Not your job in Tech
What does an empowered tech company actually look like, and who does what?
If you haven’t seen what “good looks like” before where you’ve worked, and you are curious about how others do it in modern functional tech companies, then let me describe to you how it goes down in an empowered product tech company.
This is where real innovation and great products are being discovered and developed that create meaningful, engaging and impactful work, where makers (like you perhaps) want to be spending their time at work.
Let’s start at the “un-top” of the business-end of a functional product tech company and work ourselves “down” the organisation to where the real business is actually generated.
CEO: it is NOT your job to dictate your sales/marketing/finance/product strategy, nor their execution. Hire and then trust diverse, empathetic and highly capable domain leaders to take care of that for your business. Give them what they need to do that, but do hold them accountable to their own strategies for delivering outcomes to the business strategy. Make sure they understand (and over communicate if you have to) your vision of the company as things change. Be vulnerable and genuine, making sure you share stories about what you learn with them. They will then consult you directly when they feel vulnerable and want to make a decision to change the business in the best interests of the company.
VP/Head of Product: Not your job to make the product decisions for your Product Managers or for their products. Give your product leaders the support, mentoring, and tools to help them make those decisions (with their teams) about what to do and where they should explore for more information and inspiration. But hold them accountable for keeping moving and exploring the right product for their customers. They will consult you when they feel vulnerable and need guidance and direction in tough times.
Product Manager: Not your job to decide “what to build” or how and when to build it. Collaborate and empower the rest of your product team to discover, learn and innovate based on the knowledge and context you have gained about the business and your customers. But do hold them accountable to whatever is actually made by them, and that it is viable (for the business) and that it is proven to be effective in the market. They will consult you when they seek certainty about their ideas (and the evidence they discovered) that may (to them) seem outrageous, counter-intuitive or too risky. Band together with them to take those risks together.
Content Makers: Engineer/Designer/Researcher/Scientist/Marketer/etc: It absolutely is your job to take responsibility for all the innovations and outcomes that are produced by the work that you do together. But never take that risk alone, do that with your teammates (as a cohesive team) so that none of you is exposed or cornered or accountable alone. Your other teammates will consult you when they want your support to share the risk and reward of doing something impactful and innovative in their work. Hold them accountable for generating effective customer outcomes that: deliver on product outcomes that: deliver the actual business outcomes and impact that: everyone else around you desires to achieve so much.
You will then see that the leadership in the company will consult you when they really want to know what is going on at the sharp end of the business. And they will know for sure that it is the real truth about their business.
