Beyond the Plan: How Culture Shapes Sustainable Product Transformation
No matter how well-articulated your transformation plan is, you need to equally invest in nurturing your team culture to ensure it 'sticks'
Ever since Marty Cagan published his latest book “Transformed: Moving to the Product Operating Model” (if you haven’t seen/heard about/read it yet, where have you been??) I feel as though ‘product ops’ has now become a serious buzzword and every leader is focused on transforming their product operating model (I’ll admit - I am too!)
While his book generally had lots of positive feedback, it received criticism for being idealistic in places - some readers have commented that while what he describes in his book are desirable goals, the reality in many companies involves more constraints and resistance, making such transformations difficult to achieve in practice.
This - plus my own experience in designing and implementing operating models - got me thinking about Peter Drucker’s famous saying, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. While a robust strategy is essential for navigating the complexities of product transformation, it’s the culture that ultimately determines whether these strategies become ‘sticky’, take root and flourish, or wither away and die. And in an organisation where those aforementioned constraints can make your intended changes slow to take root, I believe it’s the culture that can determine how your product teams approach the journey through the ambiguity and the messy middle, until you reach your version of utopia.
Product transformation has to be more than just changing processes or adopting new tools; it represents a fundamental shift in how your product team is structured, how they work and interact, and your foundational product management principles. Whether you’re adjusting the operating model, redefining your team topology, integrating product operations, or attempting to transition from project- to product-based squads, the underpinning culture is the bedrock upon which sustainable change is built.
The Role of Culture in Embracing Change
In any environment or scenario, the ability to pivot and adapt quickly is crucial to maintaining your relevance. A culture that promotes agility and innovation enables teams to respond effectively to new challenges and opportunities, and also feel as though they can contribute to shaping the changes. Simultaneously, if you can encourage open communication with your team, they’re more likely to give you immediate feedback when something is, or isn’t, working, allowing you to adapt your approach as needed, rather than spend months going down one path that isn’t suitable for your team and/or context.
A word of caution - encouraging your teams to embrace change doesn’t mean you can get away with things being vague and overly flexible. There needs to be some fixed concepts - anchors if you will - around which the other transformation is structured. You can approach this in a number of ways, for example co-creating operating principles for your team that will make sure you’re aligned in how you approach the transformation. Need some inspiration? Here’s a starter for 10 to define your own product operating principles:
We don’t own the customer, but we’re their biggest evangelist and make sure we always start with the user in mind
We ship products to learn faster, features are only valuable in the hands of our users
Outcome-driven, we measure success by impact made not the number of features
We’re data-informed not data-led, we balance empirical evidence with human judgement to make well-rounded decisions
Converting Silos to points for Synergy
Breaking down organisational silos to promote cross-functional collaboration is a common goal in product transformation. However, merely altering team structures without addressing cultural barriers can lead to confusion and resistance. Cultivating a culture of collaboration and mutual respect is crucial for teams to effectively navigate new operating models and work together towards shared objectives.
Spend time with the other disciplines that make up an effective cross-functional team: design, quality assurance and engineering. What learnings can you gather on how your product managers could work more effectively with the other areas? I would start with looking at these 3 areas that are relatively easy to get alignment on. Even these small, simple steps move you closer to being effective, cross-functional teams.
Are you using a common toolset that all team members have access to, and on which you use a common, understood taxonomy and naming convention?
In processes where multiple team members are involved, is it clear what each person’s role and responsibilities are? For example, during discovery the product manager is responsible for mapping out the stories and defining the MVP features while the technical lead is responsible for the technical documents and diagrams. Sounds obvious, but if it’s never been explicitly defined, there may be areas where this is still ambiguous.
Do you have a RACI matrix, mapped to the key stages of your product development life cycle, that makes it clear who is responsible/accountable/consulted/informed for each of the stages?
The Leap from Project- to Product-Based Squads
Cagan strongly advocates for product-based squads, and I agree as well, primarily because of the benefits it presents - allowing teams to have ownership over a product area(s), develop deep subject matter expertise, and be able to autonomously drive continuous improvement (outcomes over output, remember?)
However, moving from a project-based approach to product-based squads represents a significant cultural and operational shift. This change requires the entire organisation to reframe how it views and approaches product development and so can often seem the most difficult hurdle to climb in a product transformation journey.
As a product leader, it isn’t just about creating the right culture within your product team(s), but also being able to influence the wider company culture to embrace this change. In the short term it means adjusting performance metrics to focus on product outcomes rather than project milestones, and in the longer-term could also mean aligning budgeting processes to support ongoing product development, and prioritising long-term value over short-term deliverables.
This sort of transition doesn’t happen overnight - you might need to ‘test’ it out with 1 product team first to demonstrate the benefits and win trust with your leaders, before you can extend this to more areas. And trust me, it will be easy to retreat at the first hurdle and go back to ‘what you’ve always done before’. However, as long as everyone is on the same page with what you’re trying to achieve, and can be flexible during the ‘messy middle’, I’m confident that even this transition is achievable.
Summary
In the journey of product transformation, strategy provides the roadmap, but culture fuels the engine. Sustainable transformation extends beyond structural and procedural changes – it requires a deep alignment between strategic goals and the cultural fabric of your product organisation. So as much as you may have Cagan’s book in one hand (or literature from whoever your product hero is), remember to look inwards to your own organisation, and equally invest in nurturing a culture that values continuous improvement and will embrace change.