Growth vs Product? Nope!

Product from a Growth Perspective

By Laura Haines

We know that product is growth and growth is product, but it can be hard to put this in to practice and overcome some of the disconnect that emerges from differing goals, focus, expertise — how are we working at Skyscanner to ensure it’s no longer growth vs product?

What’s the problem?

As a Product Manager in Growth who transitioned from Product Engineering, I am in a very fortunate place to combine my engineering background with my growth knowledge to see the overlaps and opportunities that unite product and growth.

Traditionally, Growth and Product teams tend to work separately. The risk in doing so is that the two teams go off on different journeys to reach goals, limiting success. For Skyscanner, our concern with this happening was in undoing much of the value gained from our Skyscanner structure and the growth shift we embarked upon. We recognized that in order to work together to achieve the perfect product to market to our users, product market fit was essential.

At Skyscanner our culture revolves around lean principles — build measure learn, reducing waste and adopting growth mindsets. Yet our worry was that Product and Growth were building and learning separately, causing waste through duplication of work (only realising after the fact that we were testing similar solutions, something we could have done once, together). We needed to ensure we kept learning about and celebrating each other’s successes.

What’s the solution?

If the goal, in order to better serve traveller needs, is product and growth alignment, then we needed to begin embedding engineering to facilitate growth in specific regions and markets.

Two most powerful tools a regional product manager can ask for? Growth expertise and Product engineers Two of the many effective approaches Skyscanner takes to ensuring we move fast and learn fast? Experimentation and collaboration.

With that in mind, and to ensure Growth and Product worked hand-in-hand, we chose to create a new squad with newly recruited engineers which would serve both the Americas and EMEA markets. One of the main things they’d do was create products and features that guaranteed product-market-fit. This in itself is an experiment — can the squad identify product themes and opportunities across multiple markets and engineer solutions across two regions? The great thing about experimentation is you always learn from it and, in true Skyscanner form, we will learn and adapt from here to create the best environment for success possible.

The establishment of the Regional Features Squad means we can now ensure that we will drive forward impactful product changes from a regional perspective and truly grow the markets.

Product is Growth

The dedicated focus from both growth and product aspects allows us to uncover market opportunities and ensure we work towards product market fit and discover growth levers to bring growth to the markets. The knowledge and expertise of growth and product squads is remarkable, we are not limited by our capabilities, just our tenacity and ability to leverage each other’s strengths for impact.

It is impossible to grow a business in a market without taking your product offering into consideration, marketing a product that is not suitable for your target audience will inevitably lead to failure. In the same vein, creating a product without consideration of the regional nuances can lead to success in some markets and failures in others — to accomplish global achievements you must be better at being local. Creating a unified mindset where product and growth is one in the same will ensure there is no turmoil, no contention over which one gets your attention or which success or failure you opt for. Product is growth, growth is product — it has to be!

At Skyscanner, we are definitely moving in the right direction to tailor our Product for good market fit and then focus on sustained Growth to truly serve our markets better and solve traveller problems. Embedding growth principles in to our engineering squads, encouraging growth experts to consider engineering solutions, sharing knowledge and expertise and continually learning ensures we are all thinking about the growth of our products.

Overcoming boundaries, blockers and silos is not easy but Skyscanner’s ability to encourage continual improvement is one of the main reasons I love my job. Our structure and culture means we each have the opportunity to truly make an impact in a x10 growth business. Working with everyone in the business from growth hackers to engineers to create products to solve real user problems, uniting product and growth and, ultimately, making Skyscanner the best place for top talent to be, to play a very large part in our company’s success.

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About the author

Hi my name is Laura Haines, thanks for reading my post. I am a Product Manager at Skyscanner, working in the Americas Tribes to obtain product market fit and growth of all markets. The amazing company culture gives me the opportunity for accelerated learning through a data driven, build measure learn approach, allowing us to fail fast. Skyscanner provides me with an environment where autonomy and mastery is the norm, no two days are the same and I feel empowered to apply my knowledge and experience to make impactful decisions to grow the company and grow myself. I’d encourage you to take a look at the current Skyscanner Product and Marketing roles we have in our Growth Tribes across our global offices.

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