Melissa Perri’s guest on this week’s Product Thinking Podcast is Marty Cagan. Marty is a product executive, the Founder and Product Partner of the Silicon Valley Product Group and the author of “Inspired: How to Create Products Customers Love”. Marty joins Melissa to discuss themes from his new book, Empowered, about getting leadership to up their product game.
Show Notes
Melissa Perri’s guest on this week’s Product Thinking Podcast is Marty Cagan. Marty is a product executive, the Founder and Product Partner of the Silicon Valley Product Group and the author of “Inspired: How to Create Products Customers Love”. He has over two decades experience in the field of product management. Marty joins Melissa to discuss product management and how to become the best product manager you can possibly be.
Here are some key points you’ll hear Melissa and Marty talk about in this episode:
The essence of product is how well the team works together to solve problems in ways customers love, but that which also works for the business.
The focus of Marty’s book, Empowered, is helping leadership up their game. If a product team is not performing well, the fault lies with the leaders.
The product leader’s first and main job is to make sure that their product team thrives, and that they do their jobs well. Product managers should be encouraging and coaching their teams, and inspiring them so that they can set up their teams for success.
“Product teams are only as good as their product managers...if those product managers are not good, it all falls apart and then it doesn't matter how much singing and dancing that product leader can do with the other executives if he or she can't deliver results,” Marty tells Melissa.
What causes organizations to use tactics that only focus on cost reduction.
The advice Marty gives to clients on what they can do to change their organizations.
Becoming a great product manager is about learning from, and being coached by someone who’s dedicated to developing and coaching you.
How to know which organizations will be willing to train you and how to find a product leader who is going to put in the time and effort to show you the ropes.
Product leaders hire based on a person’s potential. It’s not about an academic qualification but more of a belief in the person’s ability to reach where product leaders think it can be.
What organizations should be doing to help bring their less tech savvy employees up to speed, for the benefit of their product teams.
One of the biggest issues surrounding product management.
The ten keys to successful transformation.
Resources Marty Cagan | LinkedIn | Twitter Silicon Valley Product Group
Episode Transcript
Melissa Perri: Creating great products isn't just about product managers and their day-to-day interactions with developers. It's about how an organization supports products as a whole. The systems, the processes, and cultures in place that help companies deliver value to their customers. With the help of some boundary-pushing guests and inspiration from your most pressing product questions, we'll dive into this system from every angle and help you think like a great product leader. This is the Product Thinking Podcast. Here's your host, Melissa Perry.
Melissa Perri: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of the Product Thinking Podcast. Today I'm joined by Marty Kagan. Everybody loves Marty. Everybody knows Marty. And he's here with me today to talk all about product management. So thank you so much for coming on the show.
Marty Cagan: Well, thanks for inviting me, Melissa. It's good to be here.
Melissa Perri: Great. So I met Marty in Portugal. Can you imagine when we were able to travel? I miss that. So we were at the Productize Conference. We had a lovely dinner together, which I thought was fantastic. But I have always heard about the great Marty Kagan. And I can tell you all that he's just as nice in person as he seems. So it's been great to get to know you. And we're going to talk a little bit about your new book today. So, Marty, you just published a new book called Empowered, which is a follow-up to Inspired, one of the classic product management books for everybody. What led you to write Empowered, and what is it about?
Marty Cagan: Well, my first love is really the stuff I wrote about in Inspired, how good teams work together to do great stuff, to solve hard problems in ways customers love but work for the business. To me, that's the essence of product. And that book has, much to my surprise, has kind of spread around the world.
But one of the things that happened was so many people I didn't know before that book sort of spread reached out. And what I learned was that teams very often absolutely wanted to work that way. But what I learned is they weren't allowed to work that way in so many companies, which, of course, when I try to explain this to friends of mine in sort of the Silicon Valley bubble, they think I'm making this up.
They genuinely do. They don't believe me when I say that there are companies out there and I describe how they work, and they're like, I can't believe it. That's insane. Especially it's insane given that the most valuable companies in the world don't work anything like that. Why wouldn't the profit motive alone motivate them to get their act together?
Anyway, that was the reality I see in so much of the world. And by the way, including in parts of Silicon Valley and parts of San Francisco. So it's not a geographical thing. But the further away you get, I think it is true. It's more common that you run into these project-based, IT-based companies.
