LTP DIGITAL 2021 had a massive audience this year with over 900 people attending. What we saw this year was a greater variety in the ways that people consumed the conference. From those at home managing children and family roles to those at their workplace enjoying it with the rest of the team on the big screen.
Leading the Product 2021 The 7 Ts of Product-Led Transformation
This year’s Leading the Product theme is Product-Led Transformation. Many of the world’s best companies are Product-Led and many others are following their lead and transforming their companies’ operating models.
This year we explored it, unpacked it, and walked our community through the 7 Ts of Product-Led Transformation – triggers, tactics, timeline, talent, tell-tales, transition and truths. Each of our speakers developed completely new content, specifically for the conference, covering one of the Ts.
As the day continued we built a complete picture of how, why and when you should transform your organisation into a Product-Led Powerhouse.
KEYNOTE – Bill Bartee, General Partner at Main Sequence Ventures and Co-Founder of Blackbird Ventures
Bill Bartee has invested in many different successful companies, over more than 20 years. According to Bill, the main difference between ‘spectacular’ companies and ‘ordinary’ companies is that spectacular companies understand their customers completely and intimately. They know their daily lives and problems and how to design solutions that solve those problems, changing their lives for the better. When companies place their customer at the centre, and then build from there, they grow faster, have higher margins and are valued more highly.
Canva, where Bill was an early investor, is a striking example. One of Canva’s founders, Melanie, had a very deep understanding of the difficulties designers faced in learning and using design software from her work as a design teacher. Design programs were:
- Difficult to learn
- Expensive
- And time-consuming
So they created Canva, which solved all those problem for anyone who wanted a great design simply, quickly and cheaply. Canva has enjoyed phenomenal growth and success and is now one of the world’s fastest growing software companies, valued at more than US$15 billion.
TRIGGERS – Larry Diamond, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Zip Co. Limited
- Talking more about Products and using Product language
- Hiring product managers and
- Orienting the business more around products.
This developed a culture where every employee needed to ‘own it’. No matter whose job it was, Zip employees needed own every issue or customer problem they were involved in – all the way through to the end.
This then led to their biggest, evolving, realisation. That while they had been calling themselves ‘customer first’ for some time – for example using a ‘wall of pain’ to surface the top 10 reasons customers weren’t happy – they weren’t really living customer first.
Winning the Amazon account in 2018 really galvanised the team and made them truly start putting customers first. They broke into smaller teams and smaller lines of code and gave true ownership and control to each small team – as well as responsibility for a discrete part of the customer journey.
These critical triggers and realisations have pushed Zip along the product-led journey to where it is now – with 6.4 million customers, rapidly expanding around the world, with a current market capitalisation of $4.2bn. BTW – Larry doesn’t think their journey is complete, they’re still working towards being a true product-led company.
TACTICS – Narelle Charity, Director of Product & Lisa Tobin, MD of Technology at Seek
For our first time ever, we had dual presenters sharing their learning together, very refreshing to see two women giving us their perspectives on Product and technology.
Lisa started by stating that organisational transformation should be both product and technology led, arguing that: “It’s when the two functions really act in partnership that an organisation can achieve great outcomes.” Narelle backed that up, explaining how when a product’s architecture isn’t optimally designed then it adds: “complexity, cost, time and risk to any product changes.”
They shared with us an acronym you can use to transform your product and architecture partnership.
T, think ahead. Look to the future and have a vision for where your Product will be.
A, all parts working together. Think about your product as part of a whole system and know how all the elements connect.
C, create a future state. A joint product and architecture roadmap makes it much easier to get from where you are, to where you need to be.
T, trade-offs. The hard prioritisation calls you’ll need to make when balancing short-term value and long-term capability.
I, invest in the relationship. The product/technology relationship is so important, you should be constantly working on it.
C, create accountability. Everything needs to be underpinned by ways of working and everyone must be held accountable.
They left us with this final comment. “Transforming the relationship between product and architecture is a journey and it’s definitely a journey we’re on at SEEK, but it’s a really worthwhile journey.”
TIMELINE – Corinna Stukan, VP Product, Roam Digital
How long does it really take to transform a company into being product-led? Corrina didn’t mince her words. It’s hard work and takes a long time (5-10 years on average) but the rewards when you’re successful are worth it. She shared the story of Adobe, that changed from a sales-led organisation into a product-led organisation and ultimately tripled its revenue between 2009 and 2018.
