Maintaining the empowerment of product teams

I recently enjoyed Marty Cagan’s article on the differences between “delivery teams”, “feature teams”, and “empowered product teams”. I’ve worked in, and managed, product teams that are both unempowered and empowered, and seen the benefits of empowerment first hand.

It struck me that the forces that affect how the empowerment of a team varies over time, and what that means for those in product leadership roles, would be worth exploring in more detail. First though, it’s essential that you’ve read Marty’s article so that you understand the core concepts. All done? Good.

Empowerment is transient

You may have got the impression from Marty’s article that empowerment is a fixed property of a team, in the same way that the size of a team, or whether it is cross functional, is a fixed property. This is not the case.

The extent to which a given team is empowered changes over time, sometimes quite suddenly. A team may be empowered to identify the best solution to a business need one quarter, but find themselves handed a feature to deliver the following quarter.

The reason for this is that empowerment is dependent on two competing forces that vary continuously. The level of trust that the leadership has in the team, and the level of urgency with which the business is operating.

Empowerment vs trust

Marty’s earlier article on Empowered Product Teams rightly identified trust as essential to empowerment. At any given moment, does the leadership of the business believe that the product team concerned:

• Understands the challenges and opportunities that the business expects them to address right now
• Can be relied upon to identify and deliver solutions that address those challenges and opportunities in a timely and cost effective manner

However trust is not binary, but must be built up over time. A product team can not simply demand to be trusted, so they can not simply expect to be empowered. They have to earn that trust, and therefore that empowerment, through consistent strong performance.

As trust in the team grows, the leadership will empower them to make increasingly strategic decisions, and offer them increased autonomy. If the team responds well to this empowerment by effectively addressing the needs of the business, they will earn more trust, and thus more empowerment, and so the cycle of growth continues.

Teams that have built a strong foundation of trust with the leadership team are more likely to be entrusted with tackling business challenges that are perceived by the leadership team to be more strategic, risky, or complex. However a business may be faced with a challenge like this at a time when none of their product teams have a sufficient track record of handling such projects for the leadership to trust them to handle it autonomously.

In this situation, a team that was empowered with a medium risk project one quarter, may find themselves less empowered the following quarter because they have moved onto a higher risk project with more executive visibility. Until they prove they can competently handle that complexity they will be subject to more oversight, and therefore less autonomy.

Trust, and therefore empowerment, can also be lost. If a team delivers a product that fails, reflects badly on the business, or overruns in time or cost, they are likely to be less empowered in future. If this happens repeatedly, the leadership may lose all faith in the team, and either demand that they be replaced, or resort to total command and control, micro-managing every aspect of their work, and demanding near constant reassurances of progress.

Trust is also personal. It exists between people, and is therefore sensitive to changes in the makeup of a team. When people leave a team, especially if they are considered to be senior or critical to the team, the level of trust that the leadership has in the team will decrease while the leadership waits to see whether the team can maintain their previous level of performance.

A product team that is stable in makeup, has been consistently performing at a high level, and has been empowered for some time can still find themselves disempowered due to changes in business circumstances. This is because empowerment is also affected by changes in urgency.

Empowerment vs urgency

While coaching a group of Product leaders a couple of years ago, one of the attendees (who’s name I unfortunately can not recall) said the following, which has stuck with me ever since:

Autonomy only works when there is a shared sense of urgency

Businesses move to a higher state of urgency in times of crisis. A startup may discover that its burn rate is too high, and it will soon run out of money. An established business might recognise the emergence of a new competitor that represents an existential threat. A significant underperformance in quarterly results may place the senior leadership under sudden pressure from the board to turn the ship around.

Under these circumstances, the senior leadership often feel the need to rapidly change the level of urgency in the business, moving from what Ben Horowitz calls “peacetime” to “wartime”. Changes in urgency are hard to propagate through a business, and leadership teams often respond by reverting to “command and control”, dictating changes to the roadmap, cancelling projects, and reassigning staff. I’ve seen this happen in organisations as small as a 20 person startup, and as large as Google.

As a product team, remaining empowered in wartime requires an order of magnitude more trust than being empowered in peacetime. In the most extreme cases, the founders or board members may take control of the roadmap even from the product leadership, at which point it’s not just one product team that’s been disempowered, but the entire product organisation.

So what does this relationship between trust, urgency, and empowerment mean for people in product leadership roles, such as a Head of Product, VP of Product, or CPO?

Facilitating empowerment

As a Product leader, a core responsibility of your role is building product teams that are effective, trusted, and empowered, and then preserving their empowerment. You need to hire product managers who are trustworthy, coach them in the importance of demonstrating trustworthiness to the leadership of the business at all times, and reinforce their trustworthiness at every opportunity in conversations with your peers on the leadership team.

Once your teams have earned sufficient trust, you must fight for their right to be empowered. For example, as a member of the leadership team you should be involved in setting the quarterly goals for the business. For your teams to be empowered, these goals need to define an outcome that the teams are asked to deliver, rather than a set of features or deliverables.

This means pushing back on the tendency of the other executives to argue for their preferred solution, in favour of focusing on the underlying business need and letting the teams identify the most promising approach through discovery, research, and testing.

You will likely need to fight this battle during every single planning session. Other members of the leadership team will always have their own demands of your product teams. If there is a feature that a particular executive has been demanding for a long time, they may argue that it is “their turn” and argue that your team should be directed to implement this feature because they have been waiting “long enough”.

As a product leader, you must also be finely tuned to the level of trust that other members of the leadership team have in your product teams, and act quickly to respond to any decline in trust that you see developing. You need to understand why this is happening, and work with the product team concerned to identify the changes that need to be made in order to turn the situation around and rebuild the trust that has been lost.

You also need to anticipate changes in urgency, and communicate them to your teams. If you can see concerns developing around business performance, or that a competitor is beginning to dominate leadership discussions, you should warn your team that this could trigger new demands on them at short notice. Your teams may even be able to preempt those demands with some planning and research so that they can react quickly if needed.

Similarly, if there is a change in urgency and senior leadership begins to exert control over the priorities and roadmap, you must quickly and clearly communicate this reality to your teams, and agree the changes in working style that will be needed to respond effectively.

You may need to set a faster pace yourself, demonstrating how your expectations of the team have changed by example. To avoid disorientating your team, or causing them distress, it’s important to acknowledge any changes you will be making to your own leadership style, ensure they understand why this is necessary, and reassure them that it is only temporary.

Lastly, if you find that your teams have been disempowered by a change in urgency, you need to take back control by accepting and embracing the new reality (rather than fighting it), and getting ahead of the situation. If you can demonstrate to the senior leadership that your teams understand the need for urgency, can operate at the pace they demand, are anticipating the changes that are needed, and will keep them continuously updated on progress, they will be happy to let those teams resume driving the product forward.

As a product leader, your ultimate goal is to reach the point where the business turns to the product team for solutions even in times of crisis. This is an exceptionally high bar, but if you reach it, you’re an exceptional leader, and you’ve built an exceptional team.

In conclusion

• The empowerment of a given team depends on the level of trust they have within the organisation, and the level of urgency at which the organisation is operating
• Empowerment of a product team is under constant threat of being withdrawn in the face of a loss of trust or an increase in business urgency
• A core element of the product leader role is to build trustworthy teams, and then fight for their right to be, and remain, empowered