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Transforming a B2B services business model to a more scalable, profitable, productized company can have many points of failure - but the biggest and most underserved is the cultural transformation required to support successful productization. The encore book from Eisha Armstrong and her team at Vecteris, Fearless tackles this frequent point of failure and dives deep on the change management required to build a Product-Friendly Culture.

Building on the insights presented in Productize, Fearless details how shifting a business model from services to products requires a profound, fearless cultural transformation; the book is uniquely focused on B2B services organizations and the complex challenges that come with productizing a culture that delivers highly customized services.

The authors have seen firsthand the significant organizational change required, and from those experiences they describe the hallmarks of success and drivers of failure. They share stories from services organizations who have made this transformation and use their insights to provide a clear roadmap for B2B services firms hoping to successfully productize. Fearless

The steps required to design a compelling vision for your productization strategyMethods to attract and retain digital product talent in an increasingly competitive marketplaceHow to determine the right organizational structures and operating models to support ongoing product innovation and managementThe tools, exercises, and resources to help bring the concepts to lifeAbove all, Fearless provides readers with actionable steps to building a fearless product mindset in the organization for sustainable, scalable growth.

Takeaways

Introduction

  • The four hallmarks of a product friendly culture are:
    • discovery
    • speed
    • abundance thinking
    • collaboration
  • The vision statement should include both a big picture vision of how the product will positively impact customers lives, as well as a strong business case to help justify investments
  • Product leaders related stories of how successful productization strategies hinge up on creating an organizational structure that I’m only facilitated the efficient integration of products into the existing business, but also cultivated product friendly behaviors
  • Governance is key for building, discipline and accountability. Governance includes formalize processes for regular, reviewing the product portfolio, making executive decisions, determining the direction of the product, roadmap some identifying which products to Sunset.
  • You should expect turnover sometimes a lot of turnover. Talent is one of the biggest challenges.
  • Performance measures incentives, assessments, training, operational freedom, promoting and rewarding product friendly behaviors.
  • You cannot have culture change without changing the organizational systems and capabilities that support culture

    Four different flavors of product position

    1. Custom services are human resource intensive and delivered differently for each client
    2. Productized services will require people to deliver but fewer people than are needed for customer services because the service delivery is standardized, often predefined packages that can be
    3. Products or off-the-shelf solutions purchased at one point in time such as a course or data
    4. Products-as-a-service take a product offering and keep the service on-going for a subscription fee. Model cycle software the service data as a service in learning as a service.

      Chapter 1

  • 18 months of progress lost because consultants didn’t buy into the organizations new product strategy. They lacked:
    • Collaboration
    • a test and learn mindset
    • urgency
  • A product from the organization is not product lead or product centric, but accommodating to both services and product
  • Most service organizations, create value for clients because they have expertise and knowledge that their clients do not. It’s cut you off from to other critical postures like curiosity about the unknown and admitting you were wrong.
  • Perfectionism takes too long to release a new product which loses money and allows your competitors to surpass you. Standards are too high. Everything has to be written down in minute detail defined. You cannot function in this way with a product company.
  • Scarcity thinking, can torpedo a productization strategy rather than noticing opportunity. All you see is the potential for loss which amplifies fear. To productize you must be willing to take risks and not focus only on protecting yourself and possible threats.
  • The heroes and sales are often the ones who can land huge deals to land. Those whales organizations often end up hitting over backwards for services organization. This approach is risky, but an organizations looking to productize it is deadly, unless the organization is very deliberate about protecting the product development teams from serving just as one or a few very large customers they will not be able to innovate to capture a broader customer base.
  • For specific behaviors that product from the culture she used to describe discovery
    • You ask questions and you bring ideas
    • You are extraordinarily candid with each other
    • You practice blameless, problem-solving
    • You’re empowered to question all aspects of the business, and adjust to new ways to create value for customers

      Ship what is ready not what is perfect

  • Specific behaviors for product from the cultures to describe speed include
    • You learn rapidly and eagerly
    • You make wise decisions despite ambiguity
    • You make tough decisions without agonizing or long delays
  • Specific behaviors of the product for friendly cultures, used to describe abundance:
    • You are tenacious and optimistic
    • You see patterns and connections, that other people miss
    • You enjoy working on things bigger than yourself
    • You work to energize and inspire others
    • You are flexible and adaptable
  • Collaboration is not gathering buy-in, collaboration is not randomly socializing.
  • An idea collaboration is strategically integrating voices who will meaningfully contribute to the decisions around product development.
  • Specific behaviors, the product, friendly cultures, used to describe collaboration
    • You genuinely seek alternate perspectives to improve your ideas
    • You share information, Bradley openly and deliberately
    • You are humble and open minded about others. Great ideas.
    • You were excited to help build, diverse teams, where everyone feels welcome and respected

      Chapter 2

  • Listen to intuition by quieting your mind
  • Expect less than perfect
  • Ask for help
  • Practice gratitude

Build your experimentation muscles. Micro experiments are small costing little time and money fast yield results quickly, crucial tell us most important amount of information with the least amount of effort.

