Instructions
This diagnostic tool is designed to enable you, your team, and your entire organization, to make regular, incremental improvements to the way you work, the way you lead, and the way you design, test, and deliver products to customers. Following these best practices, diagnosing yourself in each topic area, and setting a few goals for improvement should enable you to move toward becoming a more mindful product company. How to Get Started If you just want to jump in on your own... Choose a topic from the left menu, and start browsing through our best practices. Any time you feel ready, start a diagnostic test for that particular practice. Answer a few questions, and compare your score against others. You can also share the diagnostic with colleagues. Create a few measurable goals for each best practice to help you improve your score in that area. And, of course, if you need help from Startup Patterns along the way, there is a button to book a free consultation with someone from our team. If you want more details on how we designed this tool, and why we it is the way it is, read on... What is a Mindful Product Company? A product company is an organization where the business model (the way the company organizes its people, process, and technology to produce something of value that it can sell to customers) depends entirely on the successful development and sale of products. And in this context that will usually mean digital products, though many of the concepts within are applicable to building any technology product. A product company is distinct from companies that sell services. And it is distinct from sales-led companies. For sales-led companies, while it is critical that salespeople have products to sell, the development of those products is not as important to the strategy as the sales process used to sell those products. Sales-led and product-led companies end up looking quite different in how they plan and prioritize work, and recruit and train their people, and build their products. This diagnostic is for those who are currently running, working in a position of leadership within, or want to build product companies. To be mindful is to reserve a certain amount of mental energy at all times in order to remain aware of one's thoughts, feelings, and opinions, as well as those of the people around us, while we are engaged in any particular activity. To be successful at something, at anything, you need to be mindful while you are doing it. And that certainly goes for building companies, product companies or otherwise. This, diagnostic (and the book it is based on) is for anyone who is involved in such endeavors, including startup CEOs and the senior leaders of tech companies, investors and board members, engineers, product managers, and designers, sales and marketing people, and anyone else whose job contributes to, and depends upon, the commercial success of a product company. Why Mindful Product Companies? The stakes are too high to play it safe anymore. We now live in a world that is undergoing profound transformation. One quarter into the twenty-first century, everything seems to be in flux. In the 25 or so years since the first Internet boom, nearly every facet of our lives has been impacted by technology. The Internet has upended shopping, banking, healthcare, transportation, energy, security and policing, dating, parenting, agriculture, eating out and eating in, entertainment, creating and distributing art and music, fitness, insurance, and even fighting fires and fighting wars. And now, we're faced with possibly the biggest shift of them all, as artificial intelligence and machine learning promise to accelerate that pace of innovation that was already quite dizzying to most observers. In this context, debates about the nuances of technology product development seem painfully small, almost embarrassingly so. Do we prefer Scrum or Kanban? Is SAFe a viable process model for enterprise Agile, or the root of all evil? Is it better to start with a huge product vision from the outset, or iterate our way from a vague notion of customer need to an emergent product that surfaces over time? The answers to these and other ideological wars waged by people in our field may seem trite in comparison to the ravages of climate change. But they aren't entirely unrelated. In truth, while the debates that are waged on social media between product managers, engineers, Agile coaches, business leaders, and sales gurus about one framework or another may seem esoteric, they actually do matter. Insofar as choices we make about how we work together to build products for our customers are based ultimately on our values and principles, the methods we choose will both reflect and amplify those values and principles beyond our immediate concerns. The effects will be felt by others on our team, throughout our entire organization, and in fact by everyone who comes into contact with the objects of our art.
