Why Most Leadership Training Is Not Effective for Product Companies
Leadership has emerged recently as a critically important element of business. This is peculiar because leadership has always been a critically important element of business, but leaders became distracted by things like the Agile movement, and before that Lean Six-Sigma, and a number of other fads. Now we are back to leadership. We have come full circle.
Today’s products are more complex, and that requires particular kinds of leadership.
That means that organizations need to prepare their leaders, by giving them ways to improve their leadership skills, through training, coaching, and mentorship. Unfortunately, most of today’s leadership programs are biased by what was viewed as important in leadership circles a decade ago, but things have changed. Most leadership programs focus on,
Inspiration
Listening
Empowerment
Growth
The People side of things
These are extremely important things. So leadership programs about these are not bad. But they are deficient. What has changed is that things move more quickly today. And products are more complex. The ways that products are made is vastly more complex as well – the result of digitalization of development and manufacturing. Time to market is also more urgent than it used to be, and changes to products must happen more quickly. In other words, agility is needed now more than ever, even though so-called Agile methods did not help much in that. But that’s another story.
Leadership has returned as a central issue to focus on. We have come full circle.
An important consideration is that product companies are very different from other kinds of organizations. By “product company”, I mean any organization that makes something that generates value. That definition is a lot more expansive than what you might think of as a “product company”. And today, most product companies are heavy users of technology. If you are a small company that makes furniture by hand, then you are out of scope of this article. I am talking about product companies that make things using digital methods, which is the norm today for most large organizations.
Time to market is more important today than it used to be – a lot more important. And speed requires particular leadership traits.
The ways that digital product companies are different from other organizations are that,
Most of the issues that arise in business are inseparable from technology, and the issues tend to be complex and span multiple aspects and areas.
Speed – time to market – is really important.
Risk tolerance must be high, because products must be differentiated from competitors, and that requires taking risks.
Decisions are often wrong, and so decision-making must be experiment-based: one must be ready to change things quickly and get those changes in place.
What kinds of leadership are needed today in product companies to meet these demands? Here are some, based on our examination of some of the fastest moving and effective companies:
6. Excellent insight about the market.
7. Interest in all aspects of things – not an intellectual silo; learning mindset instead of fixed mindset.
8. Identify issues, as soon as they arise.
9. Generate effective discussions.
10. Know who to pull into a discussion.
11. Decisiveness, but with a mind toward experimenting.
12. Outcome-focused, and ready to pivot – do not care about being wrong.
13. Set high expectations, that people will behave in these ways.
14. Advocate, evangelize, intervene.
Number 6 is what we think of when we think of Steve Jobs: the visionary person. Vision is especially important in consumer markets, where product purchases are often driven by emotion. But vision is also very valuable for business-to-business too, if the vision pertains to how to solve a business customer’s problem in a novel way.
To move fast, today’s leaders need to be a lot more effective day-to-day. And they need to think both long-term and short term.
Leadership traits 7 through 14 have to do with how someone operates within the organization. They are about internal leadership and decision-making – what Peter Drucker used to call the “person of action”. This was always important, but things have changed. Products are more complex. Things move faster – there is no time for committees that let decisions drag on, or slow review processes. Instead, effective fast-moving leadership relies on a set of behaviors, and those behaviors are not taught in most leadership training.
(By the way, if you spend your days in meetings, you cannot be effective. Effective fast-moving leaders get out of their office. They get involved in the day-to-day. We can show you how to fix the full-calendar problem.)
Again, leadership traits 1-5 are very important, but they are insufficient. Today, to move fast, leaders need to be a lot more effective day-to-day. They need to think both long-term and short term. They need to know when a decision is needed, and not wait for processes. They need to discuss and act, while also listening. They need to empower, but they also need to know when to take the reins. These are all judgment calls, and that is why a lot of training, coaching, mentorship, and experience are needed to refine these skills.
Leadership today is more difficult than it was ten years ago. But in a sense it is the same: leaders who had these skills ten years ago benefited from them. But today, these skills are even more crucial.
In a sequel to this article, I illustrate my point by sharing the curriculum of a widely acclaimed leadership program at a major university. Click here →
