Episode 44: Hiring Product Managers w/Kate Leto

Are product managers really cat herders? At the very least most of us lack formal authority and need to rely on other things to build sustainable and lovable products. The next obvious question is, how do you identify a cat herder? Kate Leto author of “Hiring Product Managers: Using Product EQ to go beyond culture and skills” has created a deceivable simple to tool to help in the process, The Role Canvas.

The first box to fill in is “Why does this role exists?”. Usually takes some pondering and reminds me quite a lot of my favourite method of all times - The Double Diamond.

According to the Double Diamond you should spend as much time in the problem phase as in the solution phase, ie first understand why the role exists. What are the problems? What is the purpose? Once we have done that, we can move into solution phase and find the right product manager for the role.

The Role Canvas template is available here:

https://www.kateleto.com/articles/the-role-canvas

More information on Double Diamond from the inventors themselves:

https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/news-opinion/what-framework-innovation-design-councils-evolved-double-diamond