20Product: The Five Step Process to Hiring the Best Product People, The Four Core Skills the Best PMs Need to Have, The Two Product Documents that Drive World Class Product Teams & Why the Best PMs are Writers with Scott Williamson, Former CPO @ Gitlab

27:16Because I don't want them to rely on the jargon that they learned in their last job. Well, I don't want to also sort of penalize them for asking them about an area that I know really well and boy, this you have seen this. So I asked sort of a non -tetma goal, semi -unrelated case, to ask the how they would solve a problem. What would be an example of that? Sorry, so if you were at Sangra, is it like European mud Uber solved this problem? Yeah, I'm always sort of borderline embarrassed about this example, but I've used it a ton of times. If you ask product managers at Sangra, get likely to probably chuckle about having to have gone through this, I asked them to pretend they are a product manager at a foods company and they own the milk product line and there's been a problem with the production line and they're losing hex per day and it's sort of set up the scenario and the general manager's asked you to dig in and figure out what to do though what do you do?

28:14Bizarre problem statement but you learn a lot from how they handle it like do they start for first principles? Do they have sort of a methodical way of working through a first problem? Do they start with the customer already, they just start making shit up, do they ask good questions, to unpack the scenario. These are all signs of some of you think systematically. Ultimately, that's what that case is for, is to test systems thinking. When we asked about kind of what does the six pages get called in the process, when you think about like, kind of it's going through the like PM process, why do they most often fail?

28:48I think it's when I interview a candidate, I set it up, say, tell me about the product That was the most relevant to what we do here and I'm gonna ask you a bunch of questions about it And so I tried to go a few levels deep on what they've done It doesn't matter if they haven't done anything similar and so if I'm joining San Great and I used to work at snap seemingly Uncorrelated does that matter? Not really look at cam matter. There are certain roles where you need a certain level of technical expertise That's a fact there's certain roles like let's say I'm hiring for a billing product manager I probably want someone who's been around building before so you need to make sure that they had enough domain Experience to survive but mostly what I'm testing for is how you do product and how you think and that's relatively Domain I've lost it I tend not to hire for domain if I don't have to and you can test those things from a snap here And just fine.

29:45So how do they fail? The examples that they give don't indicate to me that they took orders They didn't use their own judgment from inputs that they got. So either they didn't go out and get good inputs or be They didn't or weren't able to turn those into insights. Well good pms can do is take inputs and derive well good insights And so I'll ask questions like tell me about a time where you're doing discovery with customers and learn something that's Surprising but caused your change course or tell me about a time where you're looking at product usage data and found something that was calmer to what you believed and what you do about it.

30:25If somebody's spent enough time interviewing and left -time sifting through product usage data, they should have plenty of examples like that. If they haven't, and they're just making shit up, that kind of thing turned up. So that's one way they fail. The depth of their examples doesn't demonstrate that they actually worked in the way we wanted to work. To this big thing small, maybe they can't communicate clearly, or riding, or verbally, or have trouble iterating to a good answer. And then three of the case study, a lot of people think very haphazardly about rough problems because they just have a great framework for it.

30:59When we think about hiring in a lot of roles, we have a midi team here where hiring for social media often is one of the roles we hire for. It's very clear when someone says, well, on Instagram, I cause a 38 % uplift in conversion on TikTok. I cause this percent data centrality tied to their role is a course signal of 8 A star candidate early. Is that the same for product? And what are the signals that are like, ah, how has got it from that answer? Yeah, I think someone who can clearly connect the work they were doing to the outcome they were trying to drive on can describe. Okay, what did I learn from customers that led me to believe that they would take this action X for there?

31:41How did I instrument the product to know whether the intended effect was there or not? Well then how did I manage to that in the iterate from there? Tell me a story about how you went from early stage to later stage. What lose did you make a long way? Because it's never about shipping one thing. It's about shipping learning and shipping learning. It's a constant journey and you have to have good habits all along the way. Speaking of shipping and learning, we're going to get to product reviews. but we are always evolving our hiring approach ourselves. I've made many mistakes hiring. When you think back, what's been your biggest hiring mistakes?

