Adapt or Die

I started consulting in 2014. It was supposed to be temporary, a way to pay the bills as I figured out which company I wanted to join next as a VP of Product. As I got more and more calls from ex-colleagues and those who saw my talks, I started to consider consulting might be a “real” job. 15 employees, 50 clients, and 8500 Product Managers helped later, it is indeed a real job.

In those early days, “digital transformations” were all the rage. They still are. I would come into companies and introduce them to great Product Management, but I had to do it under the guise of the words “lean”, “agile”, or “digital.” If I said Product Management, the door would get shut in my face. No one thought they needed product help... they just had to make their developers go faster.

So I slipped in, under the cover of my favorite buzzwords, and then slowly unleashed good product practices on them once I was inside.

When I started, I would always meet with the c-suite sponsors and ask, “Why? Why adopt agile? Why implement lean practices? Why go… digital?”

The answer was always the same.

“We need to adapt or we will die.”

These next few months will be a reality check to see who truly adapted to a modern world and who did not. While some companies thought that doing standups and getting a lovely-looking Kanban board on the wall was what it took, others saw the writing on the wall and took the time to become truly agile — to build the culture and support it to be able to adapt quickly.

Now is the time to ask yourself these questions, to see if you are ready to adapt:

Do we have a strategy and a north star to guide us?
Do we know enough about what we are currently doing to make informed decisions about what to start, stop, or continue?
Can our teams make decisions, at home, without having to call their managers every day to get permission?
Are we staying in touch with our customers and anticipating needs. What are the new opportunities?
Can we change our strategy quickly, or will we have to go through several months of planning before we can put anything in place?

The foundations of a culture and a strategy that can adapt to change quickly is one of the building blocks for great product management that we teach in truly agile companies. And yet, many leaders don’t want to spend the time on what it takes to do that - getting transparency into what is currently happening, building an adaptable strategy to enable teams to make decisions, and setting up processes for teams to be well informed and measure success.

Now what happens to those companies? I’ve talked to a lot of employees at companies this week about how things are going and there’s a distinct difference.

One company was struggling to move everyone to remote work on a moment’s notice. They had no way for their software teams to access data at home, and so they were asking people to still come in, even with many cities on lockdown. Managers are constantly micromanaging, worried their employees wouldn’t be working because they couldn’t see them. They paused the entire digital strategy for the company because they were unsure about the markets.

Contrast this with another company in the same industry, same size, where everyone has had the ability to work from home for the past two years. The leaders went through a true transformation, taking the time to set the strategy, and make it adaptable. They built clear communication and reporting infrastructure that helped keep people aligned, no matter where they were working. This made the leaders feel confident in their teams, and stop micromanaging. People picked up their laptops from work and went home. The company is now thinking through how to respond to the crisis, having their leadership think through what to do next.

While company one is struggling to get people onto laptops at home, company two is already innovating and gaining a competitive edge

One CPO I talked to this week in a truly modern company said, “This is an opportunity for us to excel. We’ll need to clamp down a bit, but we’re going to put all of our efforts into innovating to address this new landscape.” They are already starting to build new functionality for their customers to address a world where people can’t meet in person. That’s adapting.

Great Product Management is more necessary now than ever. As budgets are being clawed back, and money becomes tight, you need to be able to place your bets wisely. If you try to build everything, you will lose money in the long run. Things won’t get shipped. You’ll be struggling to make customers happy. You need focus and ruthless prioritization.

In order to prioritize, you need to have a strategy and long-term view that can serve as a north star. When we adapt, we don’t throw everything away and start over. We adjust. Product leaders need to take the time now, to really think about their goals, and what is important. They need to look at their customers and anticipate their problems. That is how they win.

These days will truly be a test for companies to see if the investment in becoming “modern” and “agile” really paid off. Did we do it right? Or did we just put paint on a shaky house? …