One Knight in Product - Transforming your Organisation to the Product Operating Model (with Marty Cagan, Author "Inspired", "Empowered" and "Transformed")

Transforming your Organisation to the Product Operating Model (with Marty Cagan, Author "Inspired", "Empowered" and "Transformed")

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03/10/24 • 61 min

Marty Cagan is the founder and a partner at Silicon Valley Product Group, a leading product consultancy that aims to get companies to work "the way that the best companies work". He is the author of two desk references for product managers: "Inspired", aimed at product teams, and "Empowered", aimed at product leaders. He has since come to realise that "the way the best companies work" is too vague a term, and also that many companies have no idea where to get started. He's now back with "Transformed", a book that aims to get companies to adopt the Product Operating Model.

A message from this episode's sponsor - New York Product Conference

Join hundreds of other product people in New York City on April 18th 2024 for the New York Product Conference! You'll learn from some of the best minds in product today — including Dennis Crowley (Founder of Foursquare), Sahil Lavingia (Founder of Gumroad), April Dunford (product positioning expert and bestselling author) and so many others through masterclass keynotes, interactive working sessions, small group discussions and more. Topics covered include Product Strategy, Product Leadership, AI for Product Managers, Customer Research, and more.

Pricing increases on the first of the month, so you'll want to register soon. Plus, use the code OneKnightInProduct and save another $50 when you register!

Episode highlights: 1. It was finally important to give the Product Operating Model a name

Whilst Marty doesn't like to unnecessarily label things, or have any sniff of "process" for the sake of process, he started to realise that just saying "the way the best companies work" was too vague and handwavy. However, the core principles of great product companies and product teams have not changed, and this isn't a framework.

2. Marty and SVPG didn't invent any of this stuff, and you shouldn't listen to him (or anyone) uncritically

These days, it's fashionable to beat up product "thought leaders" and complain that they're being too dogmatic, idealistic, or unrealistic. But, SVPG didn't invent any of these principles, they just observed them in the best-performing product companies. It's still important to apply critical thinking and make sure they make sense to you and your organisation.

3. Product managers and product leaders have more power and more responsibility than they realise

It's not always easy to transform, and there are limits to how far you can go bottoms-up, but you can generally make progress one step at a time. There's an incredible amount of onus on product leaders to evangelise and champion this change and, if they can't (or won't) do it, they shouldn't be product leaders.

4. Not everyone in an organisation will understand why it's transforming, or want to be transformed

It's easy to see this as something that just affects product teams, but the whole organisation needs to buy into the change. Reading bits of "Inspired" at them, or talking about the number of experiments you've done this week, is unlikely to sway them, You need to show business results and real impact and make them care about it on their terms.

5. There are four key competencies for a successful transformation, and they need investing in

The competencies remain the same... Product Managers, Product Leaders, "proper" Product Designers (not just pixel pushers) and Tech Leads who care as much about what they're building as how they're building it. If you just expect to get results with a disengaged, outsourced engineering team, graphic designers and product owners, you're going to be disappointed.

6. Sometimes you need help to know what good looks like

It's easy for people like us to sit there and talk about the benefits of product transformation and how we should all definitely do it but, for some people, this is all alien. In cases like this, a good product coach can be the difference between success and failure. But, there are so many product coaches these days, so make sure you get a good one.

Check out "Transformed"

"The most common question after reading INSPIRED and EMPOWERED has been: "Yes, we want to work this way, but the way we work today is so different, and so deeply ingrained, is it even possible for a company like ours to transform to the product model?" TRANSFORMED was written to bridge the gap between where most companies are right now and where they need to be. The leaders of these companies know they must transform to compete in an era of rapidly changing enabling technology, but most of them have never operated this way before. "

Check it out on Amazon.

Check out ...

A message from this episode's sponsor - New York Product Conference

Pricing increases on the first of the month, so you'll want to register soon. Plus, use the code OneKnightInProduct and save another $50 when you register!

Episode highlights: 1. It was finally important to give the Product Operating Model a name

2. Marty and SVPG didn't invent any of this stuff, and you shouldn't listen to him (or anyone) uncritically

3. Product managers and product leaders have more power and more responsibility than they realise

4. Not everyone in an organisation will understand why it's transforming, or want to be transformed

5. There are four key competencies for a successful transformation, and they need investing in

6. Sometimes you need help to know what good looks like

Check out "Transformed"

Check it out on Amazon.

Check out ...

