Background I met recently with a product leader friend. For heavy conversations I prepare notes. His team (~400 in product/engineering/design) is experiencing a lot of growth, but as with many companies in 2022 there are a lot of moving parts. I present this with a specific set of “to dos”, but nothing here is easy. Sharing here in case people find this helpful.
“This place needs more structure & focus! Oh wait, I’m suppose to provide those” -every product leader
The struggle is real, but it’s also an exciting privilege. If nothing else, it makes you think of all those times you judged other leaders too harshly.
A great point on the 'good enough' strategy. The new hammer for consultants seems to be telling companies they need to have a strategy and lack of one is there problem. Its true they will need strategy to win over the long term but it may not be their present biggest current problem. Jumping to strategy may not help anything.
Wardley's doctrine level 1 has some great ideas of things that should be addressed as a foundation to an organisation being able to leverage a strategy and part of what that entails is the organisation understanding its own context and customers & users needs. And importantly, being open enough to respond and adapt to what it learns does and does not work.
“This place needs more structure & focus! Oh wait, I’m suppose to provide those” -every product leader
The struggle is real, but it’s also an exciting privilege. If nothing else, it makes you think of all those times you judged other leaders too harshly.
This was really helpful, thank you!
Perfect!
A great point on the 'good enough' strategy. The new hammer for consultants seems to be telling companies they need to have a strategy and lack of one is there problem. Its true they will need strategy to win over the long term but it may not be their present biggest current problem. Jumping to strategy may not help anything.
Wardley's doctrine level 1 has some great ideas of things that should be addressed as a foundation to an organisation being able to leverage a strategy and part of what that entails is the organisation understanding its own context and customers & users needs. And importantly, being open enough to respond and adapt to what it learns does and does not work.
Oh this is so good, so relatable, unfortunately. The feeling that we all run like headless chickens is the scariest. Thank you for sharing John.