Product Thinking for Product Leaders: How to Apply It to Your Organization
How product leaders can use product thinking on the product organization itself, with experiments, minimum viable changes, and evidence-based adaptation.
Click image to open full size “PMs work on the 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁. Product leaders work on the 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁 𝗼𝗿𝗴.” - Ed Biden
Let’s take it one step further.
Product Leaders should work on the Product Organization using a Product Approach.
Successful Product Leaders I worked with applied their Product chops to working on their Org. They Hypothesize, Experiment, Keep options open, Inspect and Adapt, Orient to Outcomes, and use Evidence to guide them.
They DON’T spend 100 days planning the reorg to solve all Product organization problems. They get going with bite-sized changes within 10 days. (If we were playing buzzword bingo, you could call this Bias for Action I guess)
They apply a Product Operating Model to introduce a Product Operating Model.
They consider themselves stewards of the Product Management experience and frame their goals and actions around serving their customers (The PMs and other stakeholders of the Product organization).
They treat their potential changes/interventions as a hypothesis and walk the truth curve. They use Minimum Viable Changes.
They engage and empower cross-functional teams of the right people (often bringing in perspectives outside the Product Org) to figure out complex problems.
You might consider this Product Operations. Initially its a capability the Product Leader and core Product Management team might focus on. Over time, As their organization scales it often makes sense to organize a specialized enabling / platform team to help steward the Product Operating Model.
The most successful ones? They rally their colleagues to work on the whole company as a product.
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