‘How’ before ‘What’ - Transforming Product Organizations
~ 1000 words. 4 minute read.
Let’s talk transformation—not the superhero kind, but the kind that makes product organizations hum like a finely tuned orchestra. Achieving transformation in product organizations is no small feat, and yet so many teams focus on the wrong thing first. They obsess over what they’re delivering—platforms, features, products—without fixing how they deliver it. That’s like trying to run a trick play in football with a team that can’t even line up correctly. Spoiler alert: that’s a fumble.
The "HOW" Comes First
What your players, aka Product Managers, see.
Imagine this: you’ve got the most sophisticated playbook in the league. It’s brimming with dazzling plays that will leave the competition in the dust. But your team’s fundamentals are a mess. They don’t practice running routes. They don’t communicate on the field. Heck, some players don’t even know the rules. What happens when you try to execute those fancy plays? Chaos, that’s what.
Product organizations are no different. You can’t deliver groundbreaking platforms or disruptive products if your organizational processes, culture, and dependencies can’t keep up. The foundation—the how—must be solid before you can achieve your ambitious transformation goals.
Start with the Fundamentals
Marty Cagan and the Silicon Valley Product Group (SVPG) have extensively discussed the transformation of product organizations, emphasizing the importance of adopting a product operating model. This model focuses on creating technology-powered solutions that delight customers while aligning with business objectives.
Customer-Centric Solutions: By empowering cross-functional teams, organizations can develop products that truly resonate with users, enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty.
PLG, remember?This harmless statement contains two challenges that can break you right out of the gates:
a) Do you have cross-functional teams? (Of course you don’t).b) Did you empower them? (What does that even mean? Hint: It’s not building as many features for as many stakeholders as possible, as mandated from the top.)
Agility and Innovation: The model promotes a culture of continuous improvement, enabling teams to rapidly respond to market changes and innovate effectively.
EXPLOSION! This one has more than two challenges built-in:
a) [Insert Waterfall/Agile debate here. Good debate-starter: “We do Waterfall with two-week sprints.”]b) Culture. Have you unlocked its awesome power? Let’s say you don’t really know, but you do know that you don’t have a culture of continuous improvement. Do you know how to change it? Manage it? Bend it to your will?
c) Can you detect market changes? Have you created and are you maintaining a capability matrix that compares your product to the competition’s? Do your people have the time to do environmental scanning or are you bogging them down with status reporting duties?
Aligned Objectives: With clear processes and goals, teams can focus on delivering outcomes that matter, ensuring that efforts are directly tied to business success.
I imagine most of us can stop reading after “With clear processes and goals, …”
Getting the how right means creating a framework in which execution becomes second nature. It’s about setting up your organization so that it can perform at a high level consistently—not just in flashes of brilliance.
Incentives: The Hidden Saboteurs
What are you growing?
Here’s a dirty little secret about transformation: if your incentives don’t align with your intended future state, your transformation is doomed. Misaligned incentives are like planting seeds for an apple tree but watering them with orange juice (wait, what?). It doesn’t matter how much effort you put in; you’re not getting apples.
Examples of Misaligned Incentives
Faster Isn’t Always Better: If your team is rewarded for speed, they’ll prioritize shipping quickly over delivering quality. "Done" doesn’t mean "done right."
Siloed Goals: If engineering’s goal is velocity but product’s goal is customer satisfaction, you’re setting the stage for conflict, not collaboration. So much for cross-functional teams.
Punishing Failure: If people are penalized for taking risks, you’ll end up with a culture of safe bets—and safe bets rarely lead to transformation.
Aligning Incentives for Transformation
In his book Drive, Daniel Pink highlights that people are motivated by three things: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Transformative product organizations tap into these motivations by:
Rewarding Collaboration: Celebrate team wins (not just individual achievements). And let the team find itself, then empower it to solve problems, not to deliver features.
Encouraging Learning: Provide opportunities for skill development and reward people for experimenting, even if it doesn’t pan out. And for God’s sakes, make them read Marty Cagan.
Did we address the how? Self-assessments shouldn’t consist of 10 bullet points, all of which are project code names. Instead, affect cultural shifts by letting people describe their actions and behaviors that led to success.
Recommendations for Success
Ready to transform your product organization? Here’s your game plan:
Focus on Team Enablement: Invest in training, tools, and processes that make it easier for teams to collaborate and deliver. By the way, this is a great way to foster engagement.
Align Incentives with Behaviors: Ensure that rewards reinforce the behaviors you want to see. No more celebrating speed when quality should be the focus (for example).
Embrace Iterative Improvement: Transformation isn’t a one-and-done effort. Continuously assess and refine your processes to ensure they support your goals. Allow time for that!
Communicate the "Why": People are more likely to embrace change if they understand the purpose behind it. Paint a compelling vision of the future state and how it benefits them. Become a master storyteller, or find one who can evangelize it.
Celebrate Progress: Don’t wait until the end to acknowledge wins. Celebrate milestones along the way to keep momentum and morale high. Set an example by promoting those who have shown the desired behaviors again and again. It’ll create copycats.
My Take
Transformation is hard, but it’s worth it - hell, in today’s business environment, it better be a way of life. The key is to get your how in order before you start chasing the what. Build the right foundation, align incentives, and create a culture that rewards learning and collaboration. Do that, and your product organization won’t just execute the playbook—it’ll rewrite it.
