How to identify great product cultures from the rest
Product Excellence: What differentiates great product companies from the rest

What is Product Excellence
Product excellence is an ever-evolving state of organizations that focus on becoming increasingly customer and product-led. Excellence is never reached though as we have to continuously improve.
Product Excellence is only possible in companies with strong product cultures.
In their book, Empowered, Marty Cagan and Chris Jones describe strong product companies as those
Role of Technology: Technology is not an expense but it is the business
Strong Product Leadership: Product leaders are the most impactful leaders in the company.
Empowered product teams: Teams are given problems to solve, rather than features to build, and most important they are empowered to solve these problems in the best way they see fit. And they are held accountable for results.
How can we identify if we are in such great product organizations?
You can use some of the following symptoms to identify if your organization is customer-focused and product-led. If most of the symptoms are ✔️ then you are in great company and most probably build successful products. If you notice a lot of ❌ symptoms then you have the option to try and bring about a change or move to good product companies if you are passionate about customers and the craft of product management.
✔️ Customer led
❌ Competition lead
✔️ Teams continuously learn from customers
❌ Getting access to customer or customer data is highly complicated and almost impossible to access
✔️ Customers are at the center of all decisions.
❌ Leaders talk about customers but decide on products and features
✔️ Data - both qualitative and quantitative informs product roadmaps
❌ HIPPO (Highest paid person’s opinion) will carry the most weight
✔️ Teams decide their roadmaps based on the continuous discovery from and with customers
❌ Exec-driven innovation
✔️ Leaders focus on coaching and growing their teams
❌ Leaders focus more on the output of teams
✔️ PMs focus on solving for the customer in close collaboration with other functional teammates. They drive customer and business value.
❌ PMs end up being product owners or project managers. They drive execution
✔️ Company has great customer-first values that are celebrated
❌ Visibility, hero attitude, and short-term revenue might be celebrated and promoted
✔️Individuals and teams are growth-minded and learn
❌ Nobody has the time or support to learn and develop skills
✔️ Planning is done based on continuous discovery.
❌ Annual planning is a dreaded exercise based on ideation without validation
✔️ Products are prioritized through solution discovery
❌ Products are prioritized based on high-level business modeling done in a short period of time without the basis of solution discovery
✔️ Product Managers focus on solving the four risks that Marty Cagan calls out - Value risk, usability risk, feasibility risk, and business viability risk
❌ Product Managers drive execution toward a date
✔️ Teams are given problems to solve with freedom of solutions
❌ Teams are given solutions to ship
✔️ Leaders focus on providing context and directing product strategy. They empower product teams to build their products.
❌ Leaders dictate product roadmaps
✔️ Teams have access to the right tools, frameworks, and standards.
❌ Teams are left to figure out how to build better products
✔️ Metrics are outcome focused
❌ Output metrics /vanity metrics
✔️ Strong product managers grow well
❌ Strong sales/execution product managers grow faster
✔️ CPO has a strong product background
❌ Lack of CPO and product organizations led by generalists
✔️ Missionary teams
❌ Mercenaries
💬 There are many more such symptoms that can help us. Please share your recommendations on how anybody can differentiate between great product companies and others in the comments below
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