32:20And what did you learn from them? And how did it change how you think about hiring? Well, I think way back, I didn't have nearly as much conviction on, A, what a good PN look like. I didn't have a rubric in my head like I do now. And I had made the connection on systems thinking and that being super important for PM. So I think wasn't the interviewing for the right stuff was where the early stage came from. Is that the same for founders today? When you look at the founders that you work with, is that the same as the mistakes that they make when hiring for product teams? Yeah, I mean they don't know.

32:49They most of them haven't been a product manager. They have no idea what this role is about. So they don't know what to look for. They don't know how to grade it. And so they go off of pedagogy or they were a Google. Or they know the lingo, you know, they talked about validation, so it must be good at it. Because you know, it's like, it's not true. I get it. I just accept it interviewing for this at first, too. So, the more that you can do is to find out who you're clear on what skills you need out of a lot of PM and be really intentional about testing for it, even if you don't know if function well, you're going to be better off.

33:22Say we hire this person and we're excited about them joining. Onboarding is universally done terribly. How do you onboard PM's effectively, Scott? First, especially in early stage scenarios, the founder has to be crystal clear with the incoming product person about what they want to own as the founder and what they want this product person to own. Oftentimes this is murky and the PM comes in where the product leader comes in and the founder decides, huh? Actually, still not all the own prioritization but the product person came in thinking they were the own law. So do you want a long vision? Yes or no?

34:01Do you want to own strategy? Yes or no? Do you want to own prioritization? Yes or no? Do you want to own hiring? Yes or no? Be crystal clear about those and communicate that in the hiring process and document it and someone comes in so that's clear. They know what they're feel or should to play on. And then too, I like to be very prescriptive about what I expect. Okay, and week one, you should meet these people. Here's a link to all the docs you should read like in the first two weeks you should be helping them gain context very fast Like roll out the red carpet. Here's who to made here's what to read Here's all the content you need in weeks three and four talk to customers You know, I want to see 10 customer interviews or whatever by the end of month Well, you should be able to give it dental what these deliverables are company specific But help them get context tell them your expectations on what they should underwent another example is Maybe you're the founder and you're still on all the squelms for seedings.

34:54When do I want you to start leading these things? After months one, months two, like set their expectations and then along the way you engage whether they're going to be ready on time. How fast do you know if someone's bad? I think if they're really bad, you know, within the first week. If they're maybe good, they're not good enough, you're going to know within the first quarter. Have you ever had someone being really bad? And if so, what did you not see? How did they get through that process? Later on, when I got better at hiring, there were relatively few of these where it was just, you know, they're bailin' on me.

35:28Well, it's just, I've told a disaster because we got better for screening, but we did have a foreign member that just didn't make a cut at month three. I think what you find is, hey, they don't take ownership, either they don't want to or can't. By month three, you should really see them start leaning and have a strong point of view, take ownership, have some conviction and priority, and they're just not there for whatever reason. Maybe they didn't have the base skills to for a point of view. Maybe they're a little timid about communicating a point of view. Maybe they don't collaborate. Well, these things can be a little harder to test for and show up within the first few months.

36:06Once in those first few months, managing performance is so important. How do you think about managing PM performance? We said it earlier, But how do you actually do that? And is there a framework will stretch it that's effective in doing so? Yeah, I have this thing called a career development framework. I mentioned those four buckets. So validation, bill, business and communication. And then there's a breakdown for PM, senior PM, principal PM. And it tried to outline with as much specificity as possible what behavior and outcome expectations are at each level for each bucket. And I would have conversations with my directs and I would ask any other people leaders to do the same to have a check -in every two to three months on that.

36:52What I would do is very simple. I create a new line below their level and I would write down what did I see that was either really good or constructive feedback on each of these four buckets. And then I would also tell them where I think they stood at large against that skill set. Do they need development? Do they need my expectations? Or do they exceed my expectations? Well, if you check in on this stuff every couple of months, they get nuggets of really actionable feedback. They know where they stand with you. They have something or some things to work on over the next two to three months. To get better.

