The most sincere transformation is the one that you don’t call “transformation”.
It’s not a project with a start and an end.
It’s not kicked off by a ceremonial speech in front of your team.
It’s doesn’t happen by following a given set of rules.
It’s when the whole team knows that great things happen when you collaborate towards common goals with a shared vision of a better future. A better future for your users, customers, and… your team! With some external input, intrinsic motivation, and an appetite for trying things out and iterating on the way you work, and with a management that gives you the space you need to make that change happen, you can set your organisation up for a better way of building products and increased business success.
This conversation between Jack Berglund, ex CPO Doodle, and me, one of the ex Lead Product Managers Doodle, is a reflexion of the time of transformation in 2017, the challenges, the benefits, and learnings in hind side. It’s an open conversation, free-stlye, as usual no preparation and no edit.
We met to have this conversation after my LinkedIn post created curiosity in the product field, and showed the need for real “behind the scenes” stories (the image links to the post):
This is what we’ve talked about:
1:50 – The board, and the unknowns before you join any company
4:00 – Doodle’s startup 2.0 and the ads business model
5:18 – Struggles you have when you are in B2C, want to analyse behavior but have no tracking. And what you can do about it.
8:35 – Challenges when trying to become Outcome driven: About data & setting targets.
10:10 – Learnings from introducing OKRs at Doodle: Baselines, hammers, and timelines
13:35 – NCTs vs. OKRs
16:20 – Roadmapping: Our mixed output & outcome roadmap, learnings and alternatives to roadmapping; The Roadmap Death March and the difference between having to create a roadmap vs. creating ongoing focus on the most important thing that makes it tick.
24:47 – Experimenting with deadlines vs. no deadlines on the roadmap.
26:25 – Infrastructure: When you want to release often but you can’t.
29:30 – Managing up: Dependencies between speed of growth, product strategy, and infrastructure
32:46 – How focusing on the most important levers can help you manage board- and team-expectations better when modernizing the whole infrastructure.
36:53 – Culture. The importance of being aligned on the future of work, on the future of your product, and the bonding between team mates for a successful “transformation”.
41:53 – Results of a customer centric, business supportive (“product-led”) way of working.
42:11 – How to get to a great culture that supports the change: Hiring, onboarding, “we-time” for the team
43:49 – Shout-out to Itamar Gilad and Jeff Gothelf
44:33 – First “Goodbye”
45:02 – “One more thing – take 1”: Broaden your understanding of a “cross-functional team”.
46:41 – Second “Goodbye”
47:25 – “One more thing – take 2”: Crucial role of a good management team in a successful transformation.
50:29 – Final “Goodbye”
Jack and I and the whole ex-Doodle team from 2017-2020 are transformation veterans now 😂
Reach out to Jack or to me if you have questions or want to exchange about transformation. And as always, feel free to drop feedback on LinkedIn.
Enjoy the listen!
