PETRA WILLE

A Complete Guide to Developing

Great Product Managers
STRONG Product People

Copyright © 2020 Petra Wille. All Rights Reserved.

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

Author & Illustrations: Petra Wille

Editorial office: Peter Economy

Cover Illustration: Kirsten Kaiser

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

Printing: Amazon Distribution

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

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The work, including its parts, is protected by copyright. Any use is prohibited without
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Forewords by Marty Cagan and Martin Eriksson 1, 3
Introduction: Strong 5

PART I: WHAT PRODUCT MANAGERS DO—

DEFINE YOUR GOOD
Chapter 1: Your Role in This Game 13
Chapter 2: A Quick Team Assessment 27
Chapter 3: The Role of Product Managers 33
Chapter 4: Define Your Good 41

PART II: MANAGE YOUR TEAM—FIND YOUR VOICE

Chapter 5: Being a Great Boss 55
Chapter 6: Identifying and Closing Product Manager Gaps 65
Chapter 7: The Power of Coaching 83
Chapter 8: Monitoring Performance and Giving Feedback 103
Chapter 9: Motivation Do’s and Don’ts 119
Chapter 10: Building Individual and Team Alignment 129
Chapter 11: How to Find the Time 139

PART III: FIND AND RECRUIT GOOD PRODUCT MANAGERS—

ATTRACT THE BEST PEOPLE
Chapter 12: Where to Find Great Product Managers 149
Chapter 13: Interviewing, Assessing, and Hiring Candidates 159
Chapter 14: Effective Onboarding 181
 PART IV: DEVELOP YOUR EXISTING PRODUCT TEAM—
TRAIN FOR EXCELLENCE
Chapter 15: Help Your Product Managers Create a Product
Vision and Set Goals 197
Chapter 16: Hypothesis-Driven Product Development and
Experiments 213
Chapter 17: Balancing Product Discovery and
Product Delivery 239
Chapter 18: Time Management for Product People 253
Chapter 19: Working with the Cross-Functional Product
Development Team 267
Chapter 20: Communicating Directly and Openly 281
Chapter 21: Planning and Prioritization 295
Chapter 22: Increments and Iterations 307
Chapter 23: Product Evangelizing and Storytelling 317
Chapter 24: Keep the Senior PMs Engaged 329

PART V: CREATE THE RIGHT ENVIRONMENT—

BUILD A GREAT CULTURE
Chapter 25: The Product Organization’s Location in the
Company’s Org Chart 339
Chapter 26: Change from Within 347
Chapter 27: Foster the Agile Mindset 353
Chapter 28: Handling Conflict 363

A Final Note 377

Acknowledgments 381
About the Author 385
 Chapter 8
Monitoring Performance
and Giving Feedback

e
■■ Creating a healthy performance culture

■■ How to deal with poor performance

■■ Giving and receiving feedback

G ood employee performance is critical to the success of an orga-

nization and the products it builds, and feedback is one of the
most important factors in employee performance. For good reason.
As management professor Christine Porath points out in Harvard
Business Review: “High-performing teams share nearly six times
more positive feedback than average teams.”49
Even so, it’s hard to talk about performance in many compa-
nies—there always seems to be one of two possible extremes. In some
companies, performance is all that matters, and employees who don’t
constantly give 110 percent of themselves are viewed with suspicion or
derision. This is superexhausting for everybody. In other companies,
measuring, assessing, and quantifying the performance of employees

49 Christine Porath (October 16, 2016). Give Your Team More-Effective Positive
Feedback. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2016/10/give-your-team-more-effective
-positive-feedback

103
104 strong product people

is done rarely, if ever. “We are a family and we are here enjoying our
time, hanging out together, and sometimes doing some work.” The
concept of performance doesn’t fit into the “We are a family” ideology
of these companies.
In reality, both of these extremes lead to a work environment that is
unsatisfactory, and ultimately demotivating for employees. In the first
case, employees are worked to the point of exhaustion and burnout,
and performance suffers. These burned-out employees underperform or
simply leave. In the second case, motivation suffers because mastery,
autonomy, and purpose are not being served.50 Employees become
disoriented, unfocused in their efforts, and just muddle their way
through the workday.
Sure, the first kind of company may be successful for some time,
but this success is fleeting. Products built by these companies usually
lack soul because no one has time to work with users and find inno-
vative solutions on their behalf. Stress and employee turnover are
high, leading to bad products and stagnating or declining revenues as
a second-order effect. On the other hand, the second kind of company
never becomes successful in the first place. In an organization where
performance doesn’t count, nothing significant gets delivered and good,
ambitious employees quickly look for—and find—more challenging (and
more satisfying) organizations to work for.
The solution? Create a healthy performance culture.