So anyway, I realized that it's not enough to share the lessons of great product teams. We needed to share the lessons of great product leaders. And so the focus of Empowered became, how do we help leadership up their game? And really, if you have teams that are not good, whose fault is that? It's the leaders.
I mean, that's what the leaders are accountable for. And so I wanted to specifically tackle that problem and focus on the leaders. And to me, managers and leaders of product management, product design, and engineering. That's really where my focus is. And for the last three years now, I mean, I've always, that's what you do as a coach and advisor.
You work with the leaders. But over the last three years, it's been more like productizing that recommendations for those leaders. And that's been keeping me quite busy, for sure.
Melissa Perri: That's great. I agree. I agree. I had a similar realization as I got into coaching and working with product management teams. I found that I kept training people. I kept teaching them product management. They'd go back to start implementing it. And they were like, I can't do this. My leader doesn't let me.
I'm not allowed to do user research. My organization is stopping me. And that's how I started to work with leadership, too, because I was like, it doesn't matter how many people we actually train if nobody's allowed to actually go do their jobs. So I love that this is really focused on leadership. One of the things you say in the book, too, that I wanted to dive into is how the product leader's job, right?
Like their foremost job is to make sure that their team thrives and that their team can do their jobs well. Can you elaborate on like what a product leader should be doing to make sure that their product management teams are set up for success and can actually be great product managers?
Marty Cagan: Yeah, sure. There's actually a great Andy Grove quote that always comes to mind whenever I think about this, which is Andy Grove, you probably know, is like legendary CEO of Intel, of course. And he's the guy actually invented OKRs. So that's another story. But he liked to say, look, there's only two reasons organizations can't do good work.
The first is that the people don't know how to do good work. And the second is they know how to do good work. They just don't want to. And the first is what we refer to as management. And the second is what we refer to as leadership. And of course, I try to explain to leaders and managers that the mix differs.
If you're a first level manager, like if you literally manage product managers or manage engineers or manage designers, then about 80 percent of your job is literally people management. And by that, I really mean coaching and staff. That is the vast majority of jobs. And about 20 percent of your job is the leadership, the inspiring, the vision, the strategy, the objectives.
On the other hand, if you're a chief product officer or chief technology officer or the head of design, it's really the reverse. You do a little bit of coaching and staffing for sure. The leader spots are very high leverage and critical. But most of your time is really on the leadership work. It's about making sure you have, you know, you're inspiring the organization to do something amazing.
That's the mix. And in terms of the management, like you were getting at, it's really another great quote is Bill Campbell's quote, which is you cannot be a good manager without being a good coach. You know, it's one of those things I took for granted early in my career. I thought everybody had a coach.
I thought everybody's manager was actually helping them get better at their job. Then, of course, I learned that was not even close to the truth. And so I try to explain to managers, this is your number one responsibility. And honestly, I've had more than a few people say, I can't imagine spending hardly any time on that.
I've got other things to do. I try to explain to them. In fact, the way I put it bluntly is I tell these head of product that you will be judged by your weakest product manager.
Melissa Perri: Yeah, that's a really good test to to see how well of a job they're doing. And you kind of got into this question that I actually want to ask you when you started talking about CPOs, CTOs versus product leaders. I've seen a lot of heads of product start to go immediately into the coaching that you're talking about, right?
Like they coach, they mentor, they are developing their team. And what happens is they start to neglect the rest of the executives, right? The rest of the people who are on their level. And they eventually get fired because they're not really working at that leadership level, doing that leadership piece you were talking about.
So when do you know for what level, right? You're thinking about all the different levels of product managers in the organization. When do you have to look at I should be spending 80 percent of my time on leadership versus 80 percent of my time on coaching? Like how does it differ throughout the levels and where do you think it starts to flip?
Marty Cagan: Well, clearly we're talking the big variable here is the size of the organization. So a small place where they're say a director of product and it's got 12 product managers and that's the whole product management organization. There's no reason for a chief product officer. You wouldn't even have one, really.
And that person would be doing both. Obviously, they'd be number one responsibility would be develop their people at all. It's all a house of cards without that. Because, as you know, product teams are only as good as their product managers. And so if they're not good, those product managers are not good.
It all falls apart. And then it doesn't matter how much singing and dancing that product leader can do with the other executives if he or she can't deliver results. Of course, in a much bigger organization where you typically would have a chief product officer, there are lots of senior directors, VPs, directors.
You've got a whole hierarchy there. So that chief product officer is not normally spending their time coaching. If they are, that person probably has bigger issues, right? They've got like a big organization that is totally not competent yet. And so it's going to be a race before the other executives in the company decide that this person can't fix things.
