How I Build Powerful Product Teams Without Boundaries and Governance

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Male manager sitting at a desk in a modern office looking confident and smiling. | Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

Imagine you are in a box, hands tied. Now, craft an innovative product.

Absurd? Yes. Common for product teams? Unfortunately, yes.

Our expectations of product teams are sky-high.

• We expect the ability to pivot on a dime.
• We expect more, better, faster, and cheaper.
• We expect innovation to deliver stellar outcomes.

Yet, we put boundaries around what teams can do and what they can’t. We also form elaborate standards and procedures and govern all teams to follow them. This is the way we attempt to gain some sense of control over the results we seek.

But control slips through our fingers the more we try to grasp it.

We don’t get the results we desire when we tie the hands of our teams with rigidity. Creativity can’t emerge when adaptation requires permission. The boxes become a prison.

Process eats innovation.

What exactly do you mean by boxes and tied hands?

Our quest for order, while flawed, is well-intended.