Even without product leadership, you can build a solid product culture
Too many companies have a hard time getting the best out of their product teams. They don’t know how to empower them. This has a lot to do with not understanding the function and role of product leadership.
Here are two tales of a story I vividly remember from my own experience. On the one hand, a strong execution culture with robust engineering- operations and “glorified” product management struggling to establish its own credibility. On the other hand, a product culture empowering General Management to drive a full P&L (profit and loss).
Which model won? You could think strong engineering and operations could go far in their execution with the right visionary leader at the company’s helm. That’s entirely possible, but it wouldn’t last. The winner was actually the product-driven culture. But there was ONE crucial condition for success: having the right product leader.
Product Leadership is poised to bloom as more companies recognize the need for such talent. The only issue, it’s still rare to find such leaders.
The difficulty is not about driving product organizations composed of engineers, designers, technologists, and marketers. The challenge is knowing how to inspire, build alignment, and establish effective product management processes. There are simply not enough experienced and knowledgeable product leaders to meet the growing demand.
So how to get it right? Here are a few ways to instill or reinforce the right product culture, whether you already have the right product leader or are struggling to find one.
Key attributes of a strong product leader
As already highlighted, it’s tough to find a great product leader. Just think of it. The individual needs to be both a visionary, a talent developer, have excellent customer skills, and a proven execution track-record. But if you’re seriously looking for the right talent, here are the key attributes to spot:
- The right product leader knows how to develop talent. This is critical as executives are often tempted to favor great-performing product managers or product designers for product leadership roles. That’s fine, only if such talent has grown into developing other talent and acts as a great coach already.
- Along these lines, at the risk of stating the obvious, the most effective product leaders are the ones who complement their CEO or overall business leader on the vision nicely. You cannot afford to have a vision clash. For more on this topic, you can go to my previous article on strategic product management.
- It’s also critical that a product leader knows how to execute modern product management techniques, like customer and product discovery. Many industries can learn from what’s been brewing in the tech industry, especially with software-based companies.
- Lastly, you need a product leader with a certain mindset and all the human qualities that generate success. Such a mindset is about the highest degree of collaboration between the different functions (especially engineering, design, marketing) and the humility to recognize today’s world’s volatility.
Change is constant, and it calls for continuous investigation, validation, and innovation.
What if you cannot find strong product leadership (yet)?
If you don’t have a well-identified product leader yet, you still can progress by focusing first on product coaching your teams. The new role of a Product Coach is gradually recognized, whether internal or external. The more mentoring and coaching your product teams receive, the more chances you will develop CPO (Chief Product Officer) talent over time.
Here are a few critical considerations for successful product coaching:
- Help the product team embrace the unknown. This is especially true these days, given the uncertainties. Most people fear change and are not comfortable with the unknown. With the right coaching, teams can focus more on what they know they can act on. They can accept their imperfections and organize constant discovery and innovation. They “just” need to know it’s OK to fail, as long as it’s on smaller chunks, and they pivot quickly.
- Ensure the right customer focus. We all claim we are customer-focused. Yet, most “modern” product teams don’t spend enough time interacting with their customers and trying to get what’s on their mind. Data and analytics are vital to see what works, to understand trends, but won’t give you the “WHY.” To truly understand your customers, you need your product team to master their empathy skills and do more qualitative research. I recently wrote a complete article on customer empathy. If the notion is still unclear to you, it’s a must-read!
- Build resilience by organizing the effort into chewable chunks. Managing products is daunting and never-ending. Your team needs to find the right pace, and you can help deconstruct the big goals into smaller tasks. In a world of chaos, the best you can do for the team is to bring some predictability in their discovery and development cadence. The same goes for OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), a collaborative way to set goals while building alignment. The right OKRs will map to the organization’s critical goals yet can be less intimidating.
Get started!
If you already have effective product leadership, then congratulations. Empowering your product team will go a long way on your path to success. It’s like a muscle. The more you flex it, the more momentum you will gain.
If you haven’t built strong product leadership yet, don’t wait any longer. Map out your current talent to the critical leadership attributes I highlighted above. With the right talent, chances are proper coaching is happening. If not, get coaching started now, and just don’t hesitate to reach out to The Product Sherpa if you feel stuck.