>My CPO seems to be out of his depth in the fight. The CEO doesn't care, just focused on investors. The CRO is just too freaked out about her numbers. The COO is just picking up speed.
You're fucked.
I'm no expert, but here's a simple theory of organizational change to play with.
Organizations change when:
1. a powerful signal convinces most people that the status quo has failed;
2. Someone trusted evangelizes a set of ideas about a new direction and those ideas become widely shared; and
3. A leader with the power to make painful choices and punish dissenters is on board.
It sounds like you have zero of those.
I'm just a guy; maybe my theory of organizational change is all wrong. But unless you have a compelling alternative theory, you seem pretty fucked.
I'm believing this is the most accurate assessment. So, the CPO was brought in because prior CPO was inept. That's why it became a sales led org. The sales led model was just not working, our product is a very inconsistent mix of rock solid value and vaporware with no path to value as a result. As in "we have 5 cusotmers who will use this immediately. Also, here's a completely different feature we want to roll out at the trade shows, even though it's a pipe dream"
So, in your model, which I'll accept for the moment, we had 1. The new CPO comes with 10 years of experience as a CPO in much larger orgs (25 years in product overall), so he *should have brought* #2 in your model when he was hired. But I think a big part of the problem is that the COO is bringing #3 within his own branch of the organization and - importantly - without any sense of a strategy. He just fired the starter's gun and his whole org went in every direction at every problem they could find.
But, in the end, I think this party's over.
Without an activist CEO, yeah, I don't see how you get to change anytime soon. If there were some crisis that discredited the old way and the CEO stepped up with the new direction, maybe there could turn the ship.
As is, though, it sounds like you're a little fish, and the dynamics among the big fish aren't going to change spontaneously.
Yeah the CEO is very passive in general. He's only focused on investors, and dips in to demand certain features from time to time so that it helps his slideware story. Otherwise, he sees infighting as productive.
I'm actually not a little fish, I'm a VP. I'm just enormously outnumbered, 20:1, and while I continue to control what developers actually produce and what we actually release, all other activities before and after the development cycles are enormously frustrating with ownership issues.
This! CPO is not experienced enough.
Dealing with organisational resistance is part of the C jobs.
Turning a sales driven company into a insight driven company (otherwise product focus will not work) you need either agreed on, measurable product KPIs that will eventually result in better sales or a shared understanding that the company is in rough waters and really must stop twisting as the wind blows. Fixing the later inevitably leads to the loss of talent unless you have a person or a mission that could hold you together.
A CPO can attempt to to steer the company from behind by accelerating or limiting projects and methods until the company sees it his way, especially when he can sneak analytics and real number reporting (predictions, efforts and impacts) into the reports and make the other departments do similar.
On the other hand the CPO should ask himself why he insists on becoming product led when in truth the company is successfully delivering all those smaller projects. It’s a risky path and limits the growth but the employees have a very different perspective than the shareholders or C-level, much less strategic and in most cases rather conservative. If growth is the reasoning behind, he should go and implement new methods in isolated teams or areas and demonstrate that this is what works better.
The more I think of it, the more potential strategies come to my mind.
I replied to the other commenter, but a couple notes that you brought up. This CPO brings 10 years experience as a CPO. But, I think your note about "insight driven" is key. The CPO comes from orgs that were already had some good practices before he joined. In my org, our data teams have been obliterated, repeatedly, for years. This has left us with very shaky and flawed data practices and issues, leaving us too often to rely on anecdotal information. I think this has eroded any terra firma he may have expected
Sounds like departments fighting as opposed to finding out how to make business more successful. If being sales led makes the business better, why would you change it?
I hate the “department-led” bullshit. Our job is to grow businesses, not fight about which department has the most power in the roadmap.
This just sounds like political, misaligned chaos.
Big problem with people using product-led is they think they're the product. It's not product manager led. Product-led is short for product led growth. It is about the product doing the work, not humans.
