#19 Product leadership and people management responsibility

I read a few days ago: "Product Leaders don't need to manage people."

While a lot of the statements in the Product world can be answered with "yes, it depends", this one felt different.

So here's an important rule of thumb:

👉 Product Leaders should have people management responsibility.

Having responsibility for the strategic context can positively impact the way you lead and manage your teams.

And conversely, leading those teams and managing those Product Managers will provide valuable insights that feed back into shaping the strategic context.

Here's how:

✅ Team topology: When you deeply understand the strategic context, you're better equipped to define which teams should solve which problems - and how they should interact with each other.

✅ Hiring: When you understand the customer and business problems you're trying to solve - as well as the people and the teams you already have - you're better suited to know which competencies you need to add to the team(s) and the level of seniority you should hire for.

✅ Coaching: When you're deep down in your product strategy and in what your teams' objectives are, you're able to leverage that context in your coaching conversations and use it as input when crafting your coaching plans.

✅ Managing: Because you're coaching your teams (more specifically, your Product Managers) and because you're so close to the strategic context - you're also in a better position to understand who needs more support, who may need extra context, who could be promoted, etc.

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Note 1: I'm a big advocate of dual career paths, with a people manager and a specialist track.

When designing such roles in Product (e.g. Principal PM), it's important that they coach other PMs and collaborate very closely with other Product Leaders who have people management responsibilities (e.g. Head of Product). This will ensure you keep some of these synergies.

Note 2: Many leaders have both management and leadership responsibilities. But this varies according to their level in the company (e.g. Director of Product vs CPO)

Who they manage also depends a lot on how the company is organized (e.g. in a matrix org, a Product Designer could be "managed" by a Design Manager but still be part of a team led by a Product Leader).

But having PMs being led and managed by a Product Leader is extremely important.

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Hey there 👋 I’m Afonso, Founder & Partner at Scandinavian Product Group. Thanks for reading!