Have a conversation with your leaders now to stop the feature carousel

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

I am fortunate to work in a product led organization. We pride ourselves in listening to and serving our customers. Our strategic decisions are informed by data. We have clear business objectives.

It’s pretty magical to see it operate. I love to hear the pragmatic push back against proposals that sound good, but are not rooted in customer problems or needs.

I hear product managers wanting to leverage the wisdom of their teams to execute product strategy. They believe the team is closest to the voice of the customer and is best suited to solve the customers problems.

At the same time, I have witnessed a different dynamic that is contrary to the above.

Here. Build this.

Leaders withhold autonomy from teams and give them a feature list to build instead.

I believe this is not uncommon in companies that have grown from early success due to a founders insight in the market. These companies have grown from a single team to multiple product teams working on a single product and it is no longer feasible for them to keep a close pulse on a team’s progress.

While founder or early leaders have learned to relinquish parts of the strategy, they hold tight to strategic bets…