CHAPTER 13Product Leaders
So many people naively believe that the key to empowering product teams and the product model is simply to get the managers to back off, stop micromanaging, and give their product teams some space to do their jobs.
But in the product model, empowered product teams depend on better leadership, not less leadership.
What does that really mean?
As legendary CEO Andy Grove said, “What gets in the way of good work? There are only two possibilities. The first is that people don't know how to do good work. The second is that they know how, but they aren't motivated.”
Let's tackle these two in order.
Management
Let's first discuss the management responsibilities, which primarily involve coaching and staffing.
Coaching
Probably the most often overlooked element to strong management in the product model is coaching. It is the single most important responsibility of every people manager to develop the skills of their people.
This most definitely does not mean micromanaging them. It does mean assessing and understanding their strengths and weaknesses, coming up with a coaching plan, and then spending the quality time necessary to help them improve.
More generally, every member of a product team deserves to have someone who is committed to helping them get better at their craft. This is why, in the vast majority of strong tech product organizations, the engineers report to experienced engineering managers, the designers report to experienced design managers, ...
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