And yeah, not too surprised. But, you know, in terms of the head of product getting fired, there can be a lot of reasons there. It could easily be that the CEO doesn't want to change.
Melissa Perri: Yeah, I've seen that before.
Marty Cagan: And I think that's the number one reason for revolving door at a product.
Melissa Perri: Yeah, definitely the CEO part. I see so many of them just not want to give up that control or they don't understand quite what it means to make that shift and like move into product management. When you're working, too, as CEOs, what do you kind of explain to them? Like, how do you get them on board? Is it like, I won't work with anybody unless they're already on board? Or do you frequently engage in some of that cultural mind shift to open them up to it? Well, first of all, sort of full disclosure, it's not a secret that we feel very strongly about CEOs that are not on board.
Marty Cagan: Don't waste our time. So there is going to be some natural selection there. And there's no question. But I would say because I do talk like I give talks all the time to CEOs. You know, there's different motivations today. Most of them are motivated by fear. Just look at Stripe. Stripe has put the fear of God into more financial CEOs than anything else I've ever seen.
For that reason alone, I'm so grateful to Stripe, not the least of which also is their great product organization. But they have put the fear of God in these CEOs that up until now would not have worried. They thought they were invincible and they thought their way of working was fine. And of course, you know, you can say like as a product person, I wouldn't rest if I were you.
But, you know, to them, it was abstract. But now it's real. So the biggest motivation seems to be fear. Fear of disruption. Fear of somebody coming along and stealing their customers and stealing their business. And it's justified. They should be scared. Sometimes it's the profit motive, though. Sometimes they look literally at the valuation.
They can do the math. They can follow the stocks. They look at the valuation of the companies that have adopted this way of working, and they compare it to the companies that haven't. And they're going like this is the fastest way for us to dramatically increase our wealth. So it's the profit motive.
And sometimes, frankly, neither of those seems to work. And what requires the change is the board coming in and saying we need a new leader. I have seen that happen, too. That's what happened. Well, it's happened in several companies, some of which publicly, some of which not. They have to understand that.
If you talk to a CEO, like I have tried talking to some CEOs of telcos, I can't budge. You know, it's a protected industry. Their view is we're making so much money, don't bother us. So we have to wait until a strike comes along and disrupts the telco before I think they'll ever budge. But I mean, literally in the last year, I've talked to three CEOs of some of the biggest banks of the world, and they wouldn't have known my name before this year.
So and I think strike for that.
Melissa Perri: Yeah, I mean, it sounds like a testament to really introducing product to these companies. That's really fascinating with the strike pressure. I've seen that a lot, too. So when I work with a lot of financial institutions as well, but then a bunch of organizations going through transformations like pharmaceuticals, anything really.
And a lot of the time, what I observe is the leadership going, hey, we need to introduce software because we need to be more innovative or we need to keep up with disruption or we need to do X, Y, and Z to stay future thinking. But then when they go through the transformation or that, you know, take that product management organization, start to build it, the tactics almost always go towards automation or cost reduction. I don't see anything that's like, oh, we should build this product strategy that's super forward thinking that's actually going to disrupt Stripe.
Right. It's like all the tactics get like all that beautiful vision and all those those good meaning behind it gets lost. And then when you start to talk to them about what are you doing or what are you building with the software, it turns into like, oh, we're just going to automate that thing that people used to do manually.
Or we're just going to go and ask our business users, the business users what they're doing and we'll recreate those workflows and software. Right. There's no 10x thinking about like, like, how do I completely rebuild our business in a different way? Why do you think that is? Like, have you observed that too?
And like, where do you think that disconnect comes from? Like, we have all the good intentions and then we just start operating differently.
Marty Cagan: Yeah. Well, you just described the norm for big companies doing, quote, digital transformation. And, you know, I have very strong opinions about why this happens. And you'll see it ties to why we believe the CEO needs to be on board. So, you know, of course, anybody, even if you hate technology, any CEO is going to say they're doing a transformation just for their stock price alone.
They're going to say that. But what most of them do is they assign somebody as in charge of this transformation. Sometimes it's even a CIO, which combines the issue. But they're trying to check the box. And to them, they still fundamentally view technology and see technology as a cost center. They see it as an expense.
