.
- [32:52]
B
I did not understand it, obviously, in my more foolish days. I only understood it in my less foolish days afterwards as I aged. So, yes, there is a real risk, and it happens all the time.
- [33:03]
C
Right.
- [33:03]
B
And so this is where I ask again, executives and founders, to be very clear on why you are hiring for this role. Now it sounds like, okay, cool, yeah, sure. But like, we've all generated these job descriptions and like, all these other artifacts, but you Know, sometimes your search firm will make you write some things, et cetera, et cetera, and you should do it, why not? But I find that like, what then ends up happening. I'm sure you've seen it too. Christian is like, it's like a four page document with like every requirement under the sun. And then you don't follow half the things you wrote anyway, right? So I saw that enough times that I realized that like, actually what needs to happen, the problem is not that we don't have all the requirements. The problem is we have too many. So I started doing this myself in my own hiring. I started requiring for my own hiring for my teams what I call the MSN list. And maybe afterwards we can put it in the show notes for listeners. But the MSN list is a very, very simple technique. It's basically for a given role. Instead of like this two page, five page long job description, they should have every qualification under the sun, blah, blah, blah. What I like to do is just put like three bullet points under M, which is must have. Three bullet points under S, which is should have. And of course every PM knows what's coming up next. Three bullet points under N, which is nice to have, right? So that's MSN is just that, right? Msn and the three bullet points, they cannot be fluffy, they cannot be fluff passion for building delightful products. That is fluff. It doesn't mean anything. So the bullet point has to be evaluatable concretely in an interview process or through an evaluation of their background, including references or both. So either it has to be evaluateable through the interview process or through their background itself or both. So that's one criterion. Second, don't include in this MSN list table stakes that you want every employee to have. So there's no point saying high integrity. It's like, yo, so you don't want high integrity for some other roles. Doesn't make any sense. So don't include that stuff. I want you to include only the very specific things that you absolutely care about. The three bullet points under the M, like what do you really care about? So an example of something that is good, by all means. You can say something like strong empathy for customers, especially in domains where there is high ambiguity. Because that you can test in an interview process. You can literally test that through a set of questions as an example. So if that is an important, I'm not saying that has to be, but if that is an important criterion for this hire, by all means, right? Like included under M or S or N. Depending on how important it is, you can also have background related things, right? Like for instance, deep experience in the fintech banking domain, that is fine, but now you are going to need to evaluate it somehow. You're going to need to evaluate it in the interview process itself and or through the background that they have and through reference checks you do. Now in this case, the other thing I recommend, and this is like a couple of startups that have advised on this specific hiring of their CPOs. They now do it for their entire company for any important role. The CEO doesn't sign off on a hiring requisition until there's an MSN list as an example. So then the next step is we are not just creating this list so that we can feel good that we created a list. What I then do is I now assign specific individuals. So you have an interview loop like in most companies you do. Like you have them talk to four, five, six people. Usually for a leadership role it's way more than four, five, six people. So I like to assign specific bullet points to specific interviewers which is like you're responsible for this mic to basically interview them for this M and this s. Right, like whatever that is. So okay, you are responsible for evaluating them for strong customer empathy, especially in an ambiguous fast moving domain. So again now your interviews are very focused. They're not just like let's sit and ask them a bunch of questions that we just googled five minutes ago and let's try to see how clever and smart they are, right? Like it's very focused. That's like one part. The other part I wanted to share is I also ask founders to be very clear on what it is that they want this person to accomplish. So for that I basically give them a couple of questions. All right, so one question that I give them is let's assume this individual has now been in this role for nine to 12 months. And so for any kind of like growth stage startup, 9 to 12 months is the right time granularity. As you are now evaluating, evaluating this person and how they performed, what is the one thing that you want to be able to score them an 11 out of 10 on? Not a 10 out of 10 and 11 out of 10 meaning what is the one thing that they should have absolutely done a spectacular job on? Do you have clarity on that? That one thing cannot be like insignificant. Like it cannot be like, oh, they should set up a good sprint process, right? Like that is not significant enough. It has to be something related to either outputs or outcomes or it has to be meaningful at that level.
