Skip to content
Sean Horgan
Essays
On Organizational Models & Frameworks
Sean Horgan
Summary
Organizing your product team is a core function for a product leader. Many companies start with the simplest model: the first PM focuses on the first product and new PMs join the team as new products (or product components) are created. That can work when the product portfolio unfolds neatly on market segments with highly cross-functional teams that dynamically adapt practices over time. The reality is that markets evolve in unpredictable ways and teams & practices can grow resistant to change over time.
In this post I lay out some general principles followed by some examples of different organization models and process frameworks that should all be tied together as a coherent system to realize your strategy.
Organizations don’t exist in vacuums — they need to maneuver through the market landscape on their way to their objectives. Before you jump into solutions, you should first understand the environment you are operating in using one of the framework laid out here: .
Principles
References
Org Models
There is no single one-size-fits-all for organizational models which is why I’m connecting organizations & frameworks together. You need to consider the entire system when designing your team and it all starts with your organizations purpose, the ecosystem & market conditions it needs to operate in, and the people you are leading.
Management by Objective
Peter Drucker introduced Management by Objective when he published in 1954. Asana put together a good review in which lays out the 5 key elements:
Key to managing these objectives is setting clear incentives that everyone can see.
Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome
— Charlie Munger
Slime Mold
I first read Alex Komoroske’s while working at Verily back when we were still part of Google. At first I bristled at the dated stereotypes of the military as a top-down organization but it look like Alex has updated the deck with a caveat (slide 14):
In general, I think Alex’s framing gets a lot right and it’s important for to understand where on this spectrum your team needs to be:
Strategic Corporal
The strategic corporal is the notion that leadership in complex, rapidly evolving mission environments devolves lower and lower down the chain of command to better exploit time-critical information into the decision making process, ultimately landing on the corporal, the lowest ranking non-commissioned officer, typically commanding a fire team of 4 individuals or a squad of 12 individuals (three fireteams)
My experience in the Marines confirmed that this is an effective approach for navigating dynamic environments. With that, it requires the following throughout the organization:
A key element here is that your entire organization can move quickly when you can push decisions and execution deep into your teams and away from executive leadership. This quote from General James Mattis connects this back to leadership:
If I were to sum up the leadership techniques I constructed on the basis of the Marine Corps’s bias for action, it would be simple: once I set the tempo, the speed I prized was always built on subordinate initiative. This governing principle drove home the underlying efforts that would make speed a reality. Speed is essential, whether in sports, business, or combat, because time is the least forgiving, least recoverable factor in any competitive situation. I learned to prize smooth execution by cohesive teams (those that could adapt swiftly to battlefield shocks) over deliberate, methodical, and synchronized efforts that I saw squelching subordinate initiative. In fact it was always subordinate initiative that got my lads out of the jams I got them into, my mistakes being my own.”
Squad Model
Eric Kim gets into great details in this post:
Team Topology
is a consultancy based on a 2019 book by Manuel Pais and Matthew Skelton ().
I haven’t read the whole book given the mixed reviews
References
Functional Versus Mission
Andy Grove covered the distinctions between Functional versus Mission-oriented teams in High Output Management.
Functional teams increase leverage, mission-oriented teams increase speed
Process Frameworks
Agile & SAFe
I started my career in traditional waterfall and iterative planning and had a front-row seat to the introduction of the . I initially welcomed it as agile broke teams out of rigid internal practices by providing a flexible set of . Unfortunately an industry of agile practitioners and consultants created new rigid frameworks that they could easily pitch and sell to companies. Where it got off the rails for me was when teams essentially outsourced key elements of their work to distinct new roles like scrum masters which only increased complexity. The most effective teams I’ve worked on did not hire new agile/scrum roles. Instead, the product, eng, ux and solutions teams adopted the principles through our practices as part of their role.
Double Diamond Design
My preferred model for many environments is a user-centered design favorite: the double diamond design.
References
Want to print your doc?
This is not the way.
This is not the way.
Try clicking the ⋯ next to your doc name or using a keyboard shortcut (
CtrlP
) instead.