Is your company ready for Product Operating Model Coaching?

Here’s a conversation I often find myself having whenever someone from a scale-up or corporation asks me for coaching support.

Frazzled product leader: “We want a coach to help us transform how we work.”

Me (Petra, the coach): “What kind of transformation are you looking for? What are your current challenges?”

Frazzled product leader: “I don’t know. It’s all a mess. We seem to be doing agile right 50% of the time and discovery right 30% of the time and some of our decisions are data informed, but it all seems ineffective, slow, and… meh. We’re not transparent or aligned. I think we need more product thinking in general. So, let’s call it a product mindset transformation!”

And they are not wrong. They might need more alignment, more transparency, more directional clarity. They might need upskilling initiatives for their product team or a product operations function. They even might need what is called Product Operating Model (if you haven’t heard the term, Melissa Perri and Denise Tilles write about it in the new book Product Operations and Marty Cagan wrote this post to share his take on it.)

Observing a pattern

I know I’m not the only one who meets people who are keen to engage in transformation work. In fact, I recently had a conversation with Andrew Skotzko, a fellow product leadership coach. We discussed the patterns we've observed when companies approach us for help with their transformation toward a product-led organization.

As Andrew and I talked, we realized we had something in common: we both aim to maximize the impact of our work and add value for our clients. But we often found ourselves in situations where realizing this value is so hard because the company in question might not be ready to be coached.

We've both found that companies—or eager individuals—often reach out to discuss transformation coaching before they're genuinely prepared for such an undertaking.

As coaches, we are keen to help those who are ready. We have a reason for this—it’s more effective and a lot more fun to be the wind helping someone to soar instead of blowing dust and debris in their eyes.

But how can you identify if your organization is ready? How do you know you’re up for making the time and effort to reflect on your ways of working and adopt more product thinking and more effective ways of doing product work?

It turns out that Andrew and I have settled on a very similar checklist for assessing a company's "transformation readiness."

I use three core pillars: pain, urgency, and help (more on those in the next section). If you want to compare them to Andrew's pillars, make sure you read his post on this topic.

The 3 Pillars of Transformation Readiness

Before we can embark on a journey towards adopting a Product Operating Model, companies must critically assess their readiness for this significant shift. The three key pillars to consider are pain, urgency, and help. Let’s look at each one more closely:

Is there enough PAIN? Change requires a powerful catalyst. In the context of transformation, this often comes as organizational pain. If performance metrics are declining, or you're finding it increasingly difficult to attract top talent, these signs of strain could be the necessary fuel for transformation. Without this motivational pain, efforts are likely to fizzle out.
Is the timing right? Is there URGENCY? The sense of urgency can be the difference between a successful transformation and a failed one. If there is a collective realization across all levels of the organization that "we have to start now, or we'll be in trouble in a few years," it can be a powerful motivator for change.
Do you realize you need HELP? Companies need help to undertake a transformation journey. Whether external consultants, coaches, or new hires bring a fresh perspective, you'll need help to make this shift successfully. These outside perspectives make you aware of what's possible, they can potentially share examples they've seen or been involved with, and they can help you make sure you have the right people to undergo a successful transformation.

So before you even consider starting a change initiative, a transformation program, or a coaching plan, check if these three things are there. And if not: create that awareness. Think about ways people could experience the pain, feel the uncertainty, and learn about the possibility of getting support.

Here are some ideas how to go about this:

Help people feel the pain you feel

There is usually one person or a group of people who are starting to see the cracks in the current system. This might include ineffective ways of working, unsuccessful products, unhappy customers, or stalling KPIs. And these folks can connect the dots and realize that it is not one single product or one single team having these issues. It’s systemic. So they want to work on that.

But the rest of the company is not yet there. So if this is you, my recommendation would be: Map all the things you observe. Write them down. Connect the dots and create a story you can share. Don’t be pessimistic or draw a negative picture of your status quo. Just collect all the facts and data points and tell people about it. Oftentimes others have only seen fractions of that picture—so small that it was easy to ignore. But if you manage to collect a good set of data and put it in front of many folks in your organization, it’s more likely that they will come to the same conclusions then you did.

Help people develop a sense of urgency

This one is harder. Let’s assume you managed to “share the pain.” How do you make sure people start to work on a plan, start taking action to drive the change, or even go find budget for external help?

Humans have this tendency to ignore pain as long as they can because going to the doctor or seeking help often costs more energy than ignoring the pain. So that’s our natural tendency: to do what uses less resources. If we stick with the metaphor, what makes us go see the doctor? If things start getting worse really quickly: a rash, inflammation, massive pain.

My advice? Go find similar things in your organization. Maybe there is this ONE KPI that shows a significant increase or decrease. Something like an early warning sign of things going sideways. Sometimes it’s easy to find it (clients are churning at a massive scale, your company is no longer able to pay bills and salaries) and sometimes it takes time to find that signal because you have to implement tracking before you can show how bad things are. But in any case, make sure the people in charge do understand that this is not a situation they can just sit through.

Help people understand that transformation is possible and there is help available

You might actually want to do this step before or while you’re developing a sense of urgency. Why? Because pain raises awareness, but the realization that there is help available out there, that your organization is not the first organization on that planet that’s having this challenge helps tremendously with the urgency bit. If you know healthcare is available and free of additional charge (yes, I know that’s me speaking as a German here and the circumstances might not be quite so frictionless in your country :-)) and the doctor has opening hours that align with your calendar, you are more likely to go see them before things are really bad. And it’s the exact same with your organization and ways of working.

So it does help to take some colleagues to conferences, share articles, talks and blog posts or books like STRONG Product People, STRONG Product Communities or Melissa and Denise’s Product Operations. And make sure people in charge (senior executives) know that there are coaches and consultants available that have been supporting companies with adopting product mindset for years or even decades. They don’t need to turn to the McKinsey or Boston Consulting Group folks on this planet. Curiosity, the mandate to learn about and apply new ways of working, and some guidance and coaching is often all you need to get things going.

So, suppose you're a product leader, transformation manager, or someone responsible for shaping your company's product culture and considering a move toward a product-led transformation. These questions around pain, urgency, and help should be your starting point before reaching out and seeking help.

I’ve helped many clients navigate their own transformations. Hear from Jakob Riis Bentsen about our work together at Novo Nordisk or find even more case studies in my new book, Strong Product Communities.