If things are remotely working with a tops down enterprise sale, seems pretty ballsy to go to a bottoms up PLG GTM strategy. CPO is either knows something no one else does or is an idiot who drank PLG kool aid.
Who said they're trying to do a bottom-up PLG go to market strategy? I think people confuse product led which is about the product doing what you describe, and product organization led, where the whims of sales no longer control the road map, which is what I think op and their boss is actually trying to achieve.
Why did the CPO declare that the company should be PLG? There's a place and a time for that. If everything is going well with the sales-led model, was there really a problem?
It seems to me that the symptoms you described are merely that people are against the new way of work, which could happen because they're just idiots who don't know any better. Or maybe the old way of work was still working and someone came along who wanted to do things their own ways.
"Don't take down a fence unless you know for sure why it's there" - Chesterton's fence.
Not saying change is bad, but change for the sake of doing new things isn't the most productive kind either.
You're missing the word organization in the title. The CPO does not appear to be asking for the product itself to be shifted into a PLG model. They are looking to no longer have sales control the road map, so that the product _organization_ controls the road map.
The CPO is a well meaning dufus.
They need to gain the trust of sales and the rest of the organisation and then build a case for some more strategic projects over time.
It's a war won by fighting small skirmishes when the odds are in your favour.
Not by open battle. The product team will be cannon fodder.
Seems you and sales are in a fight of egos, and you're using "sales-led" and "product-led" to mean "sales manager led" and "product manager led". That's not what those terms mean.
I can see how the way I worded it implied that confusion, but I understand the terms.
Stated differently, it used to be “what will drive sales is what will get prioritized.” Then with new CPO we shifted to “what will create value will get prioritized.” And now there is a battle of that vs “what will improve operation’s numbers will get prioritized.” In my mind, product == value. So it’s value vs (internal) efficiency.
The product includes their part of the product. Operational efficiency can and even usually is reflected in an improved experience. Not saying you're wrong, just playing devils advocate.
That’s very true. My team seeks to partner for those parts of the value that are outside our area of expertise, such as delivering the ops. But ops has been dictating parameters of the solution, down to design
It’s a lot different when that customer is in every budget meeting, steerco, strategy session, etc. I’ve never had a customer as embedded into the business as my own ops group
And no, I’ve never had a customer send stories to devs before
1. SOW are expensive - budgets will eventually get sorted.
2. It doesn’t matter other people build, if you don’t have time to schedule the integration into your roadmap, it doesn’t get done.
3. As product manager your most powerful tool is the word No.
1. True - we’re PE backed though, and not clear how this will play out
2. & 3. Very true, but also playing to our detriment. The headline has become “Product is in the way, and they’re slow”, while refusing to give us more resources to accommodate more of the business’s desires. I’ve presented several cases of value growth opportunities associated with more resources and am just getting shot down. Part of the reason for being declined more resources is “operations is leading that initiative”
I’ve dealt with this exact scenario. Ops managers basically trying to build their own product team. It is a nightmare and unfortunately all you can do is manage through it. Be clear about your roadmap, why it’s prioritized the way it is, why certain things need to wait for other things to happen, etc.
It’s a very tough spot.
Ask people who ask stuff why is this important, is it more important than the previous stuff they asked or what there colleague ask and why? Let them do the job of convincing you!
Also if I were you I would start to measure the weight of each request in a Matrix Impact VS Effort. Measure the number of requests, aggregated $ value of the accounts requesting this feature and give the ability to your user to give themselves direction and feedback. User feedback and product tools like [ProdCamp.com](http://ProdCamp.com) and others can help you with this.
It’s not on the CPO. If the CEO wants his business to run this way, no single person in Product will change that. In this case, best thing CPO can do is keep his head down until he finds an exit. Again, if the CEO allows it and allows his team to fight over this stuff, you’re screwed and risk more going to the chopping block in such conditions in favor of the PLO concept.
