475: A CPO’s perspective on amazing product teams – with Amruta Moktali

How to build high-performing product teams

Today we are talking about amazing product teams—what is involved in creating one and then how to manage it.

Joining us is Amruta Moktali, Chief Product Officer at Skyflow, the world’s first and only data privacy vault delivered as an API. She’s spent over a decade mastering the complex domains of data privacy and analytics and amassed an impressive track record spanning agile startups as well as tech giants including Microsoft and Salesforce.

Summary of some concepts discussed for product managers [2:39] What do you do to create a high-performing product team? 

A high-performing team is like a beautiful orchestra. You’re the conductor bringing the right instruments together at the right time. First, you should have a clear understanding of what problem the team is looking to solve. Make sure every person on the team is bought into it. Unless you’re marching toward the same goal, you will never perform well.

It’s like music. Assemble people who will work well with each other and will challenge each other. This changes based on the environment. People who work well in person may not work well in a remote environment. People who do great in consumer products may not do well in B2B products.

The most important thing is iterativeness. A high-performance team does not happen over night. You have to guide them. Remove folks from the team who are causing the team to slow down or move in the wrong direction. As important as it is to put the right people in, it is also important to take the wrong people out at the right time.

[5:38] To assemble a high-performance product team, what skills do you look for?

Have a good understanding of the hard skills you need, which differ. Sometimes you’re looking for generalists. Sometimes you’re looking for someone with experience with a particular technology.

You also need soft skills. Make sure team members have amazing communication skills, especially if you are hiring product managers, since they are the conductors and orchestrators. Make sure your team has the ability to make hard decisions. To do that, they need to know the market, your customer, and where the business is going. Your team needs skills in bringing people together.

[8:39] Why is it important that team members know they are part of something that matters?

Being part of something that matters is what motivates you to wake up in the morning to work. The problem you’re solving and who you’re solving it for should resonate with you at some level.

I worked at the startup Clio, a health benefits company. We were supporting families all the way from pre-pregnancy to end of life. As a mom and having had aging parents, I knew the problem. It was close to my heart. Every person who was part of Clio had the same emotional feelings around their work. Making a change in one person’s life was enough to get through the whole day.

It’s a little different when you’re building a SaaS product. I’m not changing someone’s life when I’m building a SaaS product, but I can still think about what matters to me. For example, privacy matters to all of us at Skyflow. The core purpose is making sure everyone can work with information and serve their customers better but never compromise privacy. Make sure your work matters and you’re marching toward the right thing.

I have been in situations, especially in larger companies, in which the priorities of the company change and a small feature doesn’t seem to matter anymore. In that situation, you should think about how you can still matter. Ask yourself why you think your work doesn’t matter to the company anymore. Is it just because nobody is talking about you? Are you still making an impact on the revenue? Is anything you’re doing aligning with the goal? If not, make the decision to stop doing it.

It’s the responsibility of leaders to make sure everyone understands how they matter. You may have to do a little bit of realignment, asking if your work is still important to the company. You might pivot, and if your work is then in alignment with the goal you were thinking about when you came in, then continue. Otherwise, it may not be the right place for you.

[14:00] What character traits are you looking for?

One of the most important characteristics I look for is curiosity. When you’re curious, you’re also respectful, eager to learn, and humble.

I look for people who have a strong point of view but a collaborative or humble way of communicating it. They know how to get people to understand their point of view.

Team members should be able to work with other people. There will be people on your team who are the flag bearers of the culture of your team. You may do this as the leader, or there may be someone else on your team who embodies all the the things you want your team to have and brings people together.

If someone does not have the characteristics you’re looking for, make a change sooner rather than later. Either help them get there or get them out because it impacts everyone else.

Hire the one person who will make the highest impact on everyone else. Hiring junior people to train can be successful, but if you hire a high performer and leader first, they can build the team and give you more time on your hands. It creates a domino effect. You’ll hire more high performers and create the culture you want from the top down.

[18:48] What do you do when you have a “prima donna” on your team whose skills are valuable but who doesn’t care about anyone else’s perspective?

It depends on the need of the hour. There have been times I have kept prima donnas on my team because their skills were valuable to me and hiring someone to replace them would have taken me back a lot. I was able to keep them by gating them in their own world. I made sure everyone else knew that I knew they were a prima donna. I told them I knew this person was not collaborative, but right now they were doing something we needed. I coached the prima donna to work better on collaboration and told the rest of the team to tell me when there were issues. On the side, I started looking for talent to replace them.

In other situations, I’ve let people go. We have to know how to work in both situations.

I had one “prima donna” on my team who I thought would never change, but in a few months they did change. I just had to find the one or two things that were causing them to not work well with the team. I found out they felt like nobody was listening to them or they didn’t think they were smart enough. In reality, everyone knew they were extremely smart and would go just go quiet because they had nothing else to say, so this person felt disrespected.

I have a model called heart, tree, star. For every single person on your team, you need to know:

• Heart: What drives them? What do they love to do?
• Tree: How do they like to grow?
• Star: How do they like to be rewarded or recognized?

Understanding these three pieces helps align your teams, build harmony in your teams, and grow people. Once you know these three, you can guide anyone in any place. The person on my team was missing the star, and once I fixed that, the team just came together.

Action Guide: Put the information Amruta shared into action now. Click here to download the Action Guide. Useful links:

• Connect with Amruta on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Skyflow
• Listen to the Partially Redacted Podcast

Innovation Quote

“Your best teacher is your last mistake.” – Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

Thanks!

Thank you for taking the journey to product mastery and learning with me from the successes and failures of product innovators, managers, and developers. If you enjoyed the discussion, help out a fellow product manager by sharing it using the social media buttons you see below.