Why HR Needs to Start Hiring Product Managers.. Now!

The changes organisations and employees are currently experiencing due to COVID-19 are only the tip of the iceberg. Add to the mix the societal unrest due to systematic racism permeating within the United States and through to the rest of the world and organisations are staring some hairy, massive, existential questions right in the face:

What type of organisation do we want to be?

How will we better serve our employees?

How will we better serve our community?

In a recent article, I discussed why 2020 will be The Year of the Chief People Officer. The evolving situations regarding the pandemic and global, social upheaval only reinforce this prediction, and it will be up to HR teams to guide their organisations in answering the questions above. 

In the coming weeks and months (and years!), HR teams, some of which are just now being invited to the strategic management table for the first time, will have to shepherd their organisations through to the other side of COVID-19. 

In the coming weeks and months (and years!), HR teams will have to lead tough conversations around racial injustice and design policies and solutions that move companies in the right direction. 

Taking on these initiatives will require HR teams to adopt new mindsets, skill sets, operating models, and subject matter expertise.

While this kind of fundamental mindset shift doesn’t happen overnight, nevertheless, employees and organisations need to start making changes now in order to persevere through the pandemic and understand their roles in contributing to systemic injustices in society and begin to fundamentally change. 

One strategy HR teams can employ to fast-track the adoption of new operating models, ways of working, and problem solving frameworks requires us to look towards another role in many organisations for inspiration - the product manager. 

What do product managers actually do?

Now, there are about a million different definitions for the role of product manager. Depending on who you ask, the type and maturity of the organisation, or the type of product a PM owns, the set of responsibilities and descriptors used to define exactly what a product manager does will vary. 

But what doesn’t vary are the key characteristics, mindsets, abilities, and skills that make for a really strong product manager… and they all happen to be what HR teams need right now. 

Good product managers:

Have high EQ. Good PMs know how to empathise with customers, understand pain points, and transform that understanding into solutions that address varying needs. PMs with strong EQ know how the inner dynamics of an organisation work and how to navigate internal personalities and external factors in order to ship a great product (i.e. deliver valuable solutions that solve customer problems). With high EQ also comes a strong sense of self awareness, a critical asset to have on a team charged with leading an organisation through some of the toughest conversations the company may ever face. 

Must lead and manage without authority. It’s a common mantra throughout PM circles, and even detailed in job descriptions, that PMs must be able to “manage without authority.” What that really means is that a strong product manager must be able to influence a wide variety of stakeholders in order to do her job. Take leading a go-to-market strategy, for example, where in a PM must wrangle the marketing, new business, account management, customer success, and sometimes operations and engineering teams in order to collaborate and take a product to market. The urgent changes companies need to make in order to 1) work in a COVID-19 world and 2) understand and respond to the roles companies play in continuing systematic racism will rely on cross-functional initiatives that span the entire organisation. HR will have to lead and influence teams comprised of specialised roles within their own HR function, operations, hiring managers, CEOs and organisational leadership, legal, etc., in order to get this important work done. Product managers have the prior experience in shepherding cross-functional teams through complex projects. 

Know enough to be dangerous. Do strong PMs need to write code? No. Do strong PMs have to be experts at graphic and product design? Nope. Do strong PMs need to have mastered their product’s sales pitch? Probably not. But, do product managers require the ability to contextualise in order to effectively communicate and empathise with engineers, designers, salespeople, and customers? Absolutely. Do strong PMs need to provide immediate solutions or answers to every problem or gray area the team may encounter? Of course not. But they absolutely must have the business acumen and skills to gain clarity – whether that's through data analysis, consulting the right subject matter experts, or utilising collaborative decision making tactics that further team progress. Absolutely no one has all of the answers concerning the challenges that companies are currently struggling with and will continue to face in the future, but it is critical for HR to have team members with enough knowledge and experience to feel comfortable operating in ambiguous spaces and the insight to identify when they may be in over their heads. This is a balance that strong product managers can strike, day in and day out. 

And strong product managers use these skills in order to facilitate making balanced decisions. Every decision a PM makes is done so with intersection of user need, business viability, and feasibility in mind. This requires the ability to recognise tradeoffs, assess risks, and deeply understand the problem at hand and the nuances involved in designing solutions.

If there was ever a time where companies needed to make thoughtful, deeply nuanced decisions, that time has most certainly arrived.

To be clear…

There is no silver bullet solution when it comes to preparing HR organisations to tackle the tough work that lies ahead, and it will take the majority of your employees stepping up in order to move your organisation forward. However, bolstering your HR team with employees who have a breadth of experience solving people-centric business problems and navigating uncharted waters could be the first step in preparing organisations for the future of work.