It was really hard process to figure out what are the 12 things that are mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive, that actually define this role?

For example, one of the things that's not a competency within the product competency matrix is the idea of product sense or product intuition. And it was because as we thought about that particular competency, it really felt like it was a combination of multiple distinct things. It's often a result of understanding customers, being able to understand data, being able to think strategically, and knowing how to execute on a product hypothesis really well.

And so rather than have sort of an overarching theme around product sense or product intuition, we actually divided that into those different competencies.

Actually coming up with the 12 competencies and rolling that out initially was relatively straightforward. The thing that took a long time was the detailed matrix of what are the expectations for each competency for each level within the organization.
There was a lot of debate about things like what does it mean to be a senior PM who's operating with a high degree of fluency with data?

So we took a first stab at what that looked like, and then we iterated over time. We worked with the PMs throughout the organization to get a sense of how this resonated, how helpful it was in terms of them being able to define their career path.

I think the biggest pushback from just the organization in general was now that there was a rubric, that doesn't necessarily mean that people's self evaluation and self perception changes. They may still feel really confident in all of those areas, but the manager may see a gap in certain areas.

I think the value in the competency matrix is that it helps that conversation move out of an impasse, where the manager and employee can start to talk about specific competencies, specific things that that person can do.

The goal here was really to give people a starting point rather than an ending point.

I think one of the other things leaders can do is depressurize the competencies and not make it entirely about performance.

One of the things I like to do with companies that have implemented it after TripAdvisor is to encourage them not to implement it as part of their performance review process initially, and really just introduce it as a tool during 1:1s that managers can have.

This way, it becomes a way to stimulate a conversation during those 1:1s rather than a rubric that a person is going to be judged by.

As they get familiar with the competencies, then it becomes part of the culture and then you can start to have it be part of the performance process.


Ravi Mehta

We created this to define the expectations for each competency at each level of the organization. It was meant to help PM’s assess themselves during performance reviews and give managers a benchmark for making promotion and hiring decisions.

Product Competency Matrix at Tripadvisor

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