Leadership is about recognizing that there’s a greatness in everyone, and your job is to create an environment where that greatness can emerge. — Bill Campbell
👉 So many companies still have the old IT mindset when it comes to technology. It’s viewed as a necessary cost rather than the core business enabler it needs to be. The people who work on the technology teams are literally there to “serve the business,” and the technology managers and leaders are there to facilitate serving the business. Or it’s shoved off to the side in some “digital” business unit. The technology teams are disconnected from the real customers — in fact, they’re encouraged to think of their stakeholders as their customers.
Our job in product is to solve the problems we are asked to solve, in ways that our customers love, yet that work for our business.
There is a fundamental difference between how strong companies view the role and purpose of technology as compared to most other companies.
At its most basic level, the vast majority of companies view technology as a necessary expense. They know it's important, but they think of it more as a cost of doing business. If they can outsource the labor, even better. Fundamentally, they don't really consider themselves in the technology business. Instead, they think of themselves as in the insurance business, or the banking business, or the transportation business, or whatever. Certainly, they need some technology to operate, but it's viewed as a subservient role to "the business."
Because of that, in most companies, technology teams exist to serve the business. That is very often the exact phrase you will hear. But even if they aren't explicit about it, the different parts of "the business" end up driving what is actually built by the product teams.
In contrast, in strong product companies, technology is not an expense, it is the business. Technology enables and powers the products and services we provide to our customers. Technology allows us to solve problems for our customers in ways that are just now possible. Whether the product or service is an insurance policy, a bank account, or an overnight parcel delivery, that product now has enabling technology at its core.
As such, in strong product companies, the purpose of the product team is to serve customers by creating products customers love, yet work for the business.
That is a profound difference, which impacts nearly everything about the company and how it works, and results in much higher motivation and morale. And most important, it results in a much higher level of innovation and value for customers and the business.
The key to building strong product companies is having strong product leaders. The product leaders are among the most impactful leaders in the organization.
Empowered product teams depend on skilled product managers, product designers, and engineers, and it is the leaders and managers who are responsible for recruiting, hiring, and coaching these people.
A focused and compelling product strategy — based on quantitative and qualitative insights — is among the most important contributions of product leadership.
Product management leaders includes:
- The leaders and managers of product management
- The leaders and managers of product design
- The leaders and managers of engineering
Overall, we look to leadership for inspiration and we look to management for execution.
If product teams are to be empowered to make good decisions, they need to have the strategic context necessary to make those decisions.
The product vision describes the future we are trying to create and how it improves the lives of our users. It is usually between 3-10 years out.
This vision is what keeps us inspired and excited to come to work every date.
The “team topology” refers to how we break up the work among different product teams to best enable them to do great work.
The product strategy describes how we plan to accomplish the product vision, while meeting the needs of the business as we go. The strategy derives from focus then leverages insights, converts these insights into action, and finally manages the work through to completion.
Leaders should communicate the product vision, principle, and product strategy — both internally to the org and externally.
Managers are responsible for hiring and developing the members of the cross-functional product teams.
If you want to have truly empowered product teams, then your success depends very directly on these first-level people managers.
Managers are accountable to staffing the product teams.
The single most important, yet most often overlooked element to capable management is coaching. At a minimum, this involves a weekly 1:1 with the people who report to you as their people manager.
It is the most important responsibility of every people manager to develop the skills of their people. Every member of a product team deserves to have someone who is committed to helping them get batter at their craft. This does not mean micromanaging them. It does mean understanding their weaknesses and helping them to improve, providing guidance on lessons learned, removing obstacles, and what is loosely referred to as “connecting the dots.”
It is the responsibility of people managers to ensure that each product team has one or two clear objectives they have been assigned (typically quarterly) which spell out the problems they are being asked to solve.
These objectives derive directly from the product strategy.
The team is given a small number of significant problems to solve (the team objectives). The team considers the problems and proposes clear measures of success (they key results), which they then discuss with their managers.
In most organizations the technology teams are feature teams, meaning that they may be cross-functional, but they are all about implementing features and projects (output).
In strong product organizations, teams are instead given problems to solve, rather than features to build, and most important they are empowered to solve those problems in the best way they see fit. And they are held accountable to the results.
