Product Answers #11: Where should we start our transformation?
I am regularly asked this question. Sometimes explicitly (leaders ask where to start) and sometimes more implicitly (transformation has been initiated in several places and now leaders feel they are stuck in chaos and nothing is moving). For established companies this is more a question of a formal transformation project, for newer companies it is more a question of scaling from the founding team to a larger organisation.
I have seen too many transformation projects that have gone wrong and left a demotivated organisation. While there are many things that can go wrong (and no one can guarantee that your transformation will be successful), I believe there are two key things you need to get right.
Firstly, a transformation must be initiated internally and carried out internally. Surely you can get help from outside the company. I would even recommend that you find a good coach who has successfully helped other companies. However, it remains the task of the CEO or CPO (also: VP Product, Head of Product) to lead the change towards a product organisation. If you try to outsource this task, you will find that the whole thing will fail big time.
Secondly, it will take longer than you had hoped. I have already experienced that transformation at several levels sets parallel work processes in motion and from one day to the next you no longer know what the goal is and where you are working. Take it one step at a time. As I described in Transforming towards Product, start with the big picture, the product vision and strategy. Once this is established and known to everyone in your organisation, move away from priorities towards focus. You can only work on a few things at a time and still make an impact. Save the rest for later and don't bother the rest of your organisation with constantly reprioritising. Once you have a vision and are focused on taking steps to realise it, move from funding features to funding teams. Next, start measuring the success of yourself and your teams against the outcome you achieve and move away from being a output-based organisation. These outcomes will allow you to see if your teams, focused on the goal, have made progress towards the organisation's big vision.
Your organisation needs to change - and that basically means your people need to change too. Give them the big picture first and the details second.