Corinna’s three phases in her timeline for product-led transformation are:
1. Aligning the business and product
Product teams need to “speak business language” to get their executive stakeholders onside. If you go to an executive meeting and start throwing around the latest product lingo, you’re much less likely to get buy-in than if you talk about risk, revenue and return on investment. Then, you need to align on shared goals, ideally with a company-wide goal-setting framework.
2. Data foundations
Corinna advocates setting goals first before you start tracking data, because it’s easy to track too many things and get swamped by too much data. If you track the metrics that matter, then layer in your qualitative data, you know both ‘what’ the problems are and importantly ‘why’ they’re happening. You’ll also have the evidence you need to have honest conversations with your stakeholders about customer problems and then be able to measure whether your ‘fixes’ are having the desired effect.
3. Habits
Habits, as we all know, are some of the hardest things to change. Corinna urged us not to, “move on before you create a true habit and behaviour change in your company”, but to keep reminding people of the changes you want. These reminders need to involve the whole company, ideally through regular company-wide check-in sessions. Secondly you need to celebrate short-term wins but make sure you also keep reinforcing the long-term goals.
Corinna finished with some wise words on how to evaluate if your transformation is on track. Ask yourself, what happens when you’re not in the room to keep reinforcing best practices? Because culture is what happens when you’re not in the room.
TALENT – Ken Sandy, Author, The Influential Product Manager
Ken believes talent plays an essential role in driving transformation. How you recruit, grow, and retain a team is a strategic imperative. Do not underestimate how challenging and time-consuming this can be for product leaders.
Ken identified three talent principles that companies should follow:
1. Be strategic
There is a tendency to be reactive rather than strategic when managing talent. Ken suggests not just trying to solve immediate problems, but taking a longer-term view, looking at the future state of your company and hiring the people you need to make it happen.
2. Build your bench strength. Instead of trying to hire
unicorns (inspirational, experienced product leaders) who are hard to find, attract and keep, Ken recommends hiring people with great ‘soft’ skills. Hire flexible adaptable people that can change with the organisation and thrive in whatever role they find themselves in
3. Look at your existing team
Too often leaders overlook the talent they already have. You can grow leaders from within your existing team with structured, well-planned coaching and development opportunities. Thoughtful skilling up, encouraging them to go outside their comfort zones, and trusting them to perform.
Ken has worked with the Association of Product Professionals to create the Do Lead framework. The framework has 5 levels Do, Collaborate, Impact, Guide and Lead. Product Managers progress through these levels over their career. This enables better conversations with your team on where they to develop.
The last word from Ken was “effectively executing on transformation is only possible if you have built and cultivated a motivated team, a team who are adaptive, collaborative, and influential even in the face of great challenge and ambiguity.”
TELL-TALES – Janey Wong, VP Ecommerce, Away
Janey started by asking the audience, “Have you ever been in a situation where you had to ask yourself or your team, “How did we get here? How did it get this bad?” She gave us three tell-tale signs that a product-led transformation has gone off track.
When the roadmap is a free-for-all
When there’s no clear structure, or process, or responsibilities for the roadmap – when it’s a mess – this is a clear sign things are going wrong. To get back on track Janey advises you to: “hit pause” until your company clearly understands the role and processes a Product Team should follow for a roadmap. Or if this doesn’t work, or you’re not allowed to, then tighten the criteria around submitting ideas for the roadmap.
When everyone is connecting different dots
If you think you’re aligned with your stakeholders, but then you realise an important stakeholder has a completely different idea of where you’re going and how you should get there. So how to get back on track? Invest time in communication. Make your assumptions and ideas crystal clear to your stakeholders. Don’t be afraid to overcommunicate.
When no-one knows your product
If you’re at a company and you realise, for whatever reason – turnover, poor communication, fast growth – very few people know the product in detail and how it works then this is a big problem. Get back on track by making sure only Product People are making product decisions (this includes the CEO unless it’s a startup). Then remember that it takes a village. The product team is not solely responsible for product, you need buy-in and collaboration across all teams for a successful transformation.
Final learning, if you don’t have a strong product team, start hiring!
TRANSITION – Hugh McLachlan – Head of Product, ELMO Cloud HR & Payroll
Hugh turned the conference upside down, and won the crowd, by saying that the first step in becoming Product-Led is not to call it Product-Led.
He said it can be divisive language, or language people don’t understand. So to get everyone on-board you need to use inclusive language
Here’s Hugh’s 9 other steps to transition to a Product-Led company:
2. Talk valuable rather than value. Customer value has become so ubiquitous it’s almost worthless. We need to focus on those differentiating factors which customers will pay for, or will drive greater engagement.