- [38:19]
C
Right.
- [38:19]
B
So that requires a lot of thought. So whenever I ask a hiring manager this question, they're like, ah, I've never thought about it. And it's funny because like before I also used to not think about this thing, but now I'm much more clearer anytime I'm hiring too. That what is that one thing? And then furthermore, now I want you to communicate that one thing to prospective candidates at the right stage in the process.
- [38:43]
C
Right.
- [38:44]
B
Because now they will also understand very clearly what you are expecting. Now of course, like in any product leadership role, there's going to be like, you know, you're going to be doing dozens of things, but what are the one or two things that absolutely matter?
- [38:56]
C
Right.
- [38:57]
B
So that's one question. And again it's a seemingly simple sounding question, but it creates a ton of clarity on what it is it that we are even looking for.
- [39:05]
C
Right.
- [39:05]
B
Second question that I'll share is I also ask them to write down, once this person has come on board, what aspects of the product make sense for you to still continue to own as the founder or CEO or executive. So it is not a given that just because you've hired this person that now you're going to wash your hands off the product. You need to be clear what aspects of the product you're going to continue to own.
- [39:32]
C
Why?
- [39:33]
B
Because this is the main point of friction, which is one of the reasons why this role is very short lived by default. I really encourage founders to not just assume, yeah, they should own strategy because I like try to find out like is formulating and clarifying the strategy going to bring meaningful clarity to your execution and to your outcomes? Okay, great. Are you great at strategy yourself as the founder and if they say yes, like I am really great and like the company right now. There's nobody else who can do it and I really see it. So then I say, great, you should likely not delegate it and you should make it clear to candidates in the interview process, not like once they're hired, you should make it clear to them in the interview process that these are aspects of the product that I want you to own entirely. These are aspects of the product that you will own, but I would love to consult on. And then these are aspects of the product that I will be the primary owner on and then I will expect you to consult me on. Creating that clarity and doing this with intent solves a lot of problems that tend to occur downstream.
- [40:39]
A
This is a lovely masterclass in hiring product leaders and this is probably I think the first fundamental thing I see hot many companies is that they are not deliberate in building their team. Meaning rather than recruiting their staffing, they are outsourcing all of these things to HR or some function in the organization. You know, I'm like I have not met any high performing team in the world that was built by staffing by accident. You know, I'm kind of going to recap and play in my head the narrative if I'm coaching a team around this. Because you started by saying let's forget about the person and start with what you want, why you really want someone in this role. Talk about what stage you are in, what are your early stage, growth stage, kind of identify the archetype that will be ideal for this role. You kind of walk through how you test for that archetype in an individual or in a candidate. Then I love this create an MSN list, this must have, should have or nice to have type of thing. And then what do you want this person to accomplish? And that kind of look back exercise in some ways. And then I really love this political aspect of it. This potentially addressing your future friction by being upfront about what aspects of the product you still want to own, you want to participate in and hiring either complimentary or upfront. Being clear about these are important to me that I am consulted or I still own and that even in some ways, maybe even helps you identify the kind of candidates or how people self opt out where they might see that friction as something they cannot give up or they cannot work with. This has been an absolute gift for me. Suresh we'll put out in the show notes. Way to find you where to follow more information around your work and the things you're doing. Thank you for being here.
- [42:24]
B
Thanks Christian. It was great. I loved it.
- [42:26]
A
Want to learn more? Until next time, Please check out svpg.com Sign up for our newsletter that Mary Kagan puts out. Join us for one of our workshops near you and get access to all of the articles and content we put out. And thank you to everyone for joining us. Until next time, have a good day.
- [42:48]
D
A quick Disclaimer While this podcast is named Product Therapy, it is not hosted by licensed therapists or mental health professionals and it is in no way a substitute for professional mental health services. We recognize the importance of mental well being and encourage anyone facing personal difficulties to seek support from qualified professionals. See www.findahelpline.com.