The Complex Boundary Between Product & Engineering Leadership

In too many organizations, the product and engineering teams operate in an adversarial, dysfunctional way. Great products never result from this setup. In this episode, Richard and Peter share the antidote to such a situation, clarifying where to draw the line on specific responsibilities for product leaders and engineering, and where (and how) to collaborate effectively. It’s a complex boundary, with lots of trade-offs, but great organizations constantly improve how they navigate those in service of their vision and strategy. Read More

Can’t fix it? Make it more visible

It can be frustrating to find yourself in a situation where you see a problem but don’t have the power to fix—and the people who do have the power don’t seem to care. In this episode, we expand on the advice we often give our clients, “If you can’t fix it, make it more visible,” and we show how you can use that approach to influence a solution when you don’t have authority to just fix things. Read More

How We Dealt with Resistance to Change

In a case of “drinking our own champagne,” we applied the tools we teach for dealing with resistance to change to a real conflict on our team. Peter wanted to make a big change to our WordPress theme. Richard had some strong resistance to that change. Something had to give. Listen in to see how we used that resistance as a resource to come up with a breakthrough solution. Read More

Do Product Owners Do Strategy?

Is strategy part of the Product Owner role? Not just in theory, but in the real world? We interviewed POs to find out how strategy shows up in their responsibilities. In this episode, we share what we learned and what we recommend to our clients when it comes to POs and product strategy. Read More

Using Vision as a Filter

In a recent Humanizing Work Show episode, How to Craft A Vision Statement That’s Not Just Corporate Speak, we talked about the… Read More

Teams Need a Shared Purpose

A team is a relatively small, clearly defined group of people who work together towards a shared purpose. In practice, many groups that people call… Read More

How to Communicate Strategy with the Strategy Steps Canvas

In this episode, we’ll share how strategy connects with mission and vision, and how to communicate the key aspects of your strategy using our Strategy Steps Canvas. We use Tesla’s 2006 strategy as a real-world example, demonstrating how the strategy steps approach connects concrete outcomes to long term impact. Tune in to see how you can use our canvas to simplify and effectively communicate your strategic plans. Read More