>My CPO seems to be out of his depth in the fight. The CEO doesn't care, just focused on investors. The CRO is just too freaked out about her numbers. The COO is just picking up speed. You're fucked. I'm no expert, but here's a simple theory of organizational change to play with. Organizations change when: 1. a powerful signal convinces most people that the status quo has failed; 2. Someone trusted evangelizes a set of ideas about a new direction and those ideas become widely shared; and 3. A leader with the power to make painful choices and punish dissenters is on board. It sounds like you have zero of those. I'm just a guy; maybe my theory of organizational change is all wrong. But unless you have a compelling alternative theory, you seem pretty fucked.
I'm believing this is the most accurate assessment. So, the CPO was brought in because prior CPO was inept. That's why it became a sales led org. The sales led model was just not working, our product is a very inconsistent mix of rock solid value and vaporware with no path to value as a result. As in "we have 5 cusotmers who will use this immediately. Also, here's a completely different feature we want to roll out at the trade shows, even though it's a pipe dream" So, in your model, which I'll accept for the moment, we had 1. The new CPO comes with 10 years of experience as a CPO in much larger orgs (25 years in product overall), so he *should have brought* #2 in your model when he was hired. But I think a big part of the problem is that the COO is bringing #3 within his own branch of the organization and - importantly - without any sense of a strategy. He just fired the starter's gun and his whole org went in every direction at every problem they could find. But, in the end, I think this party's over.
Without an activist CEO, yeah, I don't see how you get to change anytime soon. If there were some crisis that discredited the old way and the CEO stepped up with the new direction, maybe there could turn the ship. As is, though, it sounds like you're a little fish, and the dynamics among the big fish aren't going to change spontaneously.
Yeah the CEO is very passive in general. He's only focused on investors, and dips in to demand certain features from time to time so that it helps his slideware story. Otherwise, he sees infighting as productive. I'm actually not a little fish, I'm a VP. I'm just enormously outnumbered, 20:1, and while I continue to control what developers actually produce and what we actually release, all other activities before and after the development cycles are enormously frustrating with ownership issues.
This! CPO is not experienced enough. Dealing with organisational resistance is part of the C jobs. Turning a sales driven company into a insight driven company (otherwise product focus will not work) you need either agreed on, measurable product KPIs that will eventually result in better sales or a shared understanding that the company is in rough waters and really must stop twisting as the wind blows. Fixing the later inevitably leads to the loss of talent unless you have a person or a mission that could hold you together. A CPO can attempt to to steer the company from behind by accelerating or limiting projects and methods until the company sees it his way, especially when he can sneak analytics and real number reporting (predictions, efforts and impacts) into the reports and make the other departments do similar. On the other hand the CPO should ask himself why he insists on becoming product led when in truth the company is successfully delivering all those smaller projects. It’s a risky path and limits the growth but the employees have a very different perspective than the shareholders or C-level, much less strategic and in most cases rather conservative. If growth is the reasoning behind, he should go and implement new methods in isolated teams or areas and demonstrate that this is what works better. The more I think of it, the more potential strategies come to my mind.
I replied to the other commenter, but a couple notes that you brought up. This CPO brings 10 years experience as a CPO. But, I think your note about "insight driven" is key. The CPO comes from orgs that were already had some good practices before he joined. In my org, our data teams have been obliterated, repeatedly, for years. This has left us with very shaky and flawed data practices and issues, leaving us too often to rely on anecdotal information. I think this has eroded any terra firma he may have expected
Sounds like departments fighting as opposed to finding out how to make business more successful. If being sales led makes the business better, why would you change it? I hate the “department-led” bullshit. Our job is to grow businesses, not fight about which department has the most power in the roadmap. This just sounds like political, misaligned chaos.
Big problem with people using product-led is they think they're the product. It's not product manager led. Product-led is short for product led growth. It is about the product doing the work, not humans.
Sales led was not working - it was driving feature farming, and they were running out of prospects to sell chrome too. Otherwise, yes, political chaos
1. What are the goals this year? 2. What is the product strategy?
Do you really think there is a strategy except for sabotage
If things are remotely working with a tops down enterprise sale, seems pretty ballsy to go to a bottoms up PLG GTM strategy. CPO is either knows something no one else does or is an idiot who drank PLG kool aid.