In the empowered product team model:
- The product manager is responsible for ensuring that the solutions are valuable and viable
- The product designer is responsible for ensuring the solution is usable
- A tech lead is responsible for ensuring the solution is feasible
Product design consists of:
- user experience design
- service design
- interaction design
- visual design
- industrial design (for devices)
Coaching is what turns ordinary people into extraordinary product teams. More than anything, good coaching is an ongoing dialog, with the goal of helping the employee to reach their potential.
- Developing people is job #1: If you are a manager you should be spending most of your time and energy on coaching your team. This means expending effort on things such as assessing your team, creating coaching plans, and actively helping them improve and develop.
- Empowering people produces the best results: Empowering means creating an environment where your people can own outcomes and not just tasks. You must step back to create this space, while stepping in to remove impediments, clarify context, and provide guidance.
- Beware your own insecurities: Insecure managers have a particularly hard time empowering people. Be aware of your own insecurities and understand how your behavior can interfere with empowering your team.
- Cultivate diverse points of view: Good leaders know they will get the best results when they are able to consider diverse points of view. Create a space where alternative points of view can flourish. Collecting a diverse range of opinions allows you to make the best decision.
- Seek out teaching moments: Many people are not aware of their own potential, but as a coach we are uniquely situated to help them see it. Reaching potential means both addressing gaps and recognizing and developing strengths.
- Continually earn the trust of your team: Coaching efforts will not be effective without trust. It is important to support your team both privately and publicly. Be honest, share your own challenges, and who genuine interest in your team as people.
- Have the courage to correct mistakes: Address performance issues in a timely and decisive manner.
The assessment is a coaching tool for helping managers of product people raise the level of performance of the people that report to them. It is structured as a gap analysis.
Pages 41-64 in book.
Assess in the following key areas:
- People knowledge
- Process skills and techniques
- People skills and responsibilities
After reviewing the taxonomy, perform a gap analysis. Every skill gets assigned two ratings, scored 1-10:
- Expectation: Where the employee needs to be on this skill
- Assessment: Where the employee currently performs on this scale
Finally, develop a coaching plan based on the assessment.
- One-on-ones are the foundation of coaching. The primary purpose is to help the team member develop and improve.
- As a manager, you need to demonstrate genuine and sincere interest in helping your team member fulfill their full potential.
- During onboarding (the first 2-3 months), coaching is more intense - and it is the job of the manager to get the person up to speed and make sure they are not actively doing harm to their team
- Frequency - every week, at least 30 minutes, don’t cancel
- If you want to empower your product person to solve problems, you must provide context
Sharing context means you share:
- The org’s mission and objectives for the year
- Product vision
- Product strategy
- Team objectives
- Manager doesn’t care
- Manager reverts to micromanaging
- Manager spends time talking and not listening
- Manager doesn’t provide difficult feedback
- Manager is insecure and/or incomptetent
- If a person is a product designer or tech lead and is not able to spend most of their day doing creative work, you have a problem
- Aim for four hours per day
- Block off this time on the calendar - protect it!
- Many product managers spend the vast majority of their time doing project management
- Every leadership role has some form of project management, but it is not what should define the job
- Whenever possible, team product managers with “delivery” managers to lessen the project management workload
- Acquiring knowledge and applying knowledge are two different things
- For product managers, designers, and engineers problem solving is at the core of the role
- The “written narrative” is an effective technique for developing good thinking skills
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Collaboration has a very specific meaning in the context of empowered, cross-functional product teams: Product managers, product designers, and engineers working together with customers and stakeholders and executives to come up with a solution that solves for all of our constraints and risks.
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There are three characteristics of strong product teams:
- Tacklings risks early
- Solving problems collaboratively
- Being accountable to results
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What collaboration is not:
- Consensus
- Artifacts
- Compromise
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Looking at a prototype, produced by a desisgner, together is a great way to conduct product collaboration
In organizations with the “feature team” model, features are usually coming from stakeholders, so stakeholders seem themselves as “the client” and the view the product team as the “hired IT resource” that “serves the business.”
In empowered product teams, the purpose of the product team is to “serve the customers in ways customers love, yet work for the business.”
A healthy relationship with stakeholders is based on collaboration. A strong product manager understands that each stakeholder is responsible for some key aspect of the business and that they are a key partner in helping them come up with a solution that works.
Good collaboration begins with the manager coaching their product people on the role of each stakeholder, why they are there, what they are concerned about and why, and what they need to succeed at their jobs.
