Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva)

1. Deeply Care, Build Trust

As a leader, deeply care about your team members, build trust, and actively invest in their career development to foster loyalty and high performance.

2. Infuse Growth from Start

Infuse go-to-market, growth, and monetization thinking into product development from the start, rather than treating growth as a separate layer.

3. Establish Results-Oriented Culture

Establish a results-oriented culture by clearly defining team goals, breaking them into individual levers, and making success metrics transparent for everyone.

4. Give Direct, Supportive Feedback

Have direct, even uncomfortable, conversations with team members, clearly stating your intention is to set them up for success, as this builds trust and drives improvement.

5. Model Ownership & Responsibility

As a leader, model ownership by demonstrating proactive problem-solving and taking ultimate responsibility for team outcomes, including failures.

6. Cultivate Ownership Mentality

Cultivate an ownership mentality within the team, where members proactively solve problems and take accountability, especially as the company scales and ownership might otherwise feel diluted.

7. Define Clear Team Scope

To foster ownership, define clear, independent, and exciting scope for each team member, ensuring they have distinct areas to own and drive.

8. Prioritize Team-First Collaboration

Foster a results-oriented culture that is also team-first and collaborative, encouraging members to help each other and share learnings to achieve collective success beyond individual metrics.

9. Lead by Example (Help Others)

Lead by example in being ’team first’ by actively helping other teams and contributing to initiatives outside your direct scope, demonstrating the benefits of broader collaboration.

10. Foster Curiosity & Questioning

Foster a culture that encourages curiosity, questioning assumptions, and revisiting work, as this drives better performance and creates a more engaging environment.

11. Hire First Principles Thinkers

To foster innovation, hire smart individuals who are new to a domain, as their ‘I don’t know anything, let me figure this out’ mindset encourages first principles thinking over relying on preconceived answers.

12. Assess First Principles Thinking

In PM interviews, heavily assess first principles thinking and critical thinking through live problem-solving scenarios, probing ‘why’ they approach problems a certain way and observing their questioning.

13. Assess Growth Mindset in Interviews

Assess a candidate’s growth mindset by giving direct feedback on their presentation draft during a prep call, then observe how they incorporate it into the final presentation, revealing coachability.

14. Conduct Live Problem-Solving Screen

Conduct live problem-solving during the initial hiring manager screen, asking candidates to analyze a real product (e.g., your pricing page) and explain their proposed changes and reasoning, to quickly assess critical thinking.

15. Offer Presentation Prep Call

Offer a prep call before the final presentation to answer candidate questions and review their draft, providing feedback and context to help them succeed while also observing their coachability.

16. Focus Feedback on Work

Focus feedback on observable work and specific areas for improvement, avoiding personal criticism or finger-pointing.

17. Clarify Go-to-Market Early

Clarify go-to-market strategy early, especially for blending consumer and B2B, and don’t delay investment in sales/enterprise if applicable.

18. Define Pricing Strategy Early

Define your product’s value metric and pricing strategy from the very beginning to avoid complex and costly re-pricing challenges later as you scale.

19. Base Experiments on Own Data

Base growth experiments on your own data and customer insights, forming clear hypotheses, rather than blindly applying best practices from other companies.

20. Focus on Bigger Experiments

Early-stage companies should focus on bigger, needle-moving experiments rather than small optimizations, as minor improvements won’t significantly impact growth until massive scale.

21. Distill Changes to Hypotheses

When redesigning or changing a product, always distill changes into clear hypotheses to ensure that you understand the ‘why’ behind success or failure.

22. Define ‘Flying Formation’ for Teams

Define a ‘flying formation’ or clear operating model for how growth teams collaborate with other departments to ensure seamless integration and avoid growth feeling like an isolated layer.

23. Use DACI Framework

Use the DACI framework (Driver, Accountable, Contributor, Informed) to clarify roles and responsibilities on projects, especially for cross-functional initiatives, ensuring clear decision-making.

24. Growth Teams Share Feedback

Growth teams should proactively share user feedback with other departments to inform the broader product roadmap and encourage all PMs to adopt a growth-oriented mindset.

25. Assign Revenue Ownership Strategically

Assign revenue ownership to the team most directly impacting it (e.g., product growth for in-product monetization, marketing for top-of-funnel), rather than defaulting to finance, as this aligns responsibility with impact.

26. Ramp Up New Hires Quickly

As a manager, actively ramp up new hires by clarifying 90-day success metrics, connecting them with key people, and guiding them to secure early, visible wins (e.g., presentations, low-hanging fruit projects).

27. Encourage Loom Video Updates

Encourage team members to create short (5-10 minute) Loom videos to share project updates with leaders, offering a flexible way to gain visibility when live meetings are difficult to schedule.

28. Maintain Lifelong Relationships

Maintain lifelong relationships with former team members, offering ongoing support for career advice or job searches, as this builds lasting trust and community.

29. Everyone Owns Early Growth

In the early stages (pre-product market fit), ensure everyone in the company is focused on growth, identifying the ideal customer profile and product-market fit.

30. Hire First Growth ‘Portfolio Manager’

After achieving product-market fit, hire a first growth person who acts as a ‘portfolio manager’ for acquisition, focusing on testing and scaling 1-2 key channels where you hypothesize traction, rather than an expert in many channels.

31. Prioritize Quality Signups

When focusing on acquisition, prioritize quality signups that are likely to monetize, not just high volume.

32. Qualitative User Testing for Activation

For early-stage activation, conduct qualitative user testing with a small group (e.g., 5 users) and apply best practices instead of A/B testing, as volume is too low; also, prioritize pricing/packaging without a dedicated hire.

33. Delay Growth PM Hire

Delay hiring a dedicated growth product manager until much later in the company’s journey, as early-stage companies often don’t even have core product managers yet.

34. Hire Advisor for Knowledge Gaps

Hire an advisor to fill specific knowledge gaps within your team.

35. Try Before You Buy Advisor

When hiring an advisor, clearly define expectations and goals, start with a short-term engagement (e.g., a quarter) to assess value, and be prepared to part ways if the fit isn’t right.

36. Seek Mentoring Managers

When job searching, prioritize working for managers with a proven track record of mentoring and developing people, looking for signals like past team members following them.

37. Interview Your Manager

During job interviews, actively interview your potential manager about their management philosophy and how they approach career development for their team.

38. Seek Critical Roles for Mentorship

Seek roles where your success is critical to your manager’s success, as this often leads to more dedicated mentorship and time investment from them.

39. Proactively Seek Mentors

Proactively seek mentors outside your direct management chain within your company by reaching out for advice or suggesting recurring syncs with those passionate about mentoring.

40. Build Organic Mentor Relationships

Avoid directly asking someone to ‘be your mentor’ to reduce pressure; instead, build organic relationships by reaching out for specific advice when needed, respecting their time, and allowing the mentorship to evolve naturally.

41. Know Your Limits, Plan Handoffs

To avoid burnout when taking on extra work, know your personal limits, set specific timelines (e.g., a quarter) for temporary tasks, and plan for eventual handoffs.

42. Balance Helping vs. Core Tasks

Balance helping others with maintaining focus on your core responsibilities; if your primary tasks start to suffer, it’s a clear sign you’re overcommitted.

43. Learn Webflow with Videos

Learn Webflow effectively by watching university videos and simultaneously building in the designer, utilizing the side-by-side video feature.

44. Convert Figma to Webflow

Use the Figma to Webflow plugin to convert existing Figma designs directly into Webflow, streamlining the development process.