EMPOWERED. Marty Cagan

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      The larger the organization, the more essential it is to be very good at evangelism, and it's important for the leaders to understand that evangelism is something that is never “done.” It needs to be a constant.

      We want to ensure that every member of the product organization has joined because they sincerely believe in the larger purpose.

      Normally, it is the product vision that describes what people are signing up for, but one way or another, we need to ensure the people on the team are true believers.

For example, if your vision is to deliver mass‐market electric cars, then we need people that are willing to take the leap of faith that this is both possible and worthy. Note that it is not a problem if the person you hire has different views on what might work to get us to mass‐market electric cars, but it is not helpful, for example, to hire a passionate advocate for internal combustion engines.

The Role of Management—Execution

      There are of course many types of “managers” in a company. I'm most interested here in those people responsible for hiring and developing the actual members of the cross‐functional product teams.

      Normally, this includes the director of product management, the director of product design, and the managers and directors of engineering. I'm not focused here on more senior‐level managers (managers of managers), or non‐people managers (such as product managers or product marketing managers).

      If you want to have truly empowered product teams, then your success depends very directly on these first‐level people managers.

      If you are wondering why there are so many weak product companies in the world, this would be the primary culprit. And until and unless this is corrected, there's little hope for transformation.

      It is important that these managers understand—and can effectively communicate—the product vision, principles, and product strategy from the senior leaders. Beyond that, these managers have three critically important responsibilities:

      Staffing

      These are the people we hold responsible for staffing the product teams. This means sourcing, recruiting, interviewing, onboarding, evaluating, promoting, and when necessary, replacing the members of the teams.

      If you have an HR function at your company, they are there to support managers with these activities, but they are in no way a substitute for the manager in these responsibilities.

      Coaching

Probably the single most important, yet most often overlooked, element to capable management is coaching. At the very minimum, this involves a weekly 1:1 with the people who report to you as their people manager.

      It is the most important responsibility of every people manager to develop the skills of their people. This most definitely does not mean micromanaging them. It does mean understanding their weaknesses and helping them to improve, providing guidance on lessons learned, removing obstacles, and what is loosely referred to as “connecting the dots.”

      For example, let's say you are the manager of product design, and you meet each week for an hour or so with each of the six product designers from six different product teams that work for you.

      These six product designers are each first‐class members of their cross‐functional product teams (because design is a first‐class activity, and as such it needs to partner closely with the product manager and engineers as they tackle and solve hard problems). But even if that designer is exceptionally skilled, how can she be expected to keep track of what is going on with all the other product teams? What if the design she is working on right now for her situation is in some way inconsistent or incompatible with solutions underway with other teams? The design manager is expected to flag these conflicts and get the relevant designers together to consider the bigger picture and the impact of the different solutions on the user.

      More generally, every member of a product team deserves to have someone who is committed to helping them get better at their craft. This is why, in the vast majority of strong tech product organizations, the engineers report to experienced engineering managers; the designers report to experienced design managers; and the product managers report to proven managers of product management.

      Team Objectives

The third responsibility of the people managers is to ensure that each product team has one or two clear objectives they have been assigned (typically quarterly) which spell out the problems they are being asked to solve.

      These objectives derive directly from the product strategy—it's where insights are turned into actions.

      This is also where empowerment becomes real and not just a buzzword. The team is given a small number of significant problems to solve (the team objectives).

      The team considers the problems and proposes clear measures of success (the key results), which they then discuss with their managers. The managers may need to iterate with their teams and others to try and get as much coverage as possible of the broader organization's objectives.

      The litmus test for empowerment is that the team is able to decide the best way to solve the problems they have been assigned (the objectives).

      It takes strong managers to be self‐confident and secure enough to truly empower the people that work for them, and to stand back and let the team take credit for their successes.

Note

      1 ¹ In this book I refer to the role of product design, and the title product designer. Many companies use the terms user experience design or customer experience design. What's important is that I am including service design, interaction design, visual design, and, for devices, industrial design.

      CHAPTER 4

      Empowered Product Teams

What is most surprising to me is that the virtues of truly empowered product teams are not a secret. In fact, there are plenty of books and articles out there that describe why these types of teams are so much more effective at innovation and in solving hard problems.

      While quite a few these books are inspiring and well worth reading, most companies have not been convinced to empower their teams in any meaningful sense. Why is that?

      When I ask this question of CEOs and other key leaders of these organizations, the answer typically boils down to one word: trust.

      The leaders don't trust the teams. Specifically, they don't believe they have the level of people on their teams they need to truly empower them. So, along with the other key business leaders from across the company, they believe they need to very explicitly direct the teams themselves. This is also known as the “command‐and‐control” model of management.

When I ask these leaders why they don't put people in place that they do trust, they usually argue that they either can't find, can't afford, or can't attract the level of people that Google, Amazon, Apple, and Netflix hire.

      I then point out СКАЧАТЬ