37:27And then when the review cycle comes up at the end of the year, we'll know some problems with a stand promotion, fire and conversations are all much easier because they know where to stand with you. And it takes them work. I would set prep calls in my calendar. Okay, a week before my interview with OX, I would have a little half hour prep meeting where I would show the set out, gather my thoughts, take a little bit of energy to provide and give feedback. And then I would have an extra half an hour on top of our normal one -on -one where we would just talk about career shit we wouldn't talk about day to day.

38:00And that, I found that worked really well as you were consistent. Okay, it's talking about kind of career shit and promotion in particular. What should PMs focus on if they really want to get promoted as a PM? Hey, you should have the strongest point of view. Anybody in the company about the ideal customer? For your area. Like if you're the aunt and aunt and aunt and aunt and aunt and aunt and aunt and aunt, you should know what those platform engineers want, how they work, what makes them tick. Is that how you want to wait until you get promoted though? If we think about like, I'm in GitLab. How does having a strong opinion on the ICP help me get noticed by leadership and get a promotion?

38:36If you really understand them, then you're going to TF the right work, which is going to drive results. Ultimately, you want to drive results. How do you get there? I think the building block is having a ton of perspective on the target user and what they need to do the right stuff for them. And if you demonstrate that you know the target user, Sales get in trust you marketing is gonna come for you to you to make sure that your thing is marketed the right way Engineering is going to believe you and trust you enough fight you on every decision you make It just everything flows from that So that's the very first thing I would do and then from there you're trying to prove business impact So make sure you have a KPI that leadership cares about that maps to the world that you report on regularly and openly honestly My god, it's a lot of work being a product leader.

39:23It really is. I'm listening to this. I prepped cool before the media mouth. Fuck, this sounds awful. I think one of the reasons this show is successful is because I'm not in it. And so I bring this very naturally. Oh, my God. Oh, I should do it. I should do it. Vansh is so much better. You got to want it bad to be good to you. I'm just a sure. I mean, God, yeah. You've spoken before also about like iterating and learning. I think one common feature of any product team or leadership role especially as well is the product review cycle quite hard to know how to do a product review well if you've never done one before.

40:03Yeah, how do you do product reviews well and what's been some big lessons in what works? If you're really you may be able to combine all of those but I tend to separate reviews that are about work in progress. From reviews about the product or product area as a whole as an example this opportunity let's say you're a product manager in an ops area of GitLab. I used to have a monthly KPI review with each area so we had a dead month KPI review with sick month KPI review and ops month KPI review. This was more about the area as a whole. Each area had a target KPI or numerous KPI's that they were managing to and the rhythm of that was I would ask them, okay, what happened in the numbers with gone on?

40:49What did you do last month to drive your target metric and what are you going to do next month? I was sort of this constant check -in to make sure that there are priorities and actions at least pass the test that they are reasonably aligned with the target metric they are trying to measure. So that was kind of high level, how's this whole thing doing? Then you also have work on progress. So you the ops PM and you have this idea that we need a much better and incident management features that. That's where I would get into your reviews on this in progress work. And that's where that opportunity can, the STEM comes in.

41:21Okay, ops, PM. Show me the canvas with a problem we're solving with incident management. And if the concept looks good, and you sure green like that, when they move to the next phase, which is going a prototype, usually with design. And then when we go back and review the prototype as a solution. Okay, PM, you had these 10 customers. they wanted this, does this design really solve that for? Can I just jump in and ask just so we know for this product review, who's in the room and who's set the agenda? Is it just the people working on it and the leader? Is it the wider product team? Who sets the agenda?

41:57I think for the opportunity canvas and the solution was called the preloader type review. The PM will designer who are doing the work, the product leader or leaders. For me, it was me, the design leader, we have a VP of design at both Sender and Gidlamp. The two of us were in there. Plus the PN and the designer, and anybody else they wanted to avoid, and that sometimes meant the engineering manager. We usually are running with four or five, and that's sort of on this conceptual pre -engineer phase. Can I just jump in and I'll, sorry, I'm too intrigued. Yes, go for it. You obviously want to get lab remote.

