Hiring a VP of Product?

If you are considering hiring a VP of Product, here are the questions to ask:

How will you make this person successful?

How will they help me achieve my goals?

What do they care about most? How do I align our incentives?

How will I make sure they own both the product and the people?

The best answers to these questions will reveal whether your VP of Product is a good fit for your company. If they don’t answer them well, or if you don’t like their answers, you shouldn’t hire them.

2. Understand how your new VP of Product will build and support the team.

If you already have a team, your new VP of Product needs to understand what makes the team successful. If you don’t have a team yet, your new VP of Product needs to understand what key positions they will need to fill, and what expectations those new people should have. Your new VP of Product must also understand that they won’t be able to hire everyone or fill every role themselves, so they need to know how to play the assistant versus the general manager role. If they can’t do that, then it might be time to think about someone else.

3. Define clear roles and responsibilities.

Everyone on your team must know exactly what they are doing and why it matters, or else the entire organization will fall apart. When someone is doing something important and doesn’t know why it matters or who will benefit from it, that person won’t have enough motivation or purpose to do their job well. It is up to your new VP of Product to answer these questions for each and every person on their team and in their organization. And don’t forget to ask these questions yourself! You need to know as much as possible about your own role and responsibilities too. If you don’t know what you should be doing, then no one else will either! When possible, have conversations with your new VP of Product about these topics in person rather than over email or other digital mediums. It is very hard to get meaning from email alone, but it is easy for your new VP of Product to see how excited or frustrated you are when you are talking in person. That excitement or frustration will help them better understand your role and how they can help you succeed! Even if it isn’t possible for all discussions with your new VP of Product to occur in person, try leaving a trail of breadcrumbs that helps everyone on your team understand exactly where their work fits into the big picture. This enables them to understand why their work matters as well as how it fits into the rest of the organization’s work. It also enables them to understand what their peers are doing as well as what everyone else on their team is doing so that they see how their own work ties together with everyone else on their team and beyond!

4. Empower your new VP of Product to make decisions.

Most managers are afraid to empower their team to make decisions. It is much easier to manage a team if you are the one making all of the decisions, because then you can be certain that you’re always doing the right thing. Unfortunately, this approach doesn’t work very well. When you make all of the decisions, you’re losing out on the wisdom of all of the other people on your team. Even if they don’t have much experience making decisions, they still have years and years of experience making decisions about their own work and how to spend their time. If you want to build a great team, it is critical that you empower your team to make decisions — even if those decisions are sometimes wrong. Your new VP of Product should be able to make most or all of the big decisions for their organization without your direct approval, and they also need to be able to help everyone on their team learn how to make those same types of decisions for themselves.

5. Watch out for conflicts of interest.

Your new VP of Product and their manager should both be technically capable enough to understand what is happening with the product at all times, and they should both understand how everything fits together too. This will help them make better decisions about how to prioritize work and hire for certain roles. But, because they won’t have as much technical experience as everyone else on their team, it is critical that they don’t try to do their own work or try to do someone else’s work either. When this happens, there will be conflict as people feel like they are being treated unfairly, or like someone else is getting special treatment because they are the boss. If there are multiple VPs of Product in your organization (for example, one VP for Products A & B, and one VP for Products B & C), it is a good idea for them to rotate who does what, rather than having one person responsible for everything all of the time. This will provide a much clearer picture of how each person on the team is doing and it will help prevent conflict by creating better alignment between each person’s work and what matters most in your company (sometimes people will do better at things that matter less than things that matter more!). If it isn’t possible for the VPs of Product in your organization to rotate who does what on a regular basis (for example, if you only have one product), then you should consider having an SVP (Senior Vice President) who is responsible for coordinating everything instead of having multiple VPs who each have a say in everything.

6. Give your new VP of Product authority over hiring decisions — but not responsibility for outcomes.

Your new VP of Product should have full authority over hiring decisions, which means they should be able to hire anyone inside or outside your organization without anyone else needing to approve those hires — including you. This doesn’t mean that your new VP of Product will be able to hire anyone they want, though. The new VP of Product should be hiring people who are aligned with the company’s mission and who are a good fit for the culture. The culture of the company is very important to getting work done, because it determines how people will interact with each other and whether they will feel like they are working together to achieve a common goal or whether they will feel like they are working alone in their own silos. When your new VP of Product hires someone who isn’t a culture fit or if they hire someone who isn’t aligned with the company’s mission, then it is up to you to let them know that they made the wrong decision. If you give your new VP of Product authority over hiring decisions, but you don’t give them responsibility for outcomes, then you can help the new VP of Product build a great team without giving them too much leeway to make bad decisions. If you have this type of conversation with your new VP of Product the right way (in person, not over email), then you can help them improve as a manager by giving them actionable feedback. It can be difficult for managers to hear negative feedback about their work, but it is important that managers do their best to understand where problems come from before trying to fix them!
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