Asking for help

  1. Be prepared with requests
  2. Make precise requests
  3. Offer help when asked
  4. Create relationships that are deliberately designed to help gratitude reveals existing abundance of skills resources and time

    Gratitude makes us better learners

    • Schedule gratitude
    • Make a daily list of three or more good things
    • Say thank you

      Chapter 3

    • We will change the way [target customer segment] solves [urgent and expensive customer problem] through the development of [tech-enabled/standardized products or services or solutions]. We will [overarching business goal] by [reaching specific targets].
    • Participation without a vision of what why and how you want to achieve can be extremely painful
    • Ideally, the why is grounded in customer needs
    • The vision is necessary for both making savvy business decisions, and facilitating change
    • why are you were pursuing the goal to give the impact on customers or employees. Your purpose.
    • Where you want your product is ation efforts to leave you
    • What you will do and for whom to get there

Example:

  • we will change the hospitals and healthcare systems, make real estate decisions by developing new data products to offer alongside our design services. We will grow revenue and improve margins by selling 20 million of data products and 40% net margin in the next three years.
  • Compelling product vision statements, contain a why
  • Compelling visions have business case goals
  • Organically launched 2 to 3 tech and Abel products in the next four years earning 5 million in gross revenue

    Chapter 4

  • Redesigning organizational structure to support both new product development and management of existing product is not easy. making changes to organizational structures in decision making processes increases fear. Fear brings disruption to daily workflows, operations, reporting lines, and job descriptions.
  • before creating an organizational structure, you need a well articulated vision, and the goals for the practice action strategy without these the organizational structure will fail.
  • Key functions include product management, product development, customer success, product, marketing sales, support, product review
  • you cannot have world class products without world class product managers

    Product Management

  • market research
  • customer research
  • competitive analysis
  • requirements documentation
  • product development trade-offs
  • positioning and pricing
  • sales enablement
  • oversee day-to-day operations of an existing product to ensure smooth operation and customer user
  • P&L ownership of products

    Product Development

  • Responsible for transforming ideas and requirements from product management into workable prototypes and final designs
  • Collect key data to validate / support product design and build decisions
  • Responsible for product quality, ease of product scale, and development velocity
  • Entirely outsourced in early stages

    Customer success

  • Onboarding new clients
  • Supporting customers using the product
  • Communicating clients needs back to product management
  • Falls under existing services early on

    Product Marketing

  • Develops marketing strategy for the product and executes the plan
  • Helps / support defining customer targeting, content, messaging, and market research
  • Tightly aligned with product management

    Sales Support & Enablement

  • Provides product expertise during sales process and
  • Support product sales enablement through product demos and advising on product configuration proposals

    Organizations structure should allow for:

  • Fast decision-making
  • Balance among tech, business, and design
  • Clear roles and responsibilities
  • Fast learning among people with similar roles
  • Focused goals

    When choosing org structure, consider:

  • Alignment to organizational goals
  • Minimize risk
  • Clear authority
  • Deliver value
  • Maintain positive culture

    Chapter 5

    Product governance can lead to better business outcomes and foster a product friendly culture

    1. Accountable Individual: only 1 personal accountable in a product vertical. Typically the Head of Product
    2. Responsible person(s) in charge of action and implementation
    3. Consulted person(s) included in final decision
    4. Informed person(s) need to be informed during the process and after a decision

Pg. 143: RACI example The most common tool for product governance is a product review meeting focused on reviewing performance, evaluating ideas, and making informed decisions. Typically done every quarter.

Chapter 6

  • “If you can’t execute your product vision, find someone who can or don’t do it. Don’t try to productize unless you have the talent to do so”
  • Covers key roles mentioned previously like Head of Product, Product Managers, Product Owners, Product Marketing managers, and Solution designers.
  • The chapter goes on to describe skill assessment and personality traits required for these roles.
  • The chapter was limited on changes to existing services talent or leadership roles.

    Chapter 7

  • Incentives are important. Incentivizing behaviors and performance is key.
  • Discovery behavior examples:
    • 6 research insights per quarter
    • 8 customer problems per quarter
    • 3 product opportunities per quarter
  • Consider the speed of learning and realize incentivizing one behavior may disincentivize others. Be intentional about incentives and disincentives.
  • Use various incentive types: social, moral, and monetary
  • Operational freedom is important for a product-friendly culture. Using controls like tight completion dates, tight financial controls, and rigid process can prevent innovation.

    Chapter 8

    Models of change

    1. Hire Pacesetters: Can help you move fast, but also get rejected by the company because of their pace.
    2. Separate Organization: Limits change management, but can make using current sales channel harder and overall approach more expensive.
    3. Create a movement: Invites everyone into the change, but takes A LOT OF TIME and puts company at risk. Senior leadership can undermine the movement.