Empowered – Marty Cagan

Author: Marty Cagan Type: #book

• Weak product companies:

  • Lack product vision and strategy
  • Don't give teams the autonomy to solve meaningful problems
  • Don't offer their technology teams any coaching and don't staff them properly
  • View EPD teams as "just serving the business" as opposed to serving the customer

• While those companies may want to transform, they don't know how.

• Company culture is often a reflection of founders' personalities.

  • However, culture alone doesn't lead to building successful products.

• "Leadership is about recognizing that there's a greatness in everyone and your job (as an executive) is to create an environment where that greatness can emerge." – Bill Campbell

• 3 key differences separating the best product companies:

  • How it views the role of technology:
    • It's not a necessary expense that just serves the business. It IS the business.
  • Role of product leaders
    • Hiring great people, coaching them, creating a solid product strategy for them and generally helping them achieve great outcomes. Not about "command and control".
    • Focused and compelling product vision and strategy, grounded in qualitative and quantitative insights, is one of the most important contributions from product leadership.
    • Product leadership should give empowered teams a solid product strategy
  • How it views the purpose of product teams:
    • Delivering products that customers love yet work for the business. Not just "serving the business".

Responsibilities of product leadership in strong product companies

Feature teams