Previous Episode

Applying Product Management Principles to Life (with Miloš Belčević, Author "Build Your Way")

Miloš Belčević is a product manager and author who believes that product management principles are powerful not only when managing products, but also when managing the ultimate product; your life itself. He has written a book on the subject, "Build Your Way: Applying Product Management to Life". We spoke about the book as well as some of the lessons inside.

Episode highlights: 1. We can apply product management principles to life

We can apply product management principles to one's life, beyond just professional settings. This includes using prioritisation frameworks to manage personal goals and tasks, and considering whether there's a "North-Star metric" that can help guide personal growth and decision-making.

2. Context switching can be hell at home as well as work

Whether we're switching contexts between different roles in our careers or having to balance multiple responsibilities, we can apply product management strategies to help us prioritise our time and manage our mental bandwidth.

3. We can define "Value" for our life as well as our products

There's no magic formula for "value", but it's important to understand the deeper meaning of the concept of value, whether delivering value to customers or identifying what brings value to one's life.

4. Our time is limited and we need to prioritise what's most important to us

We don't have to use prioritisation frameworks for everything, but applying product management prioritisation techniques can help us focus on what is most important. If we practice enough, we can get into the habit, and it even becomes somewhat intuitive to our life decisions.

5. Product discovery techniques can foster better interactions and conversations in life

We can use our empathic and discovery mindset to help solicit genuine feedback and dig into people's motivations in conversations. This offers the tantalising prospect of being able to bridge ideological divides and improve the quality of our interactions with society as a whole.

Check out "Build Your Way"

"Perhaps you have heard about product management. Maybe you use it in your work. If that’s the case, chances are high that you know that product management is full of useful frameworks, principles, and tools that focus on prioritization and maximizing value, better planning, agile delivery, and more. But what if you want to use these tools in your personal life? How would you do that in a way that will make sure you will live a better, happier, and more fulfilled life? In this book, author Miloš Belčević will show you how."

Check it out on Amazon.

Contact Miloš

You can catch up with Miloš on LinkedIn or check out his website.

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Next Episode

undefined - Knowing your Customers, Seeking Evidence and Sticking up for Continuous Discovery (with Hope Gurion, Product Leader and Team Coach @ Fearless Product)

Knowing your Customers, Seeking Evidence and Sticking up for Continuous Discovery (with Hope Gurion, Product Leader and Team Coach @ Fearless Product)

Hope Gurion is a seasoned product coach and one of Marty Cagan's recommendations from his new book, "Transformed". Hope also works closely with Teresa Torres, teaching continuous discovery, as well as working directly with incoming product leaders to help them make an impact in their organisations. We spoke all about knowing your customers, gathering evidence, and whether continuous discovery is really a threat to user researchers.

Episode highlights: 1. Product coaching is more than just being there to ask good questions

When working with incoming product leaders, potentially without a product background at all, it's important to have a coach who has product experience who can help you identify your weaknesses, assess the state of play and provide actionable advice. Ultimately, it's important to empower the coachee.

2. It's really hard to make decisions if you have no idea who your customers are

It's important to define who your target customer is and what are their key attributes. This could be demographics, firmographics or whatever characteristics you need to know who you most need to learn from to calibrate your decisions as a product team. But, too many product teams end up resorting to proxies in other functions who "know the customers".

3. Many leaders are overconfident, but evidence is everything

Some people are just naturally confident about everything and can react badly if their ideas are challenged. But, as product people, we absolutely need to look beyond innate confidence and work out what informed the perspective. Which customers are we basing it on? Can I speak to some of those customers? It's not about trashing people's ideas but moving forward with confidence.

4. It's important to get comfortable with making bets and understanding the difference between one-way and two-way-door decisions

Sometimes teams get stuck into cycles of trying to do "perfect research", possibly because they're afraid that they're only going to get one shot at it. This means that they end up not making any moves at all, and everyone ends up getting frustrated at the amount of time product teams take to do anything.

5. Continuous discovery is about removing as many blind spots as possible and probably isn't responsible for mass user research lay-offs

All teams have an imperfect understanding of their product, the pain points associated with their product and their customers. Continuous discovery helps address this by removing blind spots but doesn't aim for perfection - simply evidence about how to make your next move. Is it contributing to user researcher lay-offs? It feels difficult to argue this when it feels like the majority of companies don't do any user research in the first place. User researchers and continuous discovery can co-exist.

Contact Hope

You can catch up with Hope at Fearless Product or follow her on LinkedIn.

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