3. Invite others in. Ideas and insights can come from anywhere, we need to be open to others’ ideas being the right ideas and focus on what delivers greatest customer value.
4. Create a movement not an argument. You need people on your side. Do this by building a narrative that people can contribute to and get behind.
5. Build your credibility. To continue to have influence other people need to know you and back you.
6. Share achievements and own misses. We need to recognise everyone who contributes to a win, but also own our misses. This helps you be seen as strong and trustworthy.
7. Get serious about measurement. Product Managers who don’t, or can’t, measure their Product are committing a product crime.
8. Build sustainably. Boring, but important. If you run up a long list of defects and tech debt then you’ll end up with an unmanageable product that nobody wants to work on.
9. Fix your roadmap. Set your roadmap up for success by removing timelines, being open that it will change and trying to avoid customer commitments,
10. Keep at it. Becoming product-led won’t happen overnight, don’t wait for ‘magic conditions’, just start and keep plugging away.
TRUTHS – Michael Ayoola, Senior Product Manager, The New York Times
When Michael started at the Times a few years ago management felt confident that they had a strong understanding of their main problem: customers couldn’t see the value of their product – a digital subscription. They ran into all sorts of roadblocks trying to resolve this which led them to the realisation that they needed to: “rally the entire organisation behind the decision to be a product-led company.
Michael walked us through the four areas that enabled them to make the shift.
- Leadership. Each product manager at the New York Times is responsible for a discrete area and has autonomy and authority. This allows them to follow the best product management practices to solve problems and take the business forward.
- Prioritisation. As Michael says: “Product Management involves making difficult decisions, including with respect to balancing competing interests and prioritising effectively.” Giving each person authority over their area, and introducing more collaboration between different areas allowed them to prioritise better.
- Influence. Each team is supposed to create an environment of trust and collaboration, while simultaneously building influence throughout the organisation. Michael recommends starting with empathy, building true trust and understanding and then using this as a platform to build influence.
- Execution. Strong execution is critically important in a product-led organisation. The best ideas mean nothing without standout implementation and execution, including recognition of everyone who helped make it a success.
After going through this process, by the end of 2020 the New York Times had, for the first time, its digital subscription products bringing in more revenue that its print business. For Michael this is: “clear evidence that being Product-Led is working and having an impact.”
LIGHTNING TALKS
Each year at our ‘Lightning Talks Pitch Fest’ Product People from our community share 90 second pitches, competing for the glory of speaking at Leading the Product. This year the winners were Tasneem and, for the first time ever, a duo of speakers, Jane and Steve. They then turned their 90 second into lightning-fast 5-minute talks for the conference.
Tasneem Gould – Principal, GSD Alliance
Tasneem thinks it’s time to start a revolution, a product revolution. Why? Because revolutions, when done well, create lasting change for the better.
How do you do that?
You start by defining your vision and purpose. Then you create a plan for change and, most importantly, you find the people who share your vision and work with them to create goals and outcomes.
Who should you recruit?
People unsatisfied with the status quo – those that have a bias for action, those that can keep going when the going gets tough.
Where do you start?
Tasneem urges us to “Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can, but start.”
Finally, find the data points to measure your progress, communicate your success, and watch the revolution snowball as you unleash the power of the people.
Jane Register – Principal Experience Designer, Oracle & Steve Bauer – Director Product Management, Oracle
Jane and Steve likened their transformation journey over the past three years to the journey of Frodo and the Fellowship of the Ring in the Lord of the Rings.
- Frodo and his motley crew of elves, men and dwarves needed to destroy the One Ring and save the world.
- Jane and Steve needed to bring two different teams, from different companies, cultures and time zones together to make awesome products.
Just the same right? After their epic journey ended in success, Jane and Steve realised there were three things that they learned that made it a success.
- Use customer focus as part of the transformation. By better understanding customer problems and needs and putting them under the spotlight the teams focused better and bonded over common goals.
- Adapt your ways of working together. When teams grow bigger and merge together often people are asked to do things, and work in ways, they’re not used to. Usually, everyone needs to learn to work a little differently.
- Keep an eye on how the team is working. Merging teams brings many clashes of personalities and cultures, to help keep things going they used to meet regularly, discuss issues and constantly reiterate they were on the same team.
The sketchnotes included with the speaker summaries are by Rebecca Jackson. Thanks Bec for your fabulous visual summary of the presentations.