PRODUCTHEAD: Putting the Product Operating Model into context

productsnatchers #

every PRODUCTHEAD edition is online for you to refer back to

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tl;dr

There’s no one true version of product management, but there are 4 flavours

Without support from the CEO, your product operating model probably won’t succeed

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hello

Please join me in pouring one out for my recently departed dishwasher. After fifteen years of dedicated and incident-free service, it finally declared “f**k this s**t” and performed a dramatic rapid unscheduled disassembly. I will be holding a moment’s silence in remembrance.

My sentimentality about its passing is thrown into sharp relief by its replacement, which is very much an product of the times. Despite being essentially the same model and price, the upstart successor is less solidly constructed and – rather pettily, I feel – lacks several quality-of-life design touches of the original I only now appreciate in their absence.

Possibly the aspect that has irked me most is the labelling. What was once the perfectly descriptive “Quick Wash” is now “Vario Speed Plus”, which promises far more that it delivers, being otherwise identical in function. Fifteen years of progress and innovation has translated to penny-pinching on the bill of materials, transplanting of useful features to more expensive models, and 100% more meaningless brand-speak. What a time to be alive.

For you this week #

I particularly enjoyed Scott Colfer’s analysis of how we arrived at the current fad for product operating models. One can point to pretty much any fashionable innovation in how we conceive of, design and build technology products, and trace back its roots to ideas that pre-date most of the people who are championing it. It’s not a bad thing to take an existing idea and embellish it, however it is valuable to understand its historical context, if for no other reason than to avoid making the same mistakes as our predecessors.

To continue the theme of adding context, it’s well worth listening to Jason Knight interview Marty Cagan on his podcast. The episode was recorded just around the time Marty published Transformed, which popularised the concept of the Product Operating Model. As Jason is unafraid of a little provocation, he pushes Marty on the reality of setting out an ideal that most product people will simply not have the agency to work towards.

To round things off this week, I’ve included a link to a tool to help you think things through more carefully, called the Ladder of Inference (h/t to Sascha Brossmann). Originally created by Harvard professor and prolific author Chris Agyris, it’s a model of how people take action based on an often unconscious process of inference from observable information. It’s not especially tied to this week’s theme, although I’ve been finding it helpful recently and so I thought it worth sharing with you also.

Speak to you soon,

Jock

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what to think about this week

Escaping the Product Operating Model Trap

The conversation often begins the same way. A slide appears in a leadership meeting, with a title reading something like “Our Product Operating Model.” … The implication is rarely stated outright, but everyone in the room understands it: ‘if we were truly serious about product, we would reorganise the organisation around this model.’

… The trouble is, this assumes something unrealistic: that an organisations can wipe the slate clean and rebuild itself around a single philosophy, and establish a new mono-culture with Digital and a product operating model at its heart. And that ain’t gonna happen.

Operating models don’t arrive all at once

[Scott Colfer / Product In Service]

Transforming your Organisation to the Product Operating Model (with Marty Cagan)

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.

Product leaders only win hearts and minds when they show what can be done

[Jason Knight & Marty Cagan / One Knight In Product]

Ladder of inference

We act and make decisions based on the conclusions we make. But we tend to jump to these conclusions and skip important parts of the reasoning process.

Ladder of inference, developed by a former Harvard professor Chris Argyris, is a tool that helps you fill the gaps in your thinking and make decisions based on reality. It’s also helpful to challenge the thinking of others and reach better conclusions together.

Challenge your and others’ thinking

[Adam Amran / Untools]

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PRODUCTHEAD is a newsletter for product people of all varieties, and is lovingly crafted from mini fatbergs.