Creating a Healthy Performance Culture

Creating a healthy performance culture means finding a beneficial
balance when it comes to employee performance. You want to set up
your system in the right way, as illustrated in Figure 8-1—a balanced
approach that prevents overwork and burnout while demanding and
acknowledging good performance. Ultimately, this is more about fix-
ing the system than about fixing the employee.

50 Daniel Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Riverhead
Books (2009)
 M o n i t o r i n g P e r f o r ma n c e a n d Gi v i n g F e e d ba c k 105

Figure 8-1: A balanced, healthy performance culture

I have found that it usually helps to explain to everyone exactly

what a company is all about. A company is a group of people who
have committed themselves to, and are aligned with, a shared goal.
And the shared goal is solving customer problems so well that they
will pay you enough money in return so your employees can earn a
living and you can invest in the future of the company.
What a company is not is a family. Yes, we may be friendly with
one another, may meet after work for drinks or dinner, and the CEO
may sometimes act like a proud parent of her employees. But families
don’t typically have a common goal—especially not an economic one.
A company cannot function without common goals, and these goals
in many cases ultimately lead to economic outcomes. Companies are
all about creating value together, and every employee who receives a
salary must make a real contribution to this effort.
So, if your performance culture is out of balance, my advice is
to fix the system first, then work with employees to improve their
performance. Companies that have a healthy performance culture are
set up in a way that:

■■ Value creation is a shared goal and the expected growth

rate for things like revenue is appropriate/not crazy (e.g.,
not driven by greedy shareholders). Everyone knows
what the company is up for and why.
106 strong product people

■■ The resulting performance obligations must be

distributed as evenly as possible over a reasonable
number of shoulders.

■■ Roles must be clearly defined, communicated, and

understood.

■■ Expectations for the individual contributions of each

employee must be clearly communicated.

■■ Managers (and the company) must support employees in

meeting expectations.

■■ Employees who do not live up to expectations must

be supported to improve. The motto is: “It’s hard to
get better if you don’t know what better looks like.”
The manager himself needs to have a clear picture of
what better means and must support employees on this
journey as a tour guide.

Figure 8-2: It’s hard to get better if you don’t

know what better looks like 51

51 Based on a comic by Joshua Howard: https://www.slideshare.net

/MrJoshuaHoward/career-development-in-a-boxgdc-2011
 M o n i t o r i n g P e r f o r ma n c e a n d Gi v i n g F e e d ba c k 107

This brings us back to the idea of defining your good.52 Heads of

product need to have a clear definition of what a competent PM looks
like, and they must share this definition with their product teams—
working with their product teams and individual PMs to improve.53
One more important aspect essential to a healthy performance
culture is feedback—both giving and receiving it. Only when feed-
back is mutual and possible in all directions (upward to management,
sideways to colleagues and stakeholders, and inward to the team) can
everyone in a company learn, grow, and improve together. We’ll talk
more about feedback later in this chapter.

How to Deal with Poor Performance

If your people aren’t performing up to standard, you’ve got to do
something about it—now. In addition, some employees will for what-
ever reason fail to align with your company culture, values, and
goals. This also must be dealt with. Allowing poor performance or
misalignment to continue unchallenged is a sure way to demotivate
your high performers (encouraging them to move on to other orga-
nizations) while delivering lackluster products that don’t solve cus-
tomer problems.
You have put your heart and soul into every employee on your
team, helping them along their career paths and sharing their struggles
and sorrows, their ups and their downs. Sometimes, our employees
become our friends, which makes it even more difficult to engage in
difficult conversations over performance. Unfortunately, many leaders
try to ignore the issue of poor performance and hope it will go away.
But there is something else you can do that is in between ignoring
and ultimately firing somebody: You can actually really try to help
them. This might be by helping them find a new position outside your
team that plays to their strengths, or by helping them understand what
they need to improve. I personally believe that you should try to help

