Unlocking the formula for a high performance digital product team, London July 2015
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Unlocking the formula. Katie Buchanan & Mark Wilson WF Talks - Unlocking the formula for a high performance digital product team
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Transcript of Unlocking the formula for a high performance digital product team, London July 2015
Unlocking the formula. Katie Buchanan & Mark Wilson
WF Talks - Unlocking the formula for a high performance digital product team
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“Innovation remains a frustrating pursuit. Failure rates are high and even successful companies can’t sustain their performance.
“The root cause is that companies fall into the trap of adopting whatever best practices are in vogue or aping the exemplar innovation of the moment.” Gary P Pisano, Harvard Business Review, June 2015
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Unlocking the formula for sustainable digital product excellence is the defining challenge of the age for established organisations.
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Most organisations have accepted the central role that digital services play, and how critical their digital product experience is to their future success…
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… so they have aggressively built digital teams to deliver on their digital agenda.
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Sounds great – and extremely sensible… it’s just proving quite tricky to make it all work.
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Why is embedding digital capability in an established organisation so difficult?
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Established org’sORGANISATIONAL TRAITS
Volume of productsScaleReputationHeritage/legacyDigital leadership skillsMARKET CONTEXT
Disruptive threatsCommercial riskCustomer expectationsTrend fragility
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So the trick is to behave more like startups, surely?
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Startups? They have it easy…
ORGANISATIONAL TRAITS
Volume of productsScaleReputationHeritage/legacyDigital leadership skillsMARKET CONTEXT
Disruptive threatsCommercial riskCustomer expectationsTrend fragility
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Established org’s
Established org’sStartupsORGANISATIONAL TRAITS
Volume of productsScaleReputationHeritage/legacyDigital leadership skillsMARKET CONTEXT
Disruptive threatsCommercial riskCustomer expectationsTrend fragility
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What operational models have organisations tried to solve this problem?
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CentralisedBuild a design team at the centre of your organisation.
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Centralised but dispersedPlace designer(s) in each product group.
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Separate innovation labBuild a lab separated from core day-to-day business.
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…and hope that lessons are absorbed back by those watching.
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Partnership modelPartner with specialist agencies, often to help either with the early thinking/ strategy or to enhance design capacity.
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?
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So what’s the answer? What’s the formula?
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The answer is easy: do whatever it takes to deliver world-class products and services to customers.
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The formula is more complex…each is unique, based on a mix of proven ingredients and organisational DNA.
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But one thing’s for sure: the right formula for any established organisation is never pre-packaged or off-the-shelf.
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Some lessons learned…
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Don’t set disruption as an objective. Do set real-world, pragmatic objectives.
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Don’t do your learning and experimenting in public, but do learn and experiment.
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Do invest heavily in the discipline of product management: don’t outsource product responsibility.
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Do give design a seat on the Board, but don’t expect to be Apple overnight.
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Don’t design an MVP. Do design a vision, then define an MVP.
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Do create an MVP. Don’t create an MP.
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The biggest risks are at the beginning: so do invest most in specialist partners early on.
Thank you Good luck with your formula.
Mark Wilson, Founding Partner, [email protected] Katie Buchanan, Partner, [email protected]
@Wilsonfletcher #WF Talks