Empowered product teams are predicated on trust — with executives, stakeholders, customers, and your own product team. This trust is based on both competence and character.
Three essential behaviors of integrity:
- Dependability: delivering on what we give our word on
- The organization’s best interests: need to be perceived in always acting in the best interest of the organization — not only protecting the team’s interests
- Accountability: Empowered product teams sign up to achieve results, but with that empowerment comes the responsibility of accountability for those results. It means a willingness to take responsibility for mistakes
A manager can easily be responsible for a product person being miserable
- Meaningful work: most people in the product world want their work to be meaningful and this is usually the largest factor in happiness, even more than compensation. It is important to clearly and explicitly discuss and reinforce how and why an individual’s work is meaningful
- Personal relationship: Good professional relationships are built on personal relationships and knowing your team as people.
- Personal recognition: Everyone wants to feel valued (even if they don’t want public recognition).
- Work habits: Anyone who works long hours should be doing so because they want to (doing important work they are immersed in), not because they have to. A good manager will reinforce the importance of taking breaks and the “long game.”
- Modeling good behaviors: Your actions speak louder than your words. Telling people not to work long hours, but then doing so yourself sets a bad example. A manager needs to be sensitive to this and go out of their way about how and when they are re-charging, be conscious about when they are sending emails, and how they are managing their time.
- Career planning: It is important to point out that sometimes, for a person to be truly happy in their life, it means helping them into a different job or career. Managers should be aware of how important the role is that they play in the lives of their employees - they have the power to make an employee’s life miserable or to help them achieve their professional and personal goals.
Trust is a function of two things: competence and character. Competence includes your capabilities, skills, and your track record. Character includes your integrity, your motive, and your intent with people. Both are vital. — Stephen Covey
Building empowered product teams, means hiring people with competence and character.
Product Vision vs. Mission | Silicon Valley Product Group
Product Vision FAQ | Silicon Valley Product Group
The product vision is one of the our primary tools for keeping the organization truly focused on what the customer cares about.
As soon as an organization has grown to the point where there are multiple product teams — supporting many customers with their constant needs — it is very easy for each product team to get caught up in their own problems and their own work, losing sight of the overarching goal.
The product vision represents the common goal and constantly reminds us of the larger purpose.
Every product team needs to understand the bigger picture:
- Ultimately, what is the endgame?
- How does the work of my team contribute to this larger whole?
Many organizations make the mistake of describing a product vision that is not ambitious or meaningful enough. This is especially true when the product vision reads more like a roadmap.
The product vision describes the future you are trying to create. In what ways will you improve the lives of your customers?
Meanwhile, a roadmap is a set of features and projects you believe might help you get there.
It’s worth investing some real time and effort into the best way to communicate the product vision. Remember that the vision’s purpose is to inspire. PowerPoint presentations rarely inspire anyone.
The minimum is typically to create a visiontype. A visiontype is a conceptual prototype — a high-fidelity, realistic looking, but completely smoke and mirrors, user prototype. The visiontype describes the world once the vision is a reality — that may be 3 or 10 years in the future.
Product principles complement the product vision by stating the values and beliefs that are intended to inform the many product decisions that will need to be made.
The product team needs to understand the principles and the reasoning behind each one. So many decisions revolve around trade-offs and the product principles help to illuminate the values we prioritize when we make these trade-offs.
Team topology is how we organize people into teams to best enable them to do great work.
There will never be a single “perfect” team topology for an organization.
There are two types of work that all product teams (both platform and experience teams) must do:
- Move the purpose of their team forward. This is their main work.
- “Keep-the-lights-on” obligations. The daily work necessary to keep things running, like fixing critical bugs, addressing performance issues, adding capabilities/things that come up, and dealing with compliance issues
Empowerment improves when each product team has something meaningful that they are responsible for.
When a team has a very narrow scope of responsibility, its members can find it hard to stay motivated. They don’t understand how their work relates to the broader business goals, and they can feel like a small cog in a big wheel. By contrast, a team that sees itself as responsible for a meaningful problem is inspired by their connection to the larger cause. They have more pride of ownership.
Give teams Autonomy:
Autonomy does not mean that a team should never have dependencies on other product teams. Nor does it mean that a team is allowed to go off and pursue whatever it likes. Autonomy does mean that when we give teams problems to solve, they have enough control so that they can solve the problem in the best way that they see fit. A topology that results in too many dependencies can make this difficult.