Product Discovery
In the Product Discovery dimension, we assess how effectively your organization identifies and understands customer needs and market opportunities. This includes evaluating your processes for market research, user feedback, and idea generation. A strong discovery capability ensures that your product development is driven by real customer insights and market demands, leading to more successful and innovative outcomes. No company survives for very long without making a profit. That statement may seem blindingly obvious, but it is still very common for companies to churn through large sums of cash while never turning a profit. This can be true as much for newly minted startups as for innovation efforts at sprawling enterprises. If there is enough belief and fiscal backing behind an idea, it can be propelled for a very long time without ever emerging as a viable, scalable business. Many tech company founders still start out with a technical solution, some new app, widget, or gizmo, and then start searching for a target market that might be willing to pay for such a solution. But that is backwards! It was the typical approach of R&D departments of big firms during the 20th century. But this approach has a very limited success record. A few big examples happened to be world changing, and so their stories persist in the mythology of entrepreneurship. But overall, most startups will not succeed by starting a given solution and then looking for a customer to buy it. This was the big lesson in the aftermath of the dot com boom of the early 2000s. Here is what we now know. First, you must identify a painful problem that customers are willing to pay to have solved for them. Then, you must develop a solution to address this problem that is cost effective. If the solution satisfies the customer, even temporarily, there's a higher chance of retaining them as a customer through repeated use or purchases. Additionally, satisfied customers are more likely to refer others through word-of-mouth and other methods. The target customer segment must be clearly differentiated. It must be possible to identify target customers easily, so that you can find them in the market and sell the product or service to them. Start with as narrow a niche market as possible. If your target customer is "everyone", you are unlikely to make much progress. If your target customer is extremely specific, there are likely to be very specific problems they have that not many products or services are already addressing. It is easier to build something quickly to address those problems, even if the initial niche is small. Once you have established a beachhead in this niche, you can then invest in expanding to neighboring niches. It's a lot harder to start with a broad and undifferentiated market for two reasons. If your product is trying to solve too many problems for too many people buyers are less likely to be convinced of its quality. And there will be a lot more competition in a broader market. That will make it more difficult to differentiate your product or service from myriad alternatives. Most entrepreneurs start validating their idea by sharing it with people they know because they are nervous about getting brutally honest feedback from strangers. There are many people who do not suffer the pain that the product or service addresses. These often include your parents, as well as other friends and family. Your mom is only ever going to say nice things about your product or service, and is therefore not a very reliable source of market data. For real validation, the product must be tested with people who actually have the problem it claims to solve, and who have no emotional constraints around giving clear and direct feedback on how well it does the job it claims to do. Finally, the target market must be big enough to enable long term growth, and it must be accessible to our company's sales and marketing efforts. This statement seems to contradict the above advice of starting with a small niche. But that apparent contradiction is an illusion. You should start testing your idea with a tightly narrowed focus on a specific niche in the market. But you must also have a long term vision for a broader offering. If you are successful in a small initial niche, you will ultimately run out of customers. So you do need to be thinking about broader applications of your product or service even as you limit your initial testing to a smaller segment. This balance between long-term and short-term planning is one of the toughest aspects of building a business. References Ayal, N. (2014) 'Hooked'. Bland, D.J. and Osterwalder, A. (2019) 'Testing Business Ideas'. Blank, S. (2012) 'The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company'. Blogsnes, B. (2008) 'Implementing Beyond Budgeting: Unlocking the Performance Potential'. Constable, G., Rimalovski, F., and Fishburne, T. (2014) 'Talking to Humans'. Croll, A. and Yoskovitz, B. (2013) 'Lean Analytics'. Gothelf, J. and Seiden, J. (2021) 'Lean UX: Third Edition‘. Hubbard, D.W. (2010) 'How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of "Intangibles" in Business'. Maurya, A. (2012) 'Running Lean'. Perri, M. (2018) 'The Build Trap'. Ries, E. (2011) 'The Lean Startup'. Seiden, J. (2019) 'Outcomes Over Outputs'. Torres, T. (2021) 'Continuous Discovery Habits'. Weinberg, G. and Mares, J. (2015) 'Traction'.
Delivery
The Delivery dimension focuses on your organization's ability to efficiently and reliably bring products and services to market. This includes evaluating your project management practices, development processes, and ability to meet deadlines. Effective delivery ensures that your team can turn ideas into reality swiftly and with high quality, maintaining customer satisfaction and competitive advantage. Product Discovery and Product Delivery are not distinct phases, where one ends cleanly before the other begins. Rather, when done right, Product Delivery begins almost immediately as soon as Product Discovery requires experimenting with any particular solution in order to validate customer demand. High-performing teams able to execute both discovery and delivery equally well. But I have isolated the delivery concepts here for ease of analysis and understanding. While this diagnostic is not strictly about Agile software development, much of this chapter is based on concepts and practices from Agile, and is geared towards a typical team producing digital products and services. However, there are a great many ideas in this chapter that could just as well apply to any product development team. Indeed, several key Agile concepts originate from Lean manufacturing and other earlier industrial disciplines. References Anderson, D.J. (2010) 'The Kanban Book'. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990) 'Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience'. DeGrandis, D. (2017) 'Making Work Visible: Exposing Time Theft to Optimize Work & Flow'. Goldratt, E.M. (1984) 'The Goal'. Kersten, M. (2018) 'Project to Product'. O'Reilly, B., Molesky, J., and Humble, J. (2014) 'Lean Enterprise: How High Performance Organizations Innovate at Scale'. Reinertsen, D.G. (2009) 'The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development'.
Organization
The Organization dimension examines the structure and alignment of your teams and processes. This involves assessing how well your organizational design supports collaboration, communication, and the achievement of strategic goals. A well-organized company facilitates smoother workflows, clearer roles and responsibilities, and a more agile response to change. Most companies start with product discovery and delivery well before they have grown large enough to notice that organization issues have emerged. The truth is, however, that they do emerge relatively quickly, and it is important to get ahead of them as quickly as possible once the company has validated that it has discovered a customer need, can build a solution that satisfies that need, and starts to really grow. Wait too long, and these dimensions can create real serious problems that are difficult to overcome later. This chapter encapsulates what I think are the five key dimensions in a healthy organization structure. The first two, vision and strategy, are likely familiar to you, though you may not have as clear a sense of what these really mean as you should. The third dimension, Objectives & Key Results (ORKs