In this episode, Collin shares a case about a leadership team building a hardware and software product.
We dig into this case because it highlights familiar product dynamics—great, passionate people, working to tight deadlines, but stuck in semi-siloed patterns and not really operating as one team. Each group pushes its own goals but isn’t fully aligned on the end game. And when the product leaders aren’t working effectively as a team, it has a real impact on outcomes and the ability to deliver at pace.
We chose this topic to give product leaders footholds and practical ideas for starting similar conversations in your own organisation. We often call ourselves a team—but are we, as product leaders, really operating as a team? What do we really mean when we use the word “team”?
In this session, Collin describes how he asked the leadership group that he was working with this simple, but powerful question: “Are you working as a team?” To their credit, they took the time to work with Collin and reflect on this question, as a collective.
One area of the case that I found interesting was when Collin unpacks the complexity of “owning” requirements as new information emerges or thinking shifts about a particular problem. It is this inherent complexity of digital product development that makes siloed, and even semi-siloed, ways of working so dangerous.
Collin also highlights a deeper systemic issue: senior and executive leaders often don’t grasp the importance of ways of working in digital product development. Instead, they simply push the silos to deliver faster. I personally feel that this level of naivety at the top is a serious competitive problem.
I hope you find this case useful. We welcome recommendations and comments—and we’re looking forward to getting a few more episodes out, sooner rather than later.
At the end of the podcast, I refer to the work of Nonaka & Takeuchi and said I would include a link: 1) The New New Product Development Game and 2) The Knowledge Creating Company are probably their most well known work. But there is a wealth of other material that is also worth exploring.
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