Every team topology will require some sort of inter-team dependencies, but an empowering team topology is one that minimizes these dependencies.
Ultimately, empowering teams is about enabling them to figure out the best way to achieve the necessary outcomes.
Alignment
Alignment refers to how well the boundaries between teams track with their aspects of the strategic context. When alignment is high, teams generally have fewer dependencies to get things done. They can make faster decisions and are more connected with business-level outcomes.
- Architecture-aligned: If the product vision is aligned with the product architecture, the team topology can reflect that. In organizations with large amounts of technical debt and/or legacy systems, teams may not be aligned with the architecture. Their work is cluttered with dependencies and complexity. Even simple tasks can take a long time, if they’re even feasible at all.
- Business-aligned: Alignment with the business includes how the product team relates to the organization.
Platform teams provide leverage because they allow for common services to be implemented once but used in many places. Examples of this include:
- A platform team that is responsible for shared services, such as authentication or authorization
- A platform team that is responsible for maintaining a library of reusable interface components
- A platform team that is responsible for providing tools to developers for test and release automation
In a small org, the platform may be provided by a single platform team. In many of the large, top tech companies, as many as half of the product teams are platform teams.
Ultimately, platforms reduce the cognitive load for experience teams.
Empowering Platform Teams
The most common way for a strong platform team to pursue major work is through shared team objectives. With shared team objectives, the platform team has the same objective as one or more experience teams.
An emerging trend is that a growing number of companies are working to manage their internal platforms more like external platform products.
Topology and Design
Don’t follow the “internal agency model,” because this often leads to designers not being in the room when important decisions are made. Design is far too important to be run as an internal service. It needs to be a first-class member of the product team, just as the product manager and the teach lead are.
Experience teams are responsible for how the product is experienced by users in the form of apps, UIs, solutions, or journeys.
Experience teams are most empowered when they are given as much end-to-end responsibility as possible. This is more likely to happen when the scope of ownership for each team follows other natural patterns of the business such as the sales channel, market segment, or user type.
Customer-Enabling Product teams
Customer-enabling product teams create tools and systems that are used by the company’s internal employees who are providing some vital part of the customer experience. A topology can empower these experience teams by aligning them with the end-to-end needs of the different types of company users.
The written narrative is a product person’s tool to make faster and better decisions. It involves writing a short (1-2 page) narrative of an argument/point followed by an FAQ that anticipates questions and concerns.
It can be used for kickoff meetings, as prep for a presentation, etc.
If there is a way to serve the purpose asynchronously, instead of holding a synchronous meeting, then that’s generally a better path. A good example is status update meetings.
- Communication: We have some non trivial information that the organizer believes is too important or too complex to be sent via an asynchronous means such as email (ex, all-hands, product strategy roll out)
- Decisions: Requires a decision, which typically involves multiple groups/offices. Author advocates for starting the meeting with the written narrative (described above) and having each person read that. Then discussing and making a formal decision.
- Problem solving: When we don’t know what the best course of action is, but believe that with the right minds in the room we may be able to solve the problem (ex: post mortem)
Note: I’d argue that there is a fourth kind of meeting: “Culture building or team alignment” - particularly with a remote team
Note: These do not include meetings between team members on a product team (such as retro, stand up, etc)
- Purpose: Be clear on the purpose of the meeting
- Attendees: Decide on the attendee list. Be clear on who is required and who is optional.
- Preparation: Be sure to prepare for the meeting
- Communication meeting: Do you have clarity of the content? Do you have the right medium to communicate this content? Necessary images or visuals?
- Decision meeting: Do you have the written narrative and has it been reviewed by someone who understands the space?
- Problem-solving session: How will you explain the situation or context to the attendees? Have you already gathered relevant data? Are you prepared to answer the questions that will come up?
- Facilitation: As the organizer, your job is to effectively facilitate the meeting.
- Follow-up: Once the meeting has reached a conclusion there is usually some follow-up that needs to be done. It is important to close the loop on any of these.
Visiontypes are useful for communicating your product vision. A visiontype is a conceptual prototype — a high-fidelity, realistic looking, but completely smoke and mirrors, user prototype. The visiontype describes the world once the vision is a reality — that may be 3 or 10 years in the future.