Establishing Product Leadership At Scale

Whilst a lot of what it takes to be a great leader is transferable across different types of work, and there are many different styles of leadership that could all be equally successful given the right context and people, there are some things that are unique or particularly important for Product leaders to get right to set themselves up for success. Here I talk about some of those things, especially in relation to organisations at scale or scaling, where Product is getting established as a specialism and the Product team exists to support and drive development at scale.

Leading your people

Firstly and pretty foundational, you need the right people in the right place doing the right things in your team. Sounds simple — Get good people in, empower with a flat structure to get stuff done and let them bloom. But Product Managers are a fairly unique bunch, and without the right set-up even the best can flounder. Here’s a few things that I’ve found helpful to think about when setting up or optimising your Product team.

Find the right fit

Do you have your team in the right places to allow them to flourish and grow? To borrow an analogy, some plants love it hot and dry, some wet and dark. PMs are the same, they’re not all going to succeed in any role. Some are more technically inclined, some UX and others love data. Some work best influencing behind the scenes, some front and centre. Whilst we should always be stretching them to be flexible and grow, the core of what they do needs to play to their strengths so don’t bang a round peg into a square hole. Embrace their diversity and make that hole round as well so you can get the most out of what is probably your most expensive asset — then you can stretch them into new or less familiar areas. This is particularly true for PMs as they need to live and breathe their product and will be constantly challenged by demanding stakeholders and goals. Set them up for success.

Allow the right sized mistakes

Next up the maker or breaker of careers. People learn most from their mistakes and advance quicker when they’re allowed to make them. But in product, your team should be the decision makers and can have a massive impact (both positive or negative) on organisational outcomes. You also can’t be around for all the decisions that need to be made. How do you strike the right balance? Let them make the small mistakes (and learn + rectify them) but try and head off the big mistakes before they happen (and turn them into a learning opportunity). This means allowing direction to come bottom-up and allowing your people autonomy to operate with their teams and stakeholders. However, make sure you’re always available and have the right communication channels in place to check-in regularly to help guide and steer, plus be a wing for those new in to learn the ropes. And for the big stuff (the things that have a significant impact to important outcomes) be there a bit more to help. If you’re having to micromanage it’s a sign you’ve not achieved the right fit, which needs to be addressed quickly as no one will benefit.

Build bottom up to channel diversity

I have seen some Product leaders try and manage by hierarchy — Setting up reporting lines, communication and decision making so all things come from the top and just get cascaded down to get done. Whether this approach works in any walk of work is debatable but in Product they’re definitely missing the point of Product leadership. For one, if you find you have the time to define or sign-off all roadmaps and backlogs, you’re not doing the essential things needed to build team capability and lead the business called out here. For two, as knowledge workers Product Managers need to be empowered to own their world, so they can live and breath their product and make the best decisions — They are closest to their product and customers so the decision making should start from them. If you find some wacky decision making going on but you’ve got the right people in the right place, take a look at your team outcomes: Do you have well defined and communicated business outcomes that your Product Managers can ladder to? If you don’t it might not be they’re mistaken with their judgement, they just might not know the wider context their effort needs to link to. Thirdly and most powerfully, a bottom up approach allows individuals not only ownership but also freedom of expression — And that diversity of background and opinion will really help you as a team to not only understand and represent your customers, but also debate and innovate to create more value — Essential as most of us are now operating in fast changing, consumer-led competitive industries where change and customer alignment is needed just to stand still. Make sure each and everyone of your Product team can be leaders.

Leading the business

So you’ve got a great team set-up and some amazing Product Managers. Nice work. But that’s not even half the picture, with things set-up well internally in the team, most of your time will be spent managing externally to it. And with the right engagement with stakeholders, you can make your life miles easier by creating the trust and space for you and your team to crack on and do what you do best. Here’s a few things that I’ve found helpful to remember when getting out there and setting the team up for success with stakeholders.

Build those relationships

Firstly, it’s so important for you to be at the table. It can often be hard starting especially in those traditionally non-digital organisations where Product is just seen as a branch of Technology, or as a way for the Digital team to get their needs aired. We know that decent product management is essential for delivering value, but for many it’s a new concept, associated with scary new agile practices or with burns from previous run ins. When you’re at the table, firstly seek ways to help your stakeholders solve their problems and rapidly create some quick wins to show them the pace at which you can support the business. If you can work hand in hand with your key stakeholders to understand the outcomes that define success, and then regularly deliver at speed, you’re setting your team up to be able to do the same throughout the organisation.

Foster trust and prove worth

Once you have that foot in the door, build on your success by showing that you can align your team to support critical business outcomes and gain further trust. Product are in a great position to be able to report back on the success of development — So make sure your team are MVT or A/B testing where possible and monitoring the analytics when a change goes in. Some results can be truly surprising e.g. a Checkout optimisation piece I was part of delivered +20% conversion to order (which grew to +40% during peak sales). Make sure the great development is talked about in terms of the outcomes the business are pursuing so you can prove your worth with hard data.

Influence business outcomes

With trust established and critical success under your belt, even the most sceptical stakeholders should start to be seeing the light. Now’s the time to really transition Product to actually defining those business outcomes. Apply your critical and commercial thinking to help steer conversations into high value areas — You’re also uniquely positioned to do this and actually follow through with developing and delivering solutions, as well as already being well versed in the tooling and techniques to find the right value to go after (MoSCoW, RICE, KANO et al.) from using these for product prioritisation and decision making.

If you can do this well, lead by example and give your team the tools and arena to do something similar in their areas — Allowing everyone to lead at all levels with stakeholders. This can be uncomfortable for stakeholders that are used to defining outcomes and solutions that are then thrown over the IT wall to get done, but from my experience these same stakeholders can feel a great sense of release by having Product and Engineering partners working collaboratively with them to define the outcomes that will drive the business forwards (freeing them up to spend more time on their day jobs). To be clear though this has to be a partnership with stakeholders, you might know best but still need to influence without the ultimate authority, unless you’re also acting CEO too.

Maximising value creation

Finally, how do you ensure you and your team can sustain your success and continue to lead and create value without getting bogged down? Make sure you bed in Maximum Value Creation and ensure you let stakeholders know you’re in the business of maximising value created over any time frame (more on that in my previous article), this plus your influence, trust that you’ve fostered from proving your worth and great relationships built with your ace Product team will mean you will keep leading your business into the future.