Now, one that they know is necessary. I've never had a CEO say technology wasn't necessary. But that is very different to see it as a cost center versus seeing it as a profit center. Ford, who I've never actually gone in and worked with, but you got to believe from their cars, they view technology as a necessary evil.
It's a cost. Tesla, on the other hand, views technology as the empowering tool for the enabling tool for the whole company. That's what it is. It's a computer on four wheels. So fundamentally, what's going on is the CEO has a very different understanding of what this is about. And even if they do wish they did, you know, they have maybe a glimmer of what an Amazon can do or what a Slack can do or one of these companies.
What happens is the politics. So everything you describe, Melissa, are things that can easily be done by the engineers, product managers and designers. The things that would require the real transformation benefits, those will hit. And this is what we tell transformation goes way beyond product. It impacts finance, how you fund things.
It impacts sales and marketing. It impacts HR. I had to sit down on a Zoom call recently with the head of people operations, explaining to that person how she is destroying her company. Her attitude is we have these job classifications. We can't change them. And I'm like, they were set up in a different era for a different kind of business.
And I told her that my next call is to your CEO, because I know you don't mean to do it, but you are seriously damaging your company. And of course, unless the CEO steps in and tells that people operations person, you either get on with the program or you go, it's not going to happen. So imagine you're the CEO and every one of these stakeholders comes at you and says, we don't want to do this, because fundamentally it is power and politics.
And when we talk about, you know, most organizations, you know, we were talking about financial organizations, they're kind of the poster child for this. The so-called developers, engineers are really just there to serve the business and they are not there to serve customers. This is a major change from the subservient model to the collaborative model.
That is not a minor change. That is about real executives getting real power moving from one part of the company to another. And in most cases, they are not going to go along without a fight, which is why, you know, we have really come to believe that it's a waste of your money and our time if the CEO is not going to provide the necessary air cover.
Melissa Perri: Yeah, I've had that conversation too. I'm like, you're paying me for nothing right now. I don't think it's worth it. Time for me to leave. It is really fascinating how much the CEO impacts a transformation like that. And you know, one of the biggest questions I do get asked on the podcast, just in general, and email, I'm sure you get this too, it's like, what can I do to change my organization if I'm a team level product manager?
Like, oh, I'm working at this giant financial institution, I'm working at this big insurance company and our company doesn't work this way. What can I do to change the minds and hearts of my leaders? Like, what would you say to that person?
Marty Cagan: Yeah, I think it's a good question too. We all know that how much can you really impact that CEO? Certainly at a big company. If you're small or maybe you get to lunch once in a while, but in a big company, how much do you even know? Does that person even know who you are? But it turns out quite a bit.
And here's what I mean by that. If the CEO does go on board, then at least, you know, again, there's natural selection, but most of the ones we deal with, they are. The next sort of weakest link in the chain is actually the product managers. And I try to explain to the product team, getting the CEO to give it a chance is actually the easy part.
The hard part is getting product to step up and do the job they need to do. Because in most organizations, they're not. Now, there's a lot of pathologies as to why they're not. And we can talk about that, of course, if you like. I know you're as interested in that as I am. I'm very interested in that.
But for whatever reason, if the product managers are not able to do the job that's necessary, then you know what happens is the CEO gives it a shot. And three to six months later tells me they couldn't do anything. And I try to explain that it's kind of like a house of cards. Without that strong product managers on each team, it fails.
And in many cases, the people that were in the position are totally underqualified for it. And one of the things I like to explain to the CEO is, look, you need to understand what you need to expect out of your product managers. And I tell them you should know each of them, who they are. And honestly, you should believe that each of those product managers is a potential future leader of your company.
If not, you got the wrong people there. So this is a high bar. And one of the things I tell people, you meet a lot of people that genuinely want to show what they're capable of. And they want their team to shine. And so I like to tell them two things. First of all, raise the bar on yourself. So set the bar to where it needs to be.
I mean, both of us have written a lot about where that bar should be. So it's like not a big mystery where that bar really is. But what is a problem often is most people are nowhere near it. So they need to fix that. And once you fix that, go to your leader, including if you want, go to a CEO and say, hey, what do you think about letting us run an experiment?
What do you think about letting us give a try for a few months? Let us run this way. I've prepared myself. I've prepared my team. Let us take a few months and try running this way. Of course, this way normally for me means empower teams, give us some hard problems to solve, let us show what we can do.
It's a great way for the CEO and the leadership team to be able to see it happening in a non-threatening, safe way. If it goes well, great. You can spread this out across the organization. If it doesn't, well, maybe it's not for you. Maybe there's some training that's necessary, coaching, whatever. But it's a great, safe way.
