The 'Can You See What Good Looks Like?' Staffing Test
If nobody in your org has done it before, no amount of training will produce it
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 88%
A staffing heuristic for transformations: capability spreads by proximity, not by classroom. Perri's test is to ask whether anyone in the organization has actually built product at scale before. If the honest answer is no, that is a red flag — and the fix is to intersperse experienced practitioners at every level (CPO, director, senior IC) rather than buying more training.
Origin
Melissa Perri, from watching enterprises repeat the same eight-year-old pattern: mass certification, consultants exit, nobody left who has seen the job done well.
Core principles
- 01Upskilling your own people is noble — but it cannot be the only lever.
- 02People learn the job by watching someone do the job.
- 03The best enterprise product leaders name their own skill gap and hire for it.
- 04Zero visible examples of 'good' inside the org is a red flag for anyone considering staying.
How to run it
- 1
Ask the red-flag question
Walk the organization and ask: can anyone here point to a person or team doing product management well? If you cannot see what good looks like anywhere, stop and treat that as the primary problem.
Pro tip This works as an interview question too — a candidate PM should ask it before joining an enterprise.
- 2
Bring in a leader who has actually done it
Hire at least one senior leader with real product-at-scale experience to run the transformation, ideally someone who has crossed from a software-native company into your industry.
Pro tip Perri's examples: Shudi Patel (Shopify → Chief Product Officer, US Bank small business banking) and Melissa Doris (Discover → CPO, Green Dot Bank).
Watch out The people who buy SAFe usually have never run a large-scale technology organization — the framework is filling a hiring gap.
- 3
Intersperse, don't concentrate
Scatter experienced directors and individual contributors across teams so every team has a local model of good, rather than parking all the talent in one flagship squad.
Pro tip Do this at every level — team, director, VP — not just at the team level.
- 4
Keep and upskill your existing people alongside them
The most successful transformations are a mix: retain internal people who know the domain, and pair them with experienced hires so knowledge flows both ways.
Watch out Do not replace the whole population with outsiders — domain knowledge in a 100-year-old insurer is not reproducible.
- 5
Model the gap-naming behaviour at the top
The CPOs who succeed while new to this way of working ask 'what don't I know?', talk to other CPOs, and hire underneath them for the execution skills they lack while bringing market and business strength themselves.
In the wild
Patel had seen how great product teams work at Shopify, then moved into US Bank as Chief Product Officer for small business banking, bringing that lived experience into a non-software-native institution.
→ Perri cites her as the pattern to copy — an experienced product person imported into a bank to show the organization what good looks like.
Doris led the transformation at Discover Financial, then took that experience to Green Dot Bank as CPO, able to see what actually needed to happen rather than searching for a handbook.
→ A second existence proof that the transformation-experienced leader, not the framework, is the load-bearing hire.
Common mistakes
Certifying everyone and hoping
Eight years ago companies trained everyone and then said 'go'. With no one in the building who had done it before, there was nobody to watch and nothing to imitate, so the training evaporated.
Adopting a framework instead of hiring the gap
SAFe becomes a crutch for leaders who don't know what they're doing. A leader who instead asks 'what don't I know?' and hires for it will consider options broader than any single framework.
Is it for you?
Best for
Enterprise CIOs/CEOs staffing a digital transformation, and PMs evaluating whether an enterprise is worth joining
Not ideal for
Software-native companies where experienced product people are already the default population
From the transcript
“you got to get them exposure to what good looks like and if you are in an organization and you cannot see what good looks…”
“the people who buy safe they have not run large scale technology organizations before”
“they notice their skill gaps and they hire for it just like any great leader would”
From the episode
Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about SAFe and the product owner role
Melissa Perri (author, founder of Product Institute)