42:33A lot of people say that in terms of product reviews, being remote enables a lot more broad participation participation because people can obviously be kind of spectators so to speak without being a presence in the room How do you advise remote versus non -remote when it comes to product reviews and wider participation? I think you can open it up to more I was always of the mind the more the merrier But I wanted to be careful about how many voices were in the room because it would be usually fairly quick meetings You know maybe 30 30 minutes to an hour max you got to be quick in getting to the point and get into the illusions.

43:08At GitLab we recorded all of them and we posted them and anybody who wanted to watch would cut. So we were very transparent about all these meetings. You could see them all as an intern employee. What happens post product review? How do you ensure that the learnings are codified, shad and unenacted? I think that's where these modestly reviews came in. So let's just say we agreed that they should move on with a project and we like the concept and we like the kind of the design prototype. Then I get fed into the development cycle and then as they're talking about their KPI review they're to reflect on what we did last long, what we're going to do next month and then you start to see how this thing's getting iterated on as it projects all towards the ultimate customer value.

43:54That's why separating them out a little bit is the first two or more about making sure this is something we want to take on It was a good investment. And the other was more like managing the ongoing priorities is at least a building. I'm just thinking, when we think about managing those priorities, how do you use a product leader to tell them in between resolving life technical debt versus pursuing that new opportunities of revenue generation? I think this depends on stage broadly speaking. If you're very early, you're probably heavy in a new feature buildout. If you're more mature, you've probably got a lot of surface area that already exists and you might want to have a heavier percentage to get rid of improvements of things that have already shift and tech debt.

44:38At Sengrit, we had a recommended split and granted this is when we were sort of a hundred million in the age of 60, 30, 10, 60 on that new, 30 on 80 of treatments, 10 on tech debt. It was totally fungible. Teams could recommend a different split. But in the absence of the better idea, that was a recommendation on how to allocate your efforts. If you short -interior improvements or you short -tech debt, it will bite you. And so I think having a healthy amount of ongoing improvement to the current experience and a healthy amount of ability for engineers to burn down tech debt reduces the risk of these deep pile -ups that sometimes companies get in.

45:20Scott, you've been in Product Leader for many years now at some of the best before we do a quick fire just with the theme of reflection. What do you know now that you could tell yourself entering the first Product Leadership position you took? Oh my god, you can call yourself the night before that first job and say you should know this. Yeah, I think it would be really start with the problem and start with the customer, I do a ton of customer discovery. My first PN role was in a place in kind of one of these enterprise factories that tended to do what large companies asked them to do. And I get it.

46:01That was where the incentives were aligned. But ultimately, I don't think that product was everything it could have been. If I'd been more focused on starting with the problem, starting with the customer, so I wish I had that epiphany earlier. Do you worry that we're going back to that world now with the centralization of budgets back to CFOs, with CFOs being tighter on spend, with bottoms up being more constrained? I think that's a reason to bowl hypothesis. There are fewer engineers, fewer pms, fewer designers. People are being asked to do more with less. I would guess the average pms probably has less time to get out of the building.

46:41and there's more focus on revenue and if you're a trotic manager and you're trying to drive a longer trip vision that might have pay off in a year or two or three versus the sales team coming and saying hey, we gotta make the number of this quarter. I need this for company X with pretty hard to push back on that so I can imagine that a lot of pms are hard facing that and might be shifting more towards doing really tactical short -term stuff. I want to move into a quick fight Scott I could talk to you all day. I've loved this. the best shows for me where it's bluntly as granular and actionable as possible, but then I would add one thing which is really quite specific.

47:18When it's quite numbered, people don't know this, but when you number points, they instantly become, I think it's 64 % more memorable because it structures it in someone's mind. And so this has been fantastic. I want to move into a quick fly, so I'm going to say a short statement, you give me your immediate thoughts. Does that sound okay? That was good. Okay, so tell me, when do we listen to users, customers, versus when do we actually respectfully continue as planned on product roadmap? Broadly speaking, listen to customers about the problems, all generally ignore their recommendations around solution, because they may not, buildings exactly what they want, may not be the most elegant way to solve the problem.

