TBM 281: Stop Chasing Unicorns

There's a 94.5% chance your company isn't competing with the 1% of companies that regularly get called out for how they approach product. We will let it slide for a moment that 1) the reality inside the 1% is rarely as rosy as what gets communicated publicly, and 2) this statistic is completely made up (but directionally correct).

Why does this matter?

I was chatting with a product leader recently and listened while they did an excruciatingly detailed competitive analysis of their ten direct competitors. When they finished, I asked them a basic question: "When it comes to ways of working, what do the companies that beat you in deals do better product, design, and engineering-wise?" Silence. "Do they do better discovery and research, ship higher quality work, run more experiments, kill bad decisions faster, retain passionate team members, or have a more effective org design?"

"I'm not sure. I can give you a deal-by-deal analysis, but I never thought of that. If I'm honest with myself, the closest I've gotten to this was thinking that some of our competitors seemed to hire better than us. That's usually it, right? I'm embarrassed, but I don't know how some of our key competitors are structured, let alone how they work."

Three critical things struck me at that moment.

First, some leaders ignore ways of working as a potential differentiator. They are too quick to assume that ways of working spring from hiring (or not hiring) "the best", instead of a set of capabilities you can support, grow, and strengthen. Ways of working often get derided as being too process-focused. On the flip side, other leaders have only vague notions of "being Agile," "being product-led," or "adopting a product operating model." It is 0/1, be, or not, and nothing in between.

Second, people are so inundated with information about 1% of the companies that they forget to ask how they might make incremental improvements vs. our nearest competitors. If you're working in a regulated environment and getting a customer in direct contact with a team is hard, there's a good chance it is ALSO hard for your competitors. With some creativity, even a small shift—like a one-week "customer research workshop" with key customers and teams—could be an almost infinite leap from your competition. If your competition ships three times a year, imagine the difference shipping a key part of your offering weekly or monthly could make.

(The irony here is that while companies will resist these experiments, they simultaneously copy-paste things like NPS—"me-toos" at best and harmful in many cases.)

Third, internal change agents confuse what they want career-wise (to do X or Y as they imagine company Z does), with what their company needs right now and where they might help gain an advantage.

So...

Set aside time to figure out how your competitors are working (and what's working and not). What practices are "common" in your context, and where are there opportunities to set yourself apart? What specific capabilities must you evolve and strengthen as a company? Avoid handwavvy words like "Agile" or "Modern Product." Get specific. 

What is one area in which you can get incrementally better?