And in my experience, most of this time, the CEO is happy to go along with that experiment.
Melissa Perri: Yeah, that's really interesting. I guess that's also a telltale sign, right? If they're not going to go along with that experiment, then you don't know how to see it.
Marty Cagan: And it's time to go to a place where you can practice your craft. And I have that same discussion not just with product managers because it applies to professional engineers and professional designers as well.
Melissa Perri: Yeah, that has been my biggest advice to people when they say, hey, I want to change my organization. I also tell them, I'm like, do you want to be a change agent and get on this path of actually influencing people and teaching them how to work this way? Or do you just want to be a kick-ass product manager?
And if you want to be a kick-ass product manager, you can't do it at your organization. You've got to find one that will let you do it. Just go somewhere that's going to do that. I guess the question that I get when I say that, though, is how do I find the organization that's going to let me do that while interviewing?
What do you look for in organizations to see if they're going to embrace that way of working or if they can do their jobs there?
Marty Cagan: Yeah, and the good news is it's not always so easy from the outside, but during an interview it's not hard to figure out. And so what I tell people to do is, first of all, the most important thing is not actually the company you go to work for. We're talking about the scenario here that you and I were just talking about where the person wants to become a kick-ass product manager.
They're not already one. They want to become one. So the most important thing is not the company. The most important thing is who they'll work for. Literally, their manager. And the vast majority of strong, kick-ass product people I know, that's how they learn. They learn from someone else. And it's usually like a year or two working for somebody who's really dedicated to coaching and developing you.
What do we do? We can figure out who the hiring manager is in the interview process. We can use LinkedIn. We can see where they've worked before. We're looking for somebody that we can see has been there, done that at a good product company. And then when you're interviewing, first of all, of course, your first order of business is to show them you're worth making a bet on.
Beyond that, it's worth telling that hiring manager, look, the real reason I'm here is because of you. I want to learn from you how to be a kick-ass product manager. I believe you can help me do that. And I want to see if you're willing to do that. I promise I will put in the necessary effort if you will provide that coaching.
You know, most managers would love to hear that. They do love to hear that. Some of them have no, especially the startup, they might say, I appreciate it, but we have no room for that time right now. We need to hire people that already know this stuff. But most will tell you, all right, if you're in, I'm in.
Yeah, I give the same advice.
Melissa Perri: I'm like, go find an amazing product leader. And I think you can learn a lot just looking at LinkedIn and figuring out where people have been before. I think that's a really steady way to find that out. Did you know I have a course for product managers that you could take? It's called Product Institute.
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Melissa Perri: The other question that comes up with this is now we're talking about somebody who doesn't know product management that well getting a job in an organization where somebody's going to train them. And I have heard maybe like 50 times in the last month, especially for my students, like at HBS, they're like, everybody wants to hire a senior product manager. Nobody's looking for somebody coming right out of school.
How do you know which organizations are going to be willing to train you, right? And actually find a product leader who's going to be able to teach you the ropes versus the ones that are just hiring senior product managers, especially if all the jobs posted online are just for senior product managers. Like where have you seen the new people go?
How do they get those roles?
Marty Cagan: Yeah, well, and it's true. That was just another way of phrasing. Some places, especially startups, are like, we don't have the cycles to develop these people. We need people who can hit the ground running. That is usually defined as a senior product manager. But even then, you know, a lot of these people don't even know what to look for, and they're not really getting what they hope.
But that said, what do you do if you are new to product? Well, this is where there are a lot of great companies that are great first job company. I actually think Google is an excellent first job company. I used to say Facebook, but nobody should work with Facebook anymore. Amazon is a great first job company.
Apple is a great first job company. These places, basically, they can't even hire enough senior PMs that they wanted to. In fact, they don't always want to. Amazon is a great example. They prefer to show you the right way to do product rather than break all your bad habits in the first year. They literally, and they will often take people.
I actually had somebody who I had introduced into there and he was a very senior person. And he said, I got an offer, but it's for like two levels below what I am. And I was like, here's what's going on. They want you to prove you know your stuff, not just to the hiring managers, but to the organization.
And it's really true. That's what's going on. But in larger places, they are much better about developing it. And also there are some places that no matter what they do, they can't find enough senior PMs. So if they find somebody that they think has the right raw ingredients and they are willing to invest in them, but you have to realize it's a big investment.