47:59That's generally a rule of thumb. What's the biggest mistake founders make when hiring product teams? relying on low bill versus the actual accomplishments. And I also think there's in a related fashion, higher people who don't actually want to be at the stage you are. If early stage founders try to hire a maybe a really product leader and they hire somebody from maybe a company that's doing a hundred million or a billion, make sure they want to get back into that hands -on and hustle where a lot of hats move. because I see a lot of sort of failed entry because it sounds glamorous to be the first head of, but these people actually all work that way.

48:40We're really stage. There's a lot of discovery. There's a lot of creativity here. You're more on the art mode versus science. You have to want to be there, you know, that early discovery, we're taking product from zero or a small number or two, bigger number as much to full thought out for size. What function has the most friction with product, and how to use a leader, minimize it. It's a tie between engineering and sales, depending on the orientation with company. Some companies are very engineering -led, some are very sales -led, where those are, where the scales are really tipped one way or the other.

49:16They end up tending to want to do the priority work, attend to odd pms to just be order tickers and do what they think. If you're a good pm, and you want to run the process the right way, that can create a ton of friction that they don't really understand why your direction is better than theirs. Does AI change product teams much? It will. It probably has to some degree. If nothing else in terms of the projects that they're going to have to work on. So, A, they're going to have to understand this domain. They're going to have to get to know your LLL and they're going to have to learn how to prompt.

49:52They're going to have to learn how to create a maybe more of a chat experience versus a typical UI experience. So the product, the end result for customers is going to change. Two, you'll start to be able to use tools from AI, two, you'll automate some of this stuff. You know, I mentioned product usage data and customer insights. I could imagine AI will do a nice job of summarizing that for you. So you don't have to incur as much brain damage with the input and set the system, gets in help on that. So, PMs will have more help set the satisfying tons of inputs. And then ultimately, I think it might change the role like right now there's a pretty clear division between what PMs do, what designers do, what engineering engineers do.

50:39PMs decide what to do, designers decide how it's going to, like what the user experience is and design engineer builds it, codes it. I can imagine those lines blurring if you get into the world where code assistance can do some prototype being where code assistance can generate 80 % of the code and then it becomes more about how do you prop the thing to come up with the rugg user experience how do you again I think I think PM still has a role because we still gonna need to decide you were going after what problems we're gonna solve all of that but the lines may wind blur I can imagine with triple roll down the line where they're doing PM, design and engineering with the help of AI.

51:21Tell me, what would you most like to change about the world of products? Well, it's well -wired and advised at this time, but it's the same advice I would have given myself way back when. Talk to customers more. I feel like even though that's the most obvious thing in product, I'm guessing 90 % of PMs don't do them also of it. It shows up in a number of failed products and failed projects. And so I wish pms would just start there and then fill in the rest of it What recent company product strategy have you been most impressed by? Well at big scale and is all it's amazing I've learned a ton from the way they do things and if she hadn't read you working backwards I recommend it for more recent smaller company example There's a chemical that browser company yeah, Josh very cares not dude And they have a browser called ARC, which is a crowded space.

52:15It's tough to play with giants there. I've heard a ton of buzz about them, and I've used it myself on the line of ARC browser right now. Lots of thoughtful UX touches. And they made it a little more fun to go browse the web, and I think they have an ambitious vision of how one might access the internet down the line. For example, they're using AI in a clever way, and making it very easy to interact with chat He paties through the browser, so they've done a really nice job of trying to create some differentiations of great product and user experience. I'm looking now, actually, I got introduced to him through a mutual friend.

52:52He's in Paris now. There we go. Scott, listen, I've loved doing this. This has been so much fun. Thank you so much for putting up with my meandering questions. And you've been amazing. Well, my pleasure. It was a lot of fun. Thanks for having me here. For me, that was just one of the best shows. I started 20 product 20 growth and 20 sales because I wanted to bring the knowledge of the best operators to you Who maybe doesn't have that wisdom and experience and seen all the things that they've seen He went so granular there in his lessons today If you want to see more from us you can find it on YouTube by searching for 20vc But before we leave you today your website is the front door of your business But the way teams build and optimize it is broken Start between inflexible templates and cumbersome code dependent solutions.

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