How to create the best conditions for product innovation
Building a team that can sense opportunity and make the right play at the right moment
At the end of the 90s, Apple had its mojo back, the multicolored iMacs were helping to bring an ailing computer brand back to relevance. Steve Jobs, founder and professional lightning rod, was also the CEO and major shareholder at burgeoning animation studio, Pixar. He could see the advent of digital media—it was coming—and Steve, as he so often did, was watching with interest as the planets swung into view, ready for him to seize the moment.
In 1998, a new device from a company called Diamond from Chatsworth, California was released to wide acclaim. The Rio PMP300 was $200 and could hold 30 minutes of music.
A year later two students, Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker launched a new service which took advantage of the growing network effects of the internet, Napster, from their dorm room in Boston, Mass. Music was suddenly shareable.
The conditions were being created for a fundamental shift that would start the eventual transition of all media, Music, Movies, TV, Books and Games from physical, to digital and ultimately to the cloud. The celestial jukebox was born and Steve Jobs wanted in.
Steve, and the folks at Apple, saw all this, and set to work putting their deep expertise in hardware, media and the web together. The iPod was birthed on October 23rd 2001. It could hold 1,000 songs.
What is most fascinating to me about this story, which many of us have heard before, is how the Apple team was able to synthesize the complexity of the moment with masterful magic, see the opportunity and work together with intensity to create a new product in less than a year that would take the potential of the internet to an entirely new level.
Every era has teams like this that have somehow seized the moment. Whether it be Manchester United in 1999, the iPod team in 2001 or the team somewhere in the world that right now, is working on a vaccine that will hopefully change the course of our lives.
In this unprecedented era (etc, I know), we’re all learning how to lead in a diffracted workspace, remotely and in some cases working to hold our teams together. But what we really want to do is ensure that we don’t just hold our team together, but we’re creating the conditions to innovate.
So how do we get match-fit so we’re ready to move? How do we set ourselves up to seize the moments when we encounter them?
As a product leader the job is similar to being a CEO of the product. The role requires you to absorb the ambiguity of the moment, and to parse that into clear, actionable stewardship for your team. I wrote about this in a previous post.
But you also have to set the team up to create the conditions to seize the right moment to see new unforeseen spaces, to engage with new markets or to pursue opportunities when the timing is as perfect as it can be—which for some technology teams, is now.
Here is what I’ve learned about the teams that are able to make significant step shifts and see things that others can’t:
The team is organized into a small focal areas. I’ve seen big companies diversify their businesses massively, and this means they spread bet across multiple revenue streams or products which reduce the risk. But the best teams, big or small, contain squads that are tightly organized around a single product. Teams that avoid getting lost in executive pet projects thrive far better, do your best to help them manage that.
The team is constantly watching, and using healthy discourse to ‘detect’ when the time is right to be a leader or a fast-follower. It’s not always essential to be first. But following can be capital intensive. In the last 20 years, I’ve rarely seen Apple (for example) be first to market. They’ve followed with superior execution in almost every product area.
The team is empowered with enough autonomy to use their expertise. The leadership of the organization understands that strategy and vision help the team execute, processes ensure they move at pace, but between the two is deep expertise that is trusted by everyone around them.
The team is made up of the right capabilities, with diverse experience. Every innovative team has capabilities that they are able to bring to bear on the challenges in the space they occupy. This means diverse skills, neurodiversity and life experiences that have been carefully curated by a visionary leader.
The team has access to the right resources. They have the cashflow and the people they need to move when they need to, not when they are given permission.
The team can see the forces, and are poised to strike. Innovative teams can spot the ball mid-air and strike it at the right moment. They can see ‘value denials’ which shift as technologies, society and culture shifts and work to exploit them to the advantage of their customers.
The team can recognize their biases and are self-aware. With great feedback and a healthy diverse team that is prepared to challenge the status quo, you build the power in the team to be more innovative. I’ve written another post on what makes a great product leader, there’s more of this there.
How to ensure you have a team that can model this, is the tricky part. As a leader you are constantly pulled in one direction or another and challenged by the needs of the business, revenue or another leader who has a pet project.
It’s essential to revisit the things that you are focused on periodically. Notice here I am not talking about the strategic planning process—why? I believe those two words contradict each other. Strategy in its essence is what frees up a team to create a competitive advantage, Planning is what constricts a team to deliver it. In my opinion these two processes should be separate—free up your team from the roadmap any more than it is necessary to provide visibility of the features you will build next, but be mindful of who it is serving.
Great innovative teams move with freedom, flow, pace and creative thinking to be able to tackle new problems head-on when the time is right. As a product leader, your job is to create the conditions to make that possible.
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In the spirit of learning I love to read comments, builds and things that will make these more useful—and would love to hear from you, feel free to drop comments below, or get in touch. Unlike other crap DJs I also take requests for what to spin next.
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Thanks this week to @jonaswoost for the feedback which made this one better.
Legend has it, as a band leader, Miles Davis operated the same way in recording sessions... chose the right players, articulated the vision and strategy, then gave the cats freedom to be the diverse and on-time experts they were. No lack of great players out there – it’s always the communication, curation and environment creation for them to excel in. Thanks for the reminder!