Back in 2006, calling my product delivery organization a factory would have been a compliment. We were struggling to deliver predictably. Quality was such a big issue that I joked about asking one of our QA engineers to take a vacation during our final hardening week so that we would have a chance to get …
Engineers excited about LLMs, Agentic AI, RAGs, spending time going to the vendors, playing around like kids with new toys. Without a real problem in mind. Without the ability to deploy any of it in the organization (the engineers don’t talk to the legal folks much…) Can you think of where so much time and …
Ever feel like your product organization is stuck in the mud? You’re not alone. Many teams start strong, laser-focused on delivering value and achieving product-market fit. But as success scales, things get messy. Dependencies pile up, alignment fades, and suddenly, you’re running a feature factory instead of an empowered product organization. Why Do Product Organizations Stall? Here’s …
A CEO asked me last week why I’m using the term Organizational Traction. I got the inspiration from Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business (Gino Wickman’s book introducing EOS – here’s my take on it from a while ago). Here’s how I explained it in the conversation yesterday: Imagine you established a strategic vision. You know where …
I see some practitioners and leaders using these terms interchangeably. I thought I’d take the time to clarify the overlaps and differences, first of all for myself. Product-Led Organization—As opposed to Sales/Engineering/Marketing/Professional Services-led organizations, a Product-Led organization is structured to deliver value through the product. These organizations often have product-oriented leaders at the helm. Some …
Working Software. Done Increments. Two related concepts in the agile world that people trying to leverage Agile/Scrum’s empiricism outside of the software/technology space struggle with. The intent behind these practices is to achieve transparency to validate/invalidate assumptions—you might call it managing based on evidence. The key idea is to get transparency as early and often …
“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 …
FlowImpact Yoga is a rising power in the fitness industry. A PE firm has just purchased it, and its leadership is hard at work, making the best of the holding period to grow and improve the business. There are many ideas on the table. The leadership team realized that 1. They need to focus, and …
In this video, I explore the core issues many organizations face with their OKR (Objectives and Key Results) practices. We’ll revisit the fundamental principles that often get lost in the process of setting and tracking OKRs and explore how to fix misaligned strategies. Tune in for actionable insights to help you reset your approach, align …
“OKRs S&%k, but we don’t know anything better” This was a direct quote from a cybersecurity scaleup’s Chief of Staff, but I hear the sentiment way too often from founders, chiefs of staff, COOs, and others in the scaleup ecosystem. I started encountering OKRs when working with scaleups a couple of years ago, helping leaders …