PRODUCTHEAD: Down with the technocracy!

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every PRODUCTHEAD edition is online for you to refer back to

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tl;dr

Only having geniuses at the top of an org defining strategy for everyone else to enact is a relic of a bygone era

The allocation of ‘time’ and the allocation of ‘capacity’ are very different concepts

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hello

For the last few Fridays I’ve been going to Jason Knight’s One Knight (K)networking virtual meetups for a few quick chats with like-minded product people. It’s a 30-minute, low-effort way to be sociable without having to drag yourself out in person or be pitched at. People are already joining from Europe, the US and across the UK, so it’s not just another London-centric thing. Come along and see for yourself.

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In this week’s edition of PRODUCTHEAD, we’re exploring how we structure our professional world – from the high-level choices that define strategy to the granular ways we attempt to track our daily progress.

Martin Eriksson gets to grips with Roger Martin’s idea that business strategy as a discipline is “profoundly broken” and that we need to move away from top-down technocratic analysis by following his 5 conventions. However, as Roger doesn’t present a practical approach to do this, Martin proposes his Decision Stack to make strategic choices more explicit at each level of the organisation, and to bridge the gap between intent and action.

John Cutler articulates another challenge to the technocracy. Through an imagined conversation with an unnamed executive, he breaks down the seductive and often flawed belief that everything can be tracked to guide investment decisions. He warns that chasing the false precision of proxy measures (time tracking, story points, capacity allocation) can lead teams to end up faking data simply to appease the reporting. Instead he suggests we focus on outcomes, capacity, and reducing uncertainty to support real decision-making.

Speak to you soon,

Jock

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what to think about this week

Roger Martin Is Right: Strategy Is Broken.

There is no execution. Only decisions. The Decision Stack shows how strategic choices cascade through every level of your organisation.

Every manager should ‘do’ strategy

[Martin Eriksson / The Decision Stack]

The Seduction (And Folly) Of Rollups, Points, and (Most) Time Tracking

There are few ideas in business as seductive as the belief that teams can “roll up” their work in a neat, predefined tree, and that we can use things like story points and time tracking to gain magical insight into how our organization operates. When I show Sankey diagrams to executives, I can see their eyes light up. “This is it. The magic report!”

Proxy measures often prevent understanding of real impact

[John Cutler / The Beautiful Mess]

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PRODUCTHEAD is a newsletter for product people of all varieties, and is lovingly crafted from a good book, a warm rug and a sofa.