Nobody really teaches product management. We can kind of go into that. I mean, you really have to learn it by an apprenticeship really in my experience. It's not like computer science. It's not really like design. This is a little different. And so they're putting a big investment. If it's a good company, they know they're making a big investment in you.
Melissa Perri: Yeah, I find that's true too. I think I also look at product managers and I say, you know, I can teach anybody how to build a roadmap, how to interview users, right? But I feel like there's some innate qualities that make people gravitate towards product management or thrive in it too. Or maybe leadership qualities.
Maybe it's not innate. I think it's all things that you could probably learn. But I've been thinking about that a lot lately. And I've been asking some of the other guests on the show. If you're looking for somebody to hire into a product management role, they have no product management experience. We'll teach them how to build a roadmap.
You're going to Amazon. They can build a roadmap, right? What are you looking for in that person to help show you, hey, they're going to make a great product manager in the future once I teach them the ropes?
Marty Cagan: Yeah. And this is one of the tricky things because it's really not an academic qualification. It's more of, you know, you're very much hiring based on this person's potential and you think their ability to reach where you need it to be. Competence and then excellence. I still think actually early Google used to define it as very smart people that know how to get things done.
There's actually, if you unpack that, there's quite a bit in there. You're looking for people that are good problem solvers. One of the things over the years Google has actually expanded when they define the product manager description. One of the things they're looking for is, has that person proven they can learn at least two different dimensions of a business?
It could be sales, could be marketing, could be product, could be design, could be engineering, you know, but have they shown they can learn at least two? Because of course, as a good product manager, you need to learn many. And so that's a good test. And I think it's, you know, I look for that as well.
You're also looking for somebody. You know, a lot of people misunderstand this. There is no secret in our industry that most of the best companies have a pretty high technical bar. Some of them, literally, it's got to be a computer science degree. Other ones, not really, but you better show that you're pretty technical.
And what's really going on there is not, they're not expecting you to cope. What they are expecting you to do, and this is one of the huge differences between, well, the sort of the pathology of consumer packaged goods derived product management and what I consider modern tech product management, which is the role of technology. They know that you have to be able to learn and apply new technologies all the time.
And that is not everybody. A lot of people, that is the last thing they want to do. And they know if you've got a strong technology degree, then sort of by definition, you've come to terms with that. But they're scared often of people who are, quote, non-technical because of that. They're not thinking it's going to be like, oh, they're not going to be able to figure out Python or something.
They're worried that that person will not have the necessary relationship with enabling technologies. And that's why, and I'm a believer, I'm in that camp. This is what's fundamentally different between a tech product and a new bar of soap.
Melissa Perri: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It also begs the question, right, in a lot of these transformations that we work in, usually the product managers were all subject matter experts or project managers that were in the organization. And it was like, voila, now we have 500 product managers. Ta-da, this is your new role.
How do we judge those people on their technical skills if they never had any technical experience whatsoever? And then also, how do we get them up to speed? What should we be looking for, especially in these organizations that are kind of snapping their fingers and making a product org on their product team and developing that product team?
How do they get those skills?
Marty Cagan: Yeah, well, you're opening a huge Pandora's box there. I mean, that is the scenario you described, which unfortunately is all too common, especially if I can generalize on the East Coast of the U.S. And in Europe. That is a really common problem. And it's usually the instigator of all this was some agile transformation.
That was the instigator. They didn't have any of this shit before. And now all of a sudden, some agile coaches came in and said, we're going agile, which means you need product owners. Oh, you don't have any product owners. Well, no problem. You got plenty of people that look like a product owner. We have a very, and just for a small amount of money, we can train those people to be product owners.
And of course, this is one of the, in my experience, the two big pathologies leading to terrible product. Because like you said, they're either BAs, business analysts, or domain experts, which is even further away, or project managers. But those things aren't really in the agile book. So we don't need them.
But we do need product owners. How about this? It's an easy job. We could show you what to do. And this has led to, and I admit, when this first happened, I didn't really see what was happening. It took a few years before I saw what was really playing out there. At first I was like, great, more product people under the tent.
It's going to be good. But I realized later, still this is like seven years ago, I realized what was going on was people who had no clue about product were teaching these people what a product owner was. And then more, even more to the case, these people thought they could do the job of product new.
So it was truly the blind leading the blind. And we have that today is a major source of failed product effort. And frankly, these failed transformations.
