By Marty Cagan · svpg.com · LinkedIn
This essay extends an earlier sports-management analogy about actively managing a team's skills and composition, now using gardening instead. It argues that managers cannot simply hire people and wait for results; they must deliberately seed, feed and weed their teams. Seeding covers careful hiring that considers team and cultural fit, learning from past hiring failures, and investing enough time in candidate evaluation. Feeding is ongoing coaching, growth and raising the team's bar, while weeding means promptly removing underperformers who drain the team's productivity. The piece matters because it reframes people management as a continuous, active practice rather than a one-time hiring event.
01Key takeaways
- Hire for team and cultural fit as well as skills, not just technical ability.
- Review past hiring failures and departures to find patterns you can correct.
- Spend more time per candidate and bring in trusted, skilled interviewers.
- Regularly coach and challenge your team to raise its overall performance bar.
- Repeatedly reassigning an underperformer usually postpones the harder decision to remove them.
- Remove non-performers promptly so you can replace them and refocus the team.
02Key sections
- Seed: Hiring the right people
- Hiring should weigh cultural and team fit alongside skills, and managers should examine why past hires failed or left. Candidates deserve more evaluation time, supported by trusted interviewers and thorough reference checks.
- Feed: Growing the team
- Managers should continually coach, praise, correct and reward team members to make them more productive. Repeatedly moving a struggling employee between roles often signals that a harder decision is being avoided.
- Weed: Removing underperformers
- Underperforming individuals drain time from coaching and from colleagues who compensate for them. Managers should act quickly to remove such people while respecting local legal and company practices.
03From the post
“A partnership dedicated to teaching best practices to product teams and product leaders”
04Frameworks mentioned
Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.