Below Water Level

“All minds have to see the whole task to contribute efficiently”.

     — Oppenheimer in the movie Oppenheimer.

The first rule of Product is that you don’t talk about Product. You talk about the business, the customers and their struggles. But, in our very human quest for vanity, control, ego and predictability, we have instituted a separated-ness among teams, functions and units. Separated-ness kills innovation, impact, effectiveness and even joy and pride at work.

Many years back, in a meeting, a VP was saying that the business needs the RnD to do something. In jest and yet, somewhat meaning it seriously, I asked why he felt that the business and RnD are separate and why is RnD not considered “business” as it produces what customers are really buying. Within a split-second, I realized what a  career limiting move it was to have said that. The VP, in his wisdom, was generous and let it go without a response.

Despite being a technology-centric company it was well schooled in the old ways of separating management and technology teams. In working as per the old industrial era, it was bound to Taylorist management principles, keeping RnD separate from business.

Agile principles got many things right, despite the bad rep “Agile” has.

Over the last decade, even Product Managers have come to apply this “separate” mentality to themselves. In the worst of cases, Product Managers behave like gatekeepers of the product or arbitrators of executive directives or just providing some sort of “shield” to the developers and designers.

Highly effective companies do not, in fact, consider business and RnD separate but rather different functions that constitute the “business” and  come together for addressing customer problems.

Cutting edge teams have learned that change is constant. Change requires bringing people together so that we all can see the elephant as a whole. Effective product rituals require putting people with different expertise and experiences together. So divergent opinions can lead to proprietary insights.

The chaos of divergent opinions may make leadership and Product Managers feel like things are out of their control, but that is the true nature of the work.