Product Lines
If your product org is overly flat and communication is breaking down, grouping teams into product lines can help.
Charging a modest amount seemed like a good "Lean Startup" style test. (The paid membership does include a free copy of my facilitation book, Remotely Productive, which spoils the science part a bit...)
To those of you who bought a paid membership, thanks! And for those of you who aren't quite ready, don't worry - I'll keep sending at least one free play each month. Like this one on org design.
This structure seemed so normal to me I wasn't sure it needed a play - it's the most common way most product teams scale their org design. And then I encountered a company determined to keep things as flat as possible for as long as possible. So I thought it might be helpful to clarify why we scale in this way.
Context
The team has grown beyond 7-8 product managers. Communication is beginning to break down. PMs are waiting for decisions and information is not reaching them. You are beginning to miss 1:1s due to conflicting meetings you don't feel you can decline. Perhaps you know that one PM is struggling and you don't have time to coach them out of it.
Discussion
Leading product managers is a multi-part task. I've previously written about the five impossible jobs of a product manager: driving strategy, creating a steering system, 'the core', measuring results, steering and pivoting.
When you're leading PMs you take on all of these, plus you add the elements of people management: hiring, coaching, training and development, and performance management.
Put simply, it's hard to stay on top of all of this as the team gets bigger. Obviously the people management work scales linearly with each additional PM. But the rest of the work also becomes trickier - with bigger teams, driving strategy and roadmap simply takes more time because more people need to be brought on board; measuring results takes more time because more PMs need guidance on this.
And the more you are engaged with these tactical activities, the less time you have to observe the whole and reflect and note the moments when you need to steer and pivot.
At one time I had 15 direct reports. With biweekly 1:1s, I was spending 6-7 hours per week simply to check in, and the amount of context switching was not sustainable. I was not able to provide high-quality support for the PMs, and the tactical overload reduced the quality of my strategic work as well.
In his book, Wholehearted, Mike Burrows talks about how every organization has a finite capacity for decision-making and communication. Yet most companies don't acknowledge and optimize for this. Mike would not suggest creating a hierarchy as the only solution for this problem. But acknowledging that you as a leader have finite communication capacity means you need some systematic approach to getting and sharing the right information at the right times. And org design is part of that.
Play
Organize the product organization into Product Lines, or Product Areas. Each Product Line consists of 2-5 teams led by a similar number of product managers. Appoint a Product Director or Product Line Manager to lead each area.
When you have these new leadership roles, each Director can:
- take over the 1:1 management and mentoring of a manageable number of PMs. As they take time to work with each person every week, they can create more consistent PM performance and increase speed
- contribute to strategic work. Having a small number of experienced product leaders makes development of KPIs, OKRs, strategy, and roadmap much easier
- cover Sales and strategic activities, so that you don't have to be the lead on building decks and covering executive needs
- help with the steering system - organizing their PMs in preparation for planning and making sure they set targets and measure results.
Cautions and Caveats
When you move to this org structure, you're also potentially creating a new team of senior product leaders, alongside of the overall product team. This adds to your responsibilities as the head of product because now you need to make sure the senior leaders are working together.
Daily team leadership becomes a crucial capacity for you as a leader. You have to think about how these product developers will develop high trust for each other. This takes real time out of your week. But since you're now down to 4-5 direct reports, you've freed up a lot of your time.
If the incentives are wrong, the different product areas end up playing the game of Risk - that is, competing with each other for resources. One play that helps here is a monthly roadmap sync (play to be written 😸). It's critical that the overall product org have a clear shared mission and task to align around. Otherwise they'll optimize for their own areas and battle with each other.
You might not have funding for promotions or hiring. Adding a new layer to the organization can be a political problem to solve. Consider soft promotions (play to be written 😸) while you work this out.