Product Talent Portfolio

Balance PM team skillsets rather than hiring in your own image

Eeke de Milliano
How to foster innovation and big thinking

Product Talent Portfolio

"It's really tempting as a manager, to build a team in your image, because you understand their skillsets and you value those skillsets. And you're going to be able to detect and assess those skillsets better. But the best product teams, in my mind, have really figured out how to balance the talent portfolio. So instead of having a bunch of PMs who all spike in one particular area, figure out how you can create complementary skillsets for the whole PM team, so the whole is much stronger." - Eeke de Milliano

What It Is

Product Talent Portfolio is a hiring and team-building framework that treats your PM team like an investment portfolio. Just as you wouldn't put all your money in one asset class, you shouldn't hire all the same type of PM. The goal is complementary skillsets that create a stronger whole.

This requires deliberate effort because managers naturally gravitate toward hiring people similar to themselves—they can assess those skills more easily and value them more highly. Fighting this tendency is essential for building balanced teams.

How It Works

The Anti-Pattern:

  • Hire people similar to yourself
  • Value skills you personally excel at
  • Build a homogeneous team that lacks diversity of thought and capability

The Better Approach:

  • Assess team strengths and weaknesses as a portfolio
  • Hire specifically for missing capabilities
  • Create complementary rather than overlapping skillsets

Key Dimensions to Balance:

Dimension Type A Type B
Origin Homegrown (deep product knowledge, culture carrier) External (brings outside perspectives, traditional PM rigor)
Strength Execution machines Strategic visionaries
Background Technical/engineering Business/customer-facing
Experience Junior (fresh thinking, high energy) Senior (pattern recognition, credibility)

How to Apply It

  1. Map your current team - What are the collective strengths and weaknesses?

  2. Identify gaps deliberately - Don't just hire "good PMs"—hire for specific missing capabilities

  3. Hire for difference - Push hiring managers to hire people who don't look like them

  4. Balance within pillars - If you have multiple product pillars, ensure each has its own balanced portfolio

  5. Review regularly - Every 6 months, chart out team strengths, weaknesses, and hiring priorities

Eeke's Process:

"I do a little personal exercise for myself every six months, where I chart out the team that we have today, and write down all of the strengths that we have, all of the weaknesses that we have, as a team. And then I try to hire specifically for those weaknesses."

Specific Balance: Homegrown vs External

Homegrown PMs (internal promotions, from sales/support/etc.):

  • Deep product knowledge
  • Strong culture carriers
  • May lack traditional PM frameworks
  • May have blind spots from too much context

External PMs (hired from other companies):

  • Bring outside perspectives
  • More conventional PM skillsets
  • May lack product-specific context
  • May not initially fit the culture

The best teams balance both types.

When to Use It

  • When planning PM team growth
  • When writing job descriptions for new PM roles
  • When evaluating candidates in the hiring process
  • During semi-annual team planning and org design
  • When a team feels stuck or lacks certain capabilities

Source

  • Guest: Eeke de Milliano
  • Episode: "How to foster innovation and big thinking"
  • Key Discussion: (00:56:17) - Product talent portfolio concept
  • YouTube: Watch on YouTube

Related Frameworks

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