Real Talk about Empowered vs. Feature Product Teams | Chris Jones (SVPG)
Aug 4, 2024
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Chris Jones, a partner at Silicon Valley Product Group and co-author of the bestselling book Empowered, shares his insights on product teams. He discusses the crucial differences between empowered and feature teams, explaining how the latter can lead to disconnection and lack of focus. Chris emphasizes understanding organizational goals and avoiding bureaucratic pitfalls. He also highlights the importance of building trust with leadership and taking control of your career in the ever-evolving tech landscape.
True empowerment means leadership actively defines problems for teams to solve, fostering accountability and alignment with organizational goals.
The difference between empowered and feature teams lies in the focus on problem-solving versus merely delivering prescribed solutions, impacting team engagement and customer outcomes.
Deep dives
Understanding Empowerment in Teams
Empowerment in teams is often misunderstood as simply allowing team members to work freely on their preferred tasks. In reality, true empowerment involves leadership actively defining and allocating problems for teams to solve, ensuring alignment and coherence in objectives. This approach fosters accountability, where teams are responsible for delivering solutions that effectively address the specified problems, rather than merely meeting deadlines or requirements. When this leadership responsibility is absent, teams may produce outputs that lack meaningful impact, resulting in disconnection from broader organizational goals.
Future Teams vs. Empowered Teams
The distinction between future teams and empowered teams lies in how work is allocated and the resultant accountability for outcomes. Future teams often receive specific solutions to build, focusing on delivery metrics, whereas empowered teams are assigned problems to solve and have the autonomy to discover the best solutions. This shift encourages a more engaged approach, as teams are incentivized to conduct customer research and experimentation, ensuring that their deliveries genuinely enhance user experience and drive meaningful business outcomes. Measuring success becomes a collaborative effort centered on achieving collective goals rather than focusing solely on timely feature launches.
The Rise of Process Over Trust
As companies scale, the inclination to impose rigid processes often arises from a desire for control and predictability, which can lead to diminished trust in teams. Leaders may inadvertently prioritize structured procedures over empowering employees, leading to an environment where processes overshadow customer-focused innovation. To combat this, effective leadership requires a balance between necessary processes and maintaining a culture of trust and accountability among teams. Without this balance, organizations risk becoming feature factories that deliver numerous outputs without meaningful impact, isolating teams from the strategic vision necessary for cohesive growth.
Building Trust as a Product Manager
Rebuilding trust with leadership as a product manager necessitates proactive communication and a deep understanding of customer needs and data insights. It is crucial to shift conversations from merely executing tasks to discussing expected outcomes and metrics that define success. By demonstrating expertise in the market and customer understanding, product managers can establish credibility and alleviate concerns about their team's capabilities. Additionally, advocating for a collaborative environment where cross-functional teams can align on shared objectives strengthens trust and fosters a productive atmosphere conducive to innovation.
My guest today is Chris Jones, partner at Silicon Valley Product Group.
Chris and Marty Cagan wrote the best-selling book Empowered based on their 30+ years of experience working with 200+ companies. Their definition of “empowered vs. feature product teams” has created controversy, so I knew I had to chat with them.
Chris and I had a heart-to-heart chat about empowered vs. feature teams, how to avoid becoming a feature factory, and how to take back control of your career.
Timestamps:
(00:00) What empowered really means
(01:13) The difference between empowered and feature teams
(04:58) Why companies stop being customer-focused
(06:12) OKRs, processes, and bureaucracy
(13:47) Be the go-to person to build trust with leaders(18:13) Quarterly metric targets lead to bad trade-offs
(21:40) The trend towards small teams
(23:00) Does empowerment matter in wartime (Airbnb)?
(27:24) 3 types of product operating principles
(30:23) Is Google still empowered?
(33:40) How to avoid product review hell(36:15) The right way to push back on execs
(41:08) Take back control of your career
Get the interview takeaways: https://creatoreconomy.so/p/empowered-vs-feature-product-teams-chris-jones
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