Melissa Perri: Yeah, wholeheartedly agree. So what's last week when we're recording this, but a couple of weeks ago when this podcast will come out, I had Jeff Patton on. I love talking to Jeff about the history of Agile because he's such a wealth of information. When I started to get into transformations and came into all these Agile transformations that you're talking about, I started to meet all the Agile manifesto signatories and I was asking them about the product owner role and how did that come up?
Because it made no sense to me why we would just take all these subject matter experts, BAs like you're talking about, and make them product owners. The thing that they explained to me and that Jeff talks about in his podcast too is Agile really came in scrum specifically. It really came out of almost of consultants who were working at a bank that were contracting with the bank and trying to figure out how to deliver things better and faster with them, but not go through so many revisions and what's the right role for somebody to give you requirements when you're building off of requirements.
And it amazes me that something built out of that has made it this far and is the thing that we now transform companies into software companies for. Because it's like, no, they were consultants. They weren't internal software teams. They're not Amazon, right? Like this is not how Amazon operates, like you said.
It's completely different than that. And yet that's the standard everybody's taking to learn product management.
Marty Cagan: Yeah, well, I think it's worth talking about. There's another pathology too, but this is a huge one and it is a big problem. Jeff, he's an incredibly modest guy. Oh, completely, yeah.
Melissa Perri: He's one of my favorite people.
Marty Cagan: I've known him for like 20 years, but he's the exception that proves the rule. He was the first and so far only true early agilist that knew anything about product company. Everybody else was doing custom software. They were all doing custom. And in fairness, that was and probably still is the majority of software anyway.
So it's hard to kind of blame them for that. But Jeff was the one guy who knew about product companies, which of course is a very different game. And ironically, it's still agile. First of all, you have to realize agile is all about delivery. It's not about discovery or anything like that. It's about delivery.
It's an discovery or coming up with the backlog is really an exercise left for the reader. They don't go into that. And it's good progress for delivery, whether it's internal or commercial product organizations. It's good. That's not the issue. The issue is a lot of people that have no clue about product leading thousands more that have no clue about products.
So kind of what do you expect? So that's a big problem.
Melissa Perri: Yeah, that has to be one of the biggest issues that I see is that when they go through that transformation, all the product leaders are exactly in the same boat that the product owners were in. They've never done this job before. It's a whole new skill set for them. And I find that some of them are just so scared.
Because it's like you took 20 years of them doing exactly what they knew how to do. And then one day you're like, completely change that. Go lead a group of people around this thing that nobody knows how to do. And there's so much friction there about what great product leadership needs to be to actually level up that organization.
And I see so many people try to transform the teams but not actually transform that leadership area there, too.
Marty Cagan: Yeah, in fact, that's sort of what's funny. The book, Empowered, is really all about what leaders need to do. And I've had sort of two reactions consistently from leaders of the kind of companies we're talking about here. We're talking about companies that have never really done product like you and I know it.
They've been all project-based, all IT-based. And anyway, they usually tell me two things. First of all, oh my gosh, there's so much I need to do. They're overwhelmed by all these things that they now know they need to do and they weren't doing, number one. And number two, they're like, and it's hard.
They realize it's hard. And I'm like, well, OK, you now at least have an appreciation for what's in front of you. But that's right. That's right. It's hard and it's very different. Being a so-called VP product or chief product officer at a feature team organization is nothing like being the head of product at a real product organization.
The job description is completely different. One is about keeping the trains running on time and running a feature factory. The other is about consistent innovation for our customers, for our company. And it's just a night and day different job.
Melissa Perri: Do you see that more organizations, especially large ones, are not necessarily, I know growth stage startups, they're all looking for a chief product officer. But what about the really big companies and in the transformations? Have you seen them hiring more chief product officers? Do you think that's going to be a trend or are they just like, no, we're on the CIO vote?
Marty Cagan: No, no. There's funny. They all know they need to do something. I mean, where do you find a company more, a big company more, that doesn't think they need to do something? And so what they're really doing is they're looking for the easy boxes to check. And I call it rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
There are a whole bunch of things that those organizations do because they can't. They are not willing to address the real issues. But what do they do? Yeah, they decide to make a chief product officer. This is another sort of hot button of mine. They'll often set up a product ops organization just as a way to rearrange the deck chairs.
And they can check that box and say they're cool too. None of these things are addressing what they really need to address. And so I understand why they do it. It's like a temporary bump to their stock price or something, but it's not going to fix the issue.
