The art of positive disruption
What does it mean to create a successful product culture and why do people keep asking us about it?
The evolution of Netflix from a DVD rental service to a data-driven, personalised entertainment platform is one of the most famous and successful examples of a product-driven culture; a culture rooted in meeting customer needs, that pioneered a whole new entertainment category.
Now, product-focused culture, once the domain of tech giants like Netflix, Google, Amazon and Spotify, is crossing sectors. Even traditionally risk-averse industries, or those hampered by regulation and compliance — such as finance, healthcare and automotive — are overcoming these challenges as they realise the power of doing products well.
What is product-centred culture?
Successful product organisations continually focus on the customer and create outstanding products that meet and exceed their expectations. They carefully cultivate the behaviours and mindsets needed to do this.
Slack is a product culture in action, focused on creating empathy with employees and customers. Over 32 million people log on to Slack every day. That’s around 50% growth in two years. It’s so ingrained in working life that we use its name as a verb. “I’ll Slack you.”
But becoming a product culture has challenges. At Magnetic we see that organisations often grasp the concept of a strong product focus but struggle to implement the operational changes they need to shift their own culture.
These two frustrations that we heard this year are typical: “We’re a risk-averse culture. People avoid failure, so we never try new things” and “We’re going in circles. There’s too much collaboration and no one wants to make decisions.”
This is why leaders and teams have to understand why a product-focused culture is important and how to do it.
Why is a product mindset important?
We’re having more and more conversations with businesses about creating product-centric cultures. This reflects the broader shift to putting customers first. Markets and conditions change fast these days and a sharp focus on product excellence helps organisations across all sectors and sizes to be more robust, responsive and willing to take risks. Staff at Deliveroo, including CEO Will Shu, make deliveries themselves to get first-hand experience and insights.
The business case for this is simple: companies that strive for a deep understanding of user needs and shift the culture away from doing tasks towards obsessing about customer outcomes will grow their revenues
4% to 8% faster than their market competitors, according to Forbes.
Phones to drones: a timeline of disruption
How can you be more product driven?
Creating a product-driven environment means three things: creating products customers really want, making them different from competitors, and adapting quickly to market changes.
Through our work with companies like Ada, we’ve designed products from scratch that help consumers to understand their symptoms better and get early diagnosis of complex health issues. We’ve been helping global healthcare group Fresenius take a more iterative approach to product development, as it designs new devices and remote healthcare services around patients’ lifestyle and homecare needs.
It’s the cultural mindset described by Apple CEO Tim Cook: “Our whole role in life is to give you something you didn’t know you wanted, and then, once you get it, you can’t imagine your life without it.”
This is an excerpt from our 2024 book: Optimism. If you’d like a copy, request it here.
Author: Lucy Willett
Magnetic is a design and innovation company that helps design better futures. We’ve worked with global healthcare businesses, government organisations and fast growing start-ups to build capabilities, products, services and transform organisations. To find out more get in touch: lucy.willett@wearemagnetic.com.
