Why the Right Product Mindset Without Action Is No Better Than the Wrong One

And what to do about it.

Have you ever felt like your beliefs were being held hostage?

I meet plenty of product teams, managers, and even executives who feel this way. You would think that acting in a way aligned with your convictions should be commonplace. But doing right is not a given even if you are thinking right.

This happens in the product space when companies aren’t ready to support what enables great products to emerge. They resist the shift from a predictive to a learning culture.

And it’s a rampant problem.

Contrary culture can get in the way of taking action aligned with product beliefs.

Cultural headwinds can stall action.

A culture that doesn’t favor learning will cause you to hesitate. You likely won’t act in a way supportive of the product mindset. You stall due to several factors.

• Not feeling supported.
• Lack of safety to take risks.
• No courage to try something new.
• Not wanting others to view you as different.

Here’s the interesting bit. When I describe the product mindset, most people nod their heads, “Yes,” the entire time. Achieving the right thing, in the right way, at the right time appears to have universal resonance.

So, I don’t think we have a belief problem. What we have is resistance to acting on our beliefs because of the obstacles (opposing culture) in our way.

If your organization does not encourage change, change won’t happen. Change withers and dies without support.

Here’s a harsh truth. If you don’t or can’t act on your beliefs, you might as well not believe.

A product mindset can’t survive without the ability to act on it.

Think about it. The strength of your beliefs in the enablers of great products doesn’t matter much if you can’t act on them. And you can’t achieve value when your actions work against it (even if you seem to have no choice).

• Slow learning and ignoring your user won’t emerge the right thing.
• Quality indifference guarantees you won’t deliver in the right way.
• Doing too much at once means you won’t arrive at the right time.
  

This is the reality I see in 99% of the organizations I work with. Folks are stuck in a system that squeezes out any chance for acting in alignment with a product mindset. So, they act within the laws and boundaries of the system in which they find themselves.

And often, they’ve lost hope.

Settled. Given up. Checked out.

Their product mindset goes dormant.

Does this sound like you? This isn’t acceptable. It’s time to turn the table.

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4 Simple Steps I’ve Used to Turn Product Mindset Beliefs into Action (by Dismantling Barriers)

I want to help you dissolve the constraints holding your beliefs hostage.

Below are 4 simple steps I’ve used to chip away at barriers blocking me and my teams from acting on our better judgment. This works as well for product teams as it works for individuals. You can steal my guide and apply it starting today.

You don’t have to settle for a pale shadow of what you believe will produce better results. Through your obstacles lies the secret to acting in line with your beliefs.

Ready to shake things up? Let’s go.

Step 1. List out all the things blocking your path.

The first step is the easiest.

Grab some stickies, three different colors if you have them. The colors represent the 3 aspects of a product mindset—right product, right way, and right time.

1. Right Product: You can learn early and often to emerge the right product to build with the least output. You know and engage with your customers and stakeholders. This allows you to empathize and deliver solutions to delight them. You harness the collective wisdom of your team and community to emerge what’s right. Learning is your strategic advantage.
2. Right Way: You adapt behavior in the right way to an ever-changing context. This is a chase of a moving target of perfection. Improving your system of work requires agency, and you have it. Your culture promotes respect for people and promotes high employee and team engagement.
3. Right Time: You can focus on delivering the right thing. You do this sooner, with minimized waste, at the time needed, with high quality. So, you don’t build things unnecessary or not needed now. By taking small steps, one at a time, you emerge and take a non-linear path to your goals sooner.

Now, write any obstacles preventing each category on the appropriate sticky color. These can be constraint, process, authority, capability, or risk (low safety) barriers.

Here are some I’ve had in the past:

• Constraint: We are always given a deadline without our input. And scope and cost are fixed along with it.
• Process: My team has to wait for the review board meeting before deploying a solution to our users.
• Authority: We aren’t allowed to talk to our users. We must go through the user research team.
• Capability: We’ve never engaged with this business area before. We don’t know the domain.
• Risk: We don’t feel comfortable deciding without our manager’s permission.

If you are following along and writing down your barriers, I’m sure it feels great to get all those out and written down. If you aren’t writing them down now, what are you waiting for?

Now that you have your stickies written out, let’s move to step 2.

Step 2: Identify what you can control and what you can’t.

This step sets you up to start breaking through your obstacles.

Draw a grid with pain impact on the vertical axis and control on the horizontal axis. It should look like this:

Now, place your stickies from step 1 onto the grid. Reflect on two things.

1. Your ability to break through the barrier on your own
2. The level of blockage (pain) to the product mindset it presents.

This is your map of actions that will free you to take action on your beliefs.

Excited? Let’s move to step 3 to take action.

Step 3: Make small steps to fix what is in your control.

Taking the first step to remove a constraint is exhilarating.

Pick a high-pain sticky in your ability or authority to fix. Then, rally your team around a game plan to fix it.

1. Define what to do.
2. Determine a game plan.
3. Discuss how you will measure the success of removing the obstacle.

Then, go after it. Once you have achieved the success you targeted, repeat. Continue removing barriers for any other stickies with high-pain and in your control.

Once you’ve exhausted the items in your control, sit back. Bask in the glow of accomplishment and your new freedom.

But don’t wait for long. I’m sure there are plenty of barriers you need help removing that are out of your control. That’s what step 4 is for.

Step 4: Ask for help on the things out of your control.

Big, painful barriers not in your control require the spending of political capital.

Who has this? Your leader will have it. Ask them to take action to make your life easier, so value can flow smoother.

More than likely, your leader will put on a manager hat and ask for a business case for the change.

And guess what? You have evidence from Step 3 of all the benefits you already gained from your obstacle removal. Any benefit you’ve already made to your flow of value will be compelling.

This will help you make the case for more changes and gain your leader’s support.

Like step 3, you should have your leader help remove one obstacle at a time until they are all gone.

At long last, obstacles won’t constrain the product mindset to only live in your mind.

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If you actually believe in the product mindset, you must take action to make it your reality.

Otherwise, your mindset will decay. Your actions counter to your mindset will reshape your beliefs. In the end, you won’t recognize the person staring back at you in the mirror.

The path through your obstacles lets your product mindset gain traction with action. While you may have many barriers scattered in your path, you can make progress. All you have to do is remove one at a time, and eventually, you will start acting in line with your beliefs.

Enough with settling for the way things have always been. Make one step today to a better future, one where your beliefs become realized. Then another. And another.

The result? Before long, you’ll have smiling customers. You’ll have stakeholders counting up the returns. And you’ll have product teams who love their work rather than dread it.

Sounds like a future I can believe in and take action to make happen. How about you?

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