Five ways a PM can dramatically improve team culture

How do we make our teams a great place to be, while also securing better product outcomes?

Good team culture leads to successful outcomes – this is one of those obvious facts that everybody ‘knows’, but in my experience, culture and ways of working are the first things to be left behind when pressure is placed on a team to get something done.

As the industry develops and more companies adopt operating models orientated around product, we’re also seeing less of those roles that had team culture as a dedicated focus (think scrum master and delivery managers), which means this crucial aspect of successful delivery has become a shared responsibility, and is in danger of being forgotten.

Product managers can make the difference - but how do we make our teams a great place to be, while also chasing ways of working that actually get us better product outcomes?

I’ve been reflecting on five practical methods that help you do both.

1. Democratise decision-making wherever possible

Product is often called in as the ‘decision maker’ where prioritisation is needed, and obviously product set (and change) the overall strategy that the team is chasing. Even given that, I would say that the actual decisions that have to be made solely by product are lower than you think, and they’re usually tied to that handful that include risk or uncertainty.

This means there are many, many product decisions that can be made most effectively in partnership with the whole team. If you prioritise the shared forums and space to do so (e.g. workshops, ideation sessions), you increase your team’s investment in those decisions, and raise individual’s confidence in their understanding and judgement of the product. Here’s a test – ask somebody in your team why you’re working on the current priority. If they can’t give a good answer, maybe you didn’t invite them into that decision. Maybe you didn’t let them decide anything!

2. Normalise sharing WIP

There’s nothing more disconcerting than a product strategy that’s half finished – perhaps because we ultimately look to roadmaps, plans, strategies, etc., to give us certainty about where to go. I think there’s a particular pressure for product managers (perhaps down to a drive to ‘justify’ the work we do) that we need to present plans at the point where we’re most confident in them.

But if you share half-baked, hole-ridden, unfinished plans and invite everybody to give a first response, you’re going to instantly engender a culture of radical candour and feedback. You need to show vulnerability for others to do the same – and ultimately only in a culture of vulnerability and trust can decisions be fully scrutinised on their own merits without ego.

3. Make sure your team rhythms zoom out as well as in

We’re all clear on weekly ceremonies and their purpose in getting us to reflect, plan and communicate. But they’re very detail focussed. What about the ceremonies where we invite our team to look at the one year, or even the three year plan? There’s often an assumption that this is relayed by others and the team don’t join in at that level, but this misses out on the excellent opportunity to strategise upwards.

Ideally, whenever strategy ‘comes down’ in the organisation, you want to be in a position to push strategy upwards too, this is where top level thinking meets team level insights. So why not actually bake this into your rhythm? I suggest that at the least you have a quarterly session where you look to deliberately set the lens broader than your specific remit and invite your team to be creative with it.

4. Focus your energy on resources other people can use

This is an interesting one – but it’s a reflection of a shift I’ve seen when working with more empowered teams. There is always a bunch of time and effort required for effective stakeholder communication. Decks are put together, narratives are nailed. These comms tend to be for a specific context – and although they’re high effort and ‘urgent’, they tend to be one-use.

I’ve found it much better to focus on evergreen strategy docs that have a wider intended audience, with the aim of team members using them in their day to day comms, whether that’s with other teams or to frame thinking/deep dives. A great slide on ‘why this problem matters now’ will not only be extremely useful to have on hand, but could empower a particular team member to communicate that concept well in a meeting that only they attend, perhaps for a specific discipline. That’s going to work wonders for your consistency of messaging.

5. Prioritise meaningful team connection

An obvious one to land on. Non-work, social interaction really matters. It doesn’t need to eat into capacity – it can be a quick 30 minute social on a regular cadence. But that time makes all the difference for building connection long term and ultimately improving collaboration. Don’t drop it for ‘more important’ calls – make the time for it, and you’ll see the reward the next time you run a workshop where all the participants know and trust each other.

And if you can, where logistics allow, make that connection face to face, because meeting in person is a short cut to the kind of relationship that take remote communication a long time to build.