I’ve always been a big believer in the adage that employees join a company but they leave a manager. This applies to product managers as much as anyone. Our manager is a major factor in our job satisfaction. For those of us that are also managers, we need to always keep in mind the role we play in the effectiveness and enthusiasm of our employees.

Many of you have seen my lists of characteristics of great product managers, but I thought I’d share my list of characteristics of great product leaders. This pertains to group product managers, directors of product management, and VP of product or marketing, although I think this list applies to virtually every management position in a high-tech company.

Managers can hopefully use this list as a self-assessment tool. Those that aren’t yet managers can hopefully benefit from a set of characteristics to work towards.

So here’s my list of characteristics and behaviors of great product leaders:

- Unquestioned dedication to the goal of creating a great product and great user experience

- Always maintains a positive attitude – never loses cool, never gives up

- Actively fosters a creative, fun work environment

- Listens sincerely, speaks thoughtfully

- Criticizes privately and constructively, praises publicly and generously

- Is completely dependable – does what he says he will when he says will

- Keeps his manager informed and included to whatever degree his manager desires

- Brings the whole management team along on major decisions

- Proactively raises issues to his manager – no negative surprises

- Discusses problems with manager discreetly and constructively

- On controversial issues, he expresses his opinions honestly and constructively, but once decision is made he’s fully on-board

- Hires great people and develops them – builds great teams and cares about every employee’s career

- Quick to take blame if something goes wrong, but credits others when things go well

- Dedicated to self-improvement – when mistakes are made, he considers what he could have done differently

- Never gossips or complains about manager or co-workers – treats every employee with respect

- Always demonstrates profound respect for the customer

- Considers both longer-term strategic issues as well as immediate execution and tactical issues

- Personifies the company’s values through words and deeds

- Always working to build a great company – considers the long-term value of the company in every decision and communication

I should admit that while I use this list for myself, I do not always follow all of these items as closely as I wish I did. But I do frequently review this list and I think it helps me be a better manager and product leader. I have known and worked for some outstanding product leaders, but I don’t think there’s anyone out there that’s perfect all the time. But in my experience the best ones are always working to improve.

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Silicon Valley is all about creating products, and I would argue that no company in history has done that better than HP. HP had an absolutely unmatched record of consistent product innovation in a wide range of markets. That’s why they’ve personified Silicon Valley better than anyone else. Many companies, even large successful companies like IBM and Oracle, are essentially one-product companies – they ride the wave of their big product for decades, but essentially they don’t innovate past that. But Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard were able to create a company that was unique in that they created a culture and mechanism for breeding new products and new businesses. HP has created literally thousands of breakthrough products in its history. I know of no other company in the world today or in the past that has managed to do this. Even more important for this valley, HP spawned hundreds of other Silicon Valley companies.

Most importantly, Bill and Dave understood the power of startups and the problems of large companies, so they organized their growing company into a collection of loosely related and largely autonomous product divisions. Every time a business would grow past a certain point, they would split the business into multiple divisions, or they would spin off a new division. In fact, when I was asked to start a new division for them, they put us in our own separate building and told us to run it like a startup, which we did. HP essentially acted as the Venture Capitalist in that they funded our idea and asked for quarterly progress, but they left us to go after the market the best way we saw fit. In its very DNA HP was a product company; driven by a desire to innovate and create products that customers love.

Bill and Dave are unfortunately gone, but I think they’d be glad we have people like Larry and Sergey of Google with the same passion for creating great products. The resurgence of truly great product companies like Google and Apple has been great to watch, and I admire these companies for their thirst for new and better ways to solve problems.

As to HP, I think there are additional lessons to learn. After Bill and Dave retired, the company lacked their inspirational product leadership, and after stagnating for a few years, rather than searching for another great product leader, the HP board felt they needed to “reinvigorate” the company by bringing in someone from the outside with a fresh perspective.

They ended up hiring a sales person from the east coast - Carly. No big surprise, she proceeded to try to turn HP into the type of business she knew and understood, which was a very large and centralized IBM-like sales and distribution channel. Product creation moved to the margin, and reselling other company’s products and leveraging a newly centralized sales and service organization became the focus.

Sadly, many of the strong product people of the company left, and Carly replaced them with people that she felt could help her change the company into this new direction. Of course we all know now that this didn’t work as she hoped, but the worst part was that she didn’t seem to understand what made the company great in the first place.

I don’t know the new CEO, but he seems like the right sort, and I’m hopeful that it’s not too late, but he will have to undo a lot of damage, so the layoffs I think are very necessary and certainly no surprise. I do hope he can get the company back to what it does so incredibly well, and I will always root for them.

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