52 As addressed in Chapter 4: Define Your Good

53 See Chapter 7: The Power of Coaching for ideas on how to best accomplish this.
108 strong product people

them for a variety of good reasons, not the least of which is economic.
It has, in fact, been estimated that replacing an employee—including
sourcing a replacement, interviewing prospective candidates, onboarding
the new hire, and the loss in productivity as you bring the new hire
up to speed—can cost an organization more than $65,000.54
Needless to say, it makes more sense to keep your people motivated
and happy in their jobs than to continuously replace them. Invest a
significant amount of your time providing your people with feedback
and coaching them, and invest some money for training that will
improve their skills and further develop their careers.
Remember: A high work standard starts with the example you set
for others to follow. Any difference in the expectations you set for
your team compared with the expectations you set for yourself will
be duly noted and seen as hypocritical.
And if none of this helps to improve employee performance, you
will have a reason and examples to share and discuss with HR or your
boss. If you are providing your people with regular feedback (which
you should be doing), then discussing your performance concerns with
them won’t be a surprise. The key is continuous feedback, which just
happens to be the topic we’ll explore next.

Feedback: The Breakfast of Champions

Every one of us needs continuous feedback—delivered direct and
unvarnished—to perform at our very best. It’s no wonder that feed-
back has been called by some “the breakfast of champions.” But how
do you create a good feedback culture, what kinds of feedback are
there, and how can you give and accept feedback that may be per-
ceived as negative?
Again, continuous feedback is key—it really does make a difference
in the performance of your people. It’s not possible to have a good

54 Jason Evanish (May 5, 2015). The Hidden Costs of Replacing an Employee

that Total Over $65,500. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse
/hidden-costs-replacing-employee-total-over-65500-jason-evanish/
 M o n i t o r i n g P e r f o r ma n c e a n d Gi v i n g F e e d ba c k 109

feedback culture, however, if people don’t feel safe. You need to create
an environment of trust so that they are comfortable enough to show
their vulnerability, admit and accept their errors, and say, “I’m sorry.”
There needs to be psychological safety.55
And if you are having a hard time giving feedback that could be
considered negative, focus on what your people need—not just in their
current role, but also in their future careers. The bigger picture helps,
even if you find it superintimidating to give them the feedback. If you
don’t, then they won’t have the information they need to change for the
better. To get in the right frame of mind for delivering performance-re-
lated feedback, be sure to read Kim Scott’s book, Radical Candor. As
she points out, you have to care personally and challenge directly.
Be sure to give feedback, both praise and criticism, as close to the
triggering event as possible. Be liberal with praise—catch your people
doing things right and let them know you appreciate it. But avoid
delivering what is known as a “compliment sandwich,” where you
first praise an employee, then offer some criticism (the actual reason
for your feedback), and then close the conversation by again praising
the employee. This approach tends to be seen as fake by those who
receive it.

Figure 8-3: Delivering praise and criticism—constantly

55 To learn more about psychological safety, go to this chapter’s Further Reading.

110 strong product people

When you deliver feedback, Julie Zhuo—former VP, Product Design

at Facebook—suggests that this feedback will generally fall into one of
two categories, either task-related feedback or behavioral feedback.56
Here are a couple examples of task-related feedback:

■■ “I liked the management summary you added to the last

email you sent. That helped me quickly understand the
main points and saved me a lot of time!”

■■ “The report you sent to us yesterday had some mistakes

in it. The problem is that, if people are making their
decisions based on the report, those decisions will most
likely be wrong. In the long run, this will harm the
company. I think this happened because you started to
compile the report just one hour before you had to send
it. Is that correct? What could you do to avoid that in the
future?”

And here’s an example of behavioral feedback:

■■ “When you gave your presentation in yesterday

morning’s team meeting, you were uncertain about two
of the slides and jumped back and forth. I noticed how
the meeting attendees began to question everything
you said from that point on. I’m worried that this may
negatively affect your reputation here because many
senior execs attended the meeting. I would love to
support you. What do you think would help you best
avoid this the next time you give a presentation?”

56 Julie Zhuo, The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You,
Portfolio (2019)
 M o n i t o r i n g P e r f o r ma n c e a n d Gi v i n g F e e d ba c k 111

5 Steps to a New Feedback Culture

If your feedback culture needs some work (and this is the case in
many companies), there are some definite things you can do right
now to improve it. Here are five steps to creating a solid feedback
culture in your organization:
Step 1: Ask for feedback and learn how to receive it. As an HoP,
your PMs look to your example to decide how they will behave. So, if
you want your PMs to consistently ask for and receive feedback—and
to do the same with their people—then you need to model the right
way to ask for feedback and learn how to receive it.
First, find your question—the question that will trigger the kind of
candid feedback you need to do a better job. It has to be authentic and
something you can ask in every 1:1. I like to ask, “What could I do or
stop doing that would make it easier to work with me?”
Then, you need to learn how to take the feedback, which may not
always be positive. Embrace discomfort—remain calm and fight the
natural instinct to become paranoid or defensive. Count to six before
you respond. Listen to understand, not to just react, and reward your
PM for her candor.
Here are some specific tips on how to receive feedback:

■■ Listen. Keep an open mind. Everyone makes mistakes,

and we can all use improvement in some areas. Resist
the temptation to argue or make excuses.

