Growth Competency Model

A framework for hiring, evaluating, and developing growth talent across four core competency areas

Adam Fishman
How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods)

Growth Competency Model

"The goal of the competency model is not to find a unicorn human being that is an 11 out of 10 on every one of these things, because frankly, that person doesn't exist... The goal is to create a well-rounded team so that you're hiring and balancing skills across your team and that you don't have any gaps in your portfolio." - Adam Fishman

What It Is

The Growth Competency Model is a structured framework for hiring, evaluating, and developing growth talent. It identifies four core competency areas, each containing three specific skills, that define what makes an exceptional growth practitioner.

Adam Fishman developed this model after repeatedly being asked "How do we find another you?" by founders—a question that misses the first-principles approach to hiring growth talent. The model helps founders evaluate candidates properly rather than just pattern-matching to successful growth leaders.

The key insight: no one is a 10/10 on all competencies. The goal is building a balanced team that collectively covers all gaps.

How It Works

The model consists of four major competency areas, visualized as four equal wedges of a circle:

1. Growth Execution

The foundational skills—prioritize these for junior hires

  • Channel Fluency: Understanding how different acquisition, retention, and monetization channels work
  • Experimentation: Ability to generate hypotheses, run tests, and learn from results
  • Productizing Learnings: Translating insights from experiments into product changes with hooks across different areas

2. Customer Knowledge

Understanding users deeply

  • Data Fluency & Instrumentation: Ability to access, pull, and derive insights from data
  • User Psychology: Understanding emotional frames people bring to products (most come with emotional, not logical needs)
  • Creative Development: Evolving narrative and creative approaches based on experimentation and learning

3. Growth Strategy

More advanced—develops over years of experience

  • Growth Loop Modeling: Understanding how you grow—what acquires, retains, and monetizes users
  • Capital Allocation & Forecasting: Deploying money and people across the portfolio; projecting results (requires close partnership with finance)
  • Prioritization & Roadmapping: Sequencing work based on growth models and available resources

4. Communication & Influence

The pinnacle—hardest to develop, never done

  • Strategic Communication: Connecting experiments and initiatives to larger strategic bets
  • Team Leadership: Leading and developing growth teams
  • Stakeholder Management: Winning over people who may view growth as at odds with quality craftsmanship (it's not)

How to Apply It

For Founders Hiring Growth

  1. Identify your gaps - What competencies does your current team lack?
  2. Prioritize for stage - Early-stage? Prioritize Growth Execution and Customer Knowledge
  3. Don't seek unicorns - No one is 10/10 on everything; build a balanced team
  4. Use in interviews - Ask behavioral and situational questions mapped to specific competencies
  5. Set clear expectations - Share which competencies you're evaluating before hiring

For Hiring Junior Growth People

Focus on:

  • Growth Execution - Can they ship? Do they have good work ethic?
  • Customer Knowledge - Do they understand your users (especially for internal transfers)?

Adam's hiring signal: Ben Lauzier, during his interview at Lyft, asked to borrow a laptop to check in code at his current job. That demonstrated execution ability—someone who gets things done.

For Evaluating & Developing Growth Talent

Instead of vague feedback like "be more strategic," give specific feedback:

  • "We need to work on growth strategy—specifically better modeling of loops"
  • "Your stakeholder management needs work—let's focus on winning over the design team"

For Job Seekers (Reverse Interview)

Ask founders:

  • "Which competencies are most important for this first hire?"
  • "What are your expectations of what I'll bring?"

Then candidly share where you're strong and developing.

When to Use It

  • Hiring - Evaluate candidates systematically rather than pattern-matching
  • Performance reviews - Give concrete, specific feedback tied to competencies
  • Career development - Identify which competencies to develop next
  • Team building - Ensure you have coverage across all four areas
  • Reverse interviewing - Align expectations with hiring managers

Junior vs Senior Expectations

Competency Junior Senior
Growth Execution Should be strong Expected
Customer Knowledge Should be strong (especially internal hires) Expected
Growth Strategy Developing Should be strong
Communication & Influence Developing Should be strong

Common Mistakes

  1. Seeking the silver bullet - Expecting one hire to solve all growth challenges
  2. Skipping first principles - Pattern-matching to "people like Adam" instead of evaluating competencies
  3. Ignoring internal candidates - Internal transfers already have customer knowledge and cultural fit
  4. Expecting unicorns - Even Adam isn't 10/10 on all competencies

Source

  • Guest: Adam Fishman
  • Episode: "How to build a high-performing growth team | Adam Fishman (Patreon, Lyft, Imperfect Foods)"
  • Key Discussion: (00:10:59) - Full explanation of the Growth Competency Model
  • YouTube: Watch on YouTube

Related Frameworks

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