Empowered: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products

Book Preface

My first book, INSPIRED, discussed how strong product teams
at the best product companies use the modern techniques of
product discovery to solve hard problems in ways their customers love,
yet work for their business.
INSPIRED brought me and my SVPG Partners into many more
organizations, well beyond Silicon Valley.
The most striking thing we learned was that in so many
companies—even companies trying to do true, technology-powered
products and services—product teams were too often not allowed to
work the way they needed to.
We realized that it’s not just the techniques that strong product teams use to discover successful products, but that the differences
between how great product companies work and the rest run much
deeper

What we found in these companies was not pretty.
The Role of Technology
So many companies still have the old IT mindset when it comes to
technology. It’s viewed as a necessary cost rather than the core business
enabler it needs to be. The people who work on the technology teams
are literally there “to serve the business,” and the technology managers
and leaders are there to facilitate serving the business. Or it’s shoved off
to the side in some “digital” business unit. The technology teams are
disconnected from the real customers—in fact, they’re encouraged to
think of their stakeholders as their customers.
Coaching
There is little if any active coaching of the people on the technology
teams. And even if they wanted to coach, the managers often don’t have
the experience themselves. So the problems perpetuate.
Staffing
Most of these companies recognize that they don’t have the staff they
need, but they have very misguided ideas about how to correct that, and
what to look for in product staff. So again, the problems perpetuate.
Product Vision
These companies rarely have an inspiring, compelling product vision.
They may have had one during the early years of their company, but
after the founders left, the vision faded. The people on the technology
teams feel like they’re just working in feature factories

Team Topology
The technology people are divided up into teams where they feel like
they aren’t responsible for anything meaningful, they can’t do much
without depending on changes from several other teams, and that
they’re just a small cog in a giant wheel.
Product Strategy
It wouldn’t be fair to say that most of these companies have a weak
product strategy, because in truth, most have literally no strategy at all.
They are just trying to please as many stakeholders as they can with the
people and time and skills they have.
Team Objectives
Most of these companies have heard that Google and others use the
OKR (Objectives and Key Results) technique to manage their work,
and the CEO watched a video or read a book and thought it sounded
easy. So they adopted the technique—layering it on top of their existing
product roadmaps and culture—and every quarter there’s a planning
exercise that consumes a few weeks and is then largely ignored for the
rest of the quarter. Most of the people on the teams say they get little
if any value out of this technique.
Relationship to Business
The relationship between the technology teams and the rest of the
business is not good. The stakeholders and executives have little or no
trust in the technology teams. And the people on the technology teams
feel like unappreciated mercenaries, subservient to the business.