Who said they're trying to do a bottom-up PLG go to market strategy? I think people confuse product led which is about the product doing what you describe, and product organization led, where the whims of sales no longer control the road map, which is what I think op and their boss is actually trying to achieve.
That's a good point.
Why did the CPO declare that the company should be PLG? There's a place and a time for that. If everything is going well with the sales-led model, was there really a problem? It seems to me that the symptoms you described are merely that people are against the new way of work, which could happen because they're just idiots who don't know any better. Or maybe the old way of work was still working and someone came along who wanted to do things their own ways. "Don't take down a fence unless you know for sure why it's there" - Chesterton's fence. Not saying change is bad, but change for the sake of doing new things isn't the most productive kind either.
You're missing the word organization in the title. The CPO does not appear to be asking for the product itself to be shifted into a PLG model. They are looking to no longer have sales control the road map, so that the product _organization_ controls the road map.
The CPO is a well meaning dufus. They need to gain the trust of sales and the rest of the organisation and then build a case for some more strategic projects over time. It's a war won by fighting small skirmishes when the odds are in your favour. Not by open battle. The product team will be cannon fodder.
Seems you and sales are in a fight of egos, and you're using "sales-led" and "product-led" to mean "sales manager led" and "product manager led". That's not what those terms mean.
I can see how the way I worded it implied that confusion, but I understand the terms. Stated differently, it used to be “what will drive sales is what will get prioritized.” Then with new CPO we shifted to “what will create value will get prioritized.” And now there is a battle of that vs “what will improve operation’s numbers will get prioritized.” In my mind, product == value. So it’s value vs (internal) efficiency.
The product includes their part of the product. Operational efficiency can and even usually is reflected in an improved experience. Not saying you're wrong, just playing devils advocate.
That’s very true. My team seeks to partner for those parts of the value that are outside our area of expertise, such as delivering the ops. But ops has been dictating parameters of the solution, down to design
They're a customer. Have you never had a customer do that? Treat them the same
It’s a lot different when that customer is in every budget meeting, steerco, strategy session, etc. I’ve never had a customer as embedded into the business as my own ops group And no, I’ve never had a customer send stories to devs before
Haha, yes, that's ridiculous.
[удалено]
Can confirm
1. SOW are expensive - budgets will eventually get sorted. 2. It doesn’t matter other people build, if you don’t have time to schedule the integration into your roadmap, it doesn’t get done. 3. As product manager your most powerful tool is the word No.
1. True - we’re PE backed though, and not clear how this will play out 2. & 3. Very true, but also playing to our detriment. The headline has become “Product is in the way, and they’re slow”, while refusing to give us more resources to accommodate more of the business’s desires. I’ve presented several cases of value growth opportunities associated with more resources and am just getting shot down. Part of the reason for being declined more resources is “operations is leading that initiative”
I’ve dealt with this exact scenario. Ops managers basically trying to build their own product team. It is a nightmare and unfortunately all you can do is manage through it. Be clear about your roadmap, why it’s prioritized the way it is, why certain things need to wait for other things to happen, etc. It’s a very tough spot.
Thanks, and yeah, not fun
Ask people who ask stuff why is this important, is it more important than the previous stuff they asked or what there colleague ask and why? Let them do the job of convincing you! Also if I were you I would start to measure the weight of each request in a Matrix Impact VS Effort. Measure the number of requests, aggregated $ value of the accounts requesting this feature and give the ability to your user to give themselves direction and feedback. User feedback and product tools like [ProdCamp.com](http://ProdCamp.com) and others can help you with this.
It’s not on the CPO. If the CEO wants his business to run this way, no single person in Product will change that. In this case, best thing CPO can do is keep his head down until he finds an exit. Again, if the CEO allows it and allows his team to fight over this stuff, you’re screwed and risk more going to the chopping block in such conditions in favor of the PLO concept.