■■ Consider the source. Does the speaker have the

authority, knowledge, and expertise to give you this
feedback? Does he or she have an ulterior motive? (Be
careful not to invent one, though, just to make yourself
feel better.)

■■ Ask for specific examples. Don’t accept generalities such

as “poor,” “disappointing,” or “lousy.” Politely ask the
speaker to tell you exactly what is wrong. Questions like,
“Exactly what was wrong with the presentation?” or a
112 strong product people

request such as, “Help me to understand what you mean

by ‘poor’,” should help you get some useful feedback.

■■ Evaluate the criticism. If the feedback is valid, accept

it gracefully and with a positive attitude, and thank
the person giving the feedback. Tell the speaker you
appreciate his or her comments and be enthusiastic about
your willingness and ability to use the suggestions to
improve your performance.

■■ Keep the useful information but let go of the negative

feelings. Don’t dwell on the embarrassment of being
criticized. Hold your head up high and move on.

Remember: Always assume that the feedback you get from your people
is given to help, not hurt you. As Indra Nooyi, former chairman and
CEO of PepsiCo, suggests, “Whatever anybody says or does, assume
positive intent. You will be amazed at how your whole approach to a
person or problem becomes very different.”57
Step 2: Create a habit: collect and prepare. Creating a feedback
culture requires that you and your people make it a habit—something
you do continuously. As you create this habit, you’ll want to focus
your efforts in two areas: collecting your feedback and preparing to
deliver it.
When collecting feedback, find the triggers that will make it a
habit. For example, “Whenever I enter a room for a meeting where one
or more of my PMs is attending, I’ll get out a pen and paper to collect
some feedback for them.” In addition, track your collection efforts to
reinforce the habit—making notes in a small journal is enough. You’ll
also need to plan how you will get back on track if your feedback
collection habit starts to slacken: “When this happens I will…”

57 https://archive.fortune.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0804/gallery.bestadvice
.fortune/7.html
 M o n i t o r i n g P e r f o r ma n c e a n d Gi v i n g F e e d ba c k 113

Preparing positive feedback is easy: simply note the task or behavior

you want to praise and how it made a positive contribution to the team,
organization, or customers. Preparing negative feedback, however,
takes a bit more work. Here are some specific things you should do to
prepare for delivering negative feedback:

■■ Check to see if the expectations where clear—if not,

change this first!

■■ Make a list of what’s not working.

■■ Focus on the patterns—the recurring issues are the ones

you’ll want to focus on with your PMs. Fixing these
recurring issues will yield the greatest improvement
overall in the shortest amount of time.

■■ Map it to something they know: role description,

PMwheel, and so on. The feedback will be taken less
personally that way.

■■ Plan to discuss in your next 1:1

OO Think about how the feedback could be

misinterpreted. As Kim Scott puts it, “Measure

at the other person’s ear.”58 Keep cultural and
personal differences in mind.
OO I like to use the Situation-Behavior-Impact (SBI)

feedback tool, developed by the Center for Creative

Leadership to help managers deliver clear, specific
feedback.59 It requires you to describe the exact
situation you want to talk about, the behavior the
other person showed in this situation, and what
negative/positive impact this might have on them,
the team, or the company.

58 Kim Scott, Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity,
St. Martin’s Publishing Group (2017)
59 https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/situation-behavior-impact-feedback.htm
114 strong product people

OO Don’t make it personal—instead of “you” (“You

screwed this up!”) use “this” (“This requires a
different approach.”)

Step 3: Ask if they want it. Did your PM ask for feedback? Yes?
Great, then give it! No? Then ask if they want feedback. This may
require asking some specific questions that elicit feedback about work
performance:

■■ “Would you like more or less feedback on your work?

Why/why not?”

■■ “Would you like more or less direction from me? Why/

why not?”

■■ “On what aspect of your job would you like more help or
coaching?”

■■ “What’s a recent situation you wish you handled

differently? What would you change?”