Melissa Perri: Yeah, it's definitely interesting. You just mentioned product ops too. Is that a, you're seeing them set up bad product ops organizations or are you not a fan of product ops?
Marty Cagan: I'm not a fan of the way most companies that set it up actually do it. Okay. It's ridiculous. And of course I understand. And again, it's got a nice patina to it. But it's really, honestly, the way they're doing it, it's lipstick on a pig.
Melissa Perri: Yeah, yeah.
Marty Cagan: And I also point out to them, I don't know a single great product organization that has one or needs one.
Melissa Perri: Stripe does. Stripe has a product.
Marty Cagan: Stripe has product ops, but not the way it's defined.
Melissa Perri: Yeah, definitely. It's different for sure. I did a lot of interviews with them about how they run theirs and what they're doing. Yeah, I see product ops in larger organizations tends to be more governance. It's like the PMO or just kind of shuffled into a product ops where they just renamed it. There's a lot.
Marty Cagan: Also, a lot of them, because they don't have leaders that know how to coach and develop their people, they try to set up, okay, product ops will do that. Yeah, exactly. They put that anywhere. They don't yet do that. They won't do that. Yeah.
Melissa Perri: So yeah, there's a lot of, that's a whole other discussion. That's also like, I've seen that with the Agile org. They're like, let's pull this Agile org over here and now we'll just call it product ops and we'll have the coaches all live there too, but definitely see that as well.
Melissa Perri: So we've got these leaders in organizations, especially going through transformations, never did product management before. What do organizations need to do to ensure that they're actually making this transition correctly? What would you advise them? Let's say Fortune 500 company about to embark on this product transformation. They probably did some Agile transformation that everybody has at some point now, but what do they need to do to get this right? What would you say is the first thing they should look at to start to really move towards a product org?
Marty Cagan: Well, I was mentioning Leah before. Leah and I wrote an article together called Keys to Successful Transformation. We went through all the companies we know that have tried to transform and there were a small subset that succeeded and we went through those companies and we said, what were the things that they did successfully that the other ones didn't?
And we came up with 10 things that we think were really what made the difference. So if you just Google Keys to Successful Transformation, you'll probably find that, but you will see the first one is the CEO responsibility. You'll also see on there several other important ones, like you got to raise the bar on your product leaders.
You need serious head of product, head of design, head of engineering. You need people that understand this. You also need to understand the role of technology. It's not a cost center. It's an enabler for the business. It's a profit center. And then one of the very explicit ones in there is unless you're willing to raise your bar on the product managers, it's all going to fall apart.
So those are the kinds of things that really need to happen in order for a company to successfully transform. The good news is it does work. It's not like there aren't great success stories out there today. There are. Even for very old companies. My favorite actual successful transformation was this month. 200-year-old company.
This month was their anniversary. That's the guardian in the UK. And they were able to do recently in seven weeks what I frankly don't even think teams at Amazon, Google, they couldn't have done that in seven weeks. And they did it because they had put in place these muscles that they needed to develop.
And they had a near death experience when the internet came and took away all their revenue. So that's what motivated them. They brought in a new board chair, a woman named Judy Givens. She was profiled actually in the book, Empowered. You may have seen that. She's amazing. And she's like, Well, look, we either build the product organization or we die.
It's that simple. And didn't take a lot of money, ironically. It doesn't take, usually takes less than what they were spending before, but it's very different use of funds. And they ended up building a real organization that got the attention of Apple, earned Apple's respect, got a lot of Apple marketing for free, and really changed the course of that company.
And the good news is they are still here.
Melissa Perri: That's fantastic. That's a really good success story. So we need more of those out there. So I'm hoping that some organizations, as they go through this, they'll be more willing to share as well, because I think that's always the hard part about learning about these things, watching the success stories. All right. Thanks so much for being on the podcast, Marty. So if people want to find your book, Empowered, they can buy it on Amazon. Does that work for you?
Marty Cagan: They can buy it anywhere they like.
Melissa Perri: Anywhere they like, just buy the book. Get the book, Empowered. If anybody wants to read more of your articles, I know you write a lot. What's the best place to go?
Marty Cagan: SVPG.com.
Melissa Perri: Great. So thank you so much for being with us. And if you're listening to this podcast and you enjoy it, please go to whatever is your favorite podcast to listen on, podcast platform, and give us a rating and a review. That would be great. We'll see you next time.
Marty Cagan: Thank you, Melissa.