Step 4: Give feedback (praise and criticism). Start your new feed-
back habit by giving praise. Not only is it easier to give, but positive
feedback encourages people to change their negative behaviors while
keeping the positive ones. Remember: You get what you reward! Once
you’ve given some praise, then work your way into giving critiques
as well. As shown in Figure 8-4, it’s important to say the right things
(content) clearly with the right attitude in an appropriate setting and
in a timely manner.
But please don’t be the party pooper. For example, if the team is
celebrating a big product launch, that is not the time to single out
people to deliver negative feedback about how they could have done
better. Please save that for your 1:1 improvement discussions.
 M o n i t o r i n g P e r f o r ma n c e a n d Gi v i n g F e e d ba c k 115

Figure 8-4: Content, attitude, form, setting, and timing

Here’s a step-by-step approach to giving feedback to your PMs:

1. In the meeting, get context first. Someone’s poor perfor-
mance could be due to problems at home or work, being
overwhelmed, not enjoying the work they are doing, changes
in their goals and interests, burnout, or any number of other
reasons. You want to find out the source of the poor perfor-
mance before you jump into your feedback.
2. Then say it right away. You are prepared, so there’s abso-
lutely no reason to beat about the bush. Don’t make room for
assumptions—explain exactly where you are coming from.
Ask and say the obvious, for example, “I think X is the reason
why, is that correct?” Reference back to either the PM’s role
description, the definition of your good, or the PMwheel.
3. Transition to coaching. Talking about a problem is not
enough. Make sure it’s clear what needs to be different going
forward, and that your PM understands why his work was
below standard. Your specific examples and explaining how
the issues affected others can paint a more vivid picture that
helps him understand your coaching more clearly. Tell people
what success regarding the feedback topic looks like. (For
junior employees, it might be necessary to say something
like, “This is the issue in my view—here’s a suggestion on
how to fix it. What do you think about that?”)
116 strong product people

4. Offer help. You need to support your employee who may feel
overwhelmed for a variety of different reasons.
5. Agree on next steps. Ask your PM to email you the agree-
ment. (In their words, did your feedback resonate with them?)
6. Follow up. Did the feedback you provided lead to the change
you would like to see? (If not, ask yourself: Am I giving
feedback often enough? Am I highlighting positive things
often enough?)

And remember the words of Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor:

“Don’t focus on what you fear, focus on what they need.”
Step 5: Make sure you’re not the only source of feedback. Your
PMs will take your feedback more seriously if they also hear it from
others, so don’t be the only source of it. Encourage peer feedback and
make sure everyone knows how to give—and receive—it.
Ultimately, it’s up to you as head of product to create a culture in
your organization where feedback is valued and happening on a con-
tinuous basis. Model the behavior yourself and provide the resources
and support your people need to do it themselves without your con-
stant prodding or intervention. Giving feedback should be as easy and
invigorating as taking a breath of fresh air.

Further Reading
■■ Situation-Behavior-Impact (SBI) feedback tool: https://
www.strongproductpeople.com/further-readings
#chapter-8_1

■■ Joshua Howard has written a lot about engineering role

expectations—his “There Is No Them” blog contains
many tips on how to make sure employees know what
the expectations are: https://www.strongproductpeople
.com/further-readings#chapter-8_2
 M o n i t o r i n g P e r f o r ma n c e a n d Gi v i n g F e e d ba c k 117

■■ If you have to discipline or let an employee go,

this article presents many alternative approaches:
https://www.strongproductpeople.com/further
-readings#chapter-8_3

■■ Jeff Gothelf wrote this excellent article on psychological

safety: Without Psychological Safety There Is No
Learning and There Is No Agility: https://www.strong
productpeople.com/further-readings#chapter-8_4

■■ This article on psychological safety by Laura Delizonna

has good advice on how to create it: High-Performing
Teams Need Psychological Safety. Here’s How to Create
It: https://www.strongproductpeople.com/further
-readings#chapter-8_5

■■ Books:
OO Radical Candor by Kim Scott (or watch her video:

https://youtu.be/f-Tcr0T9Tyw)
OO The Making of a Manager by Julie Zhuo

OO The Team That Managed Itself by Christina

Wodtke
 About the Author

e
P etra Wille is an independent product
leadership coach who’s been helping
product teams boost their skillset and
up their game since 2013. Alongside
her freelance work, Petra co-organizes
and curates Mind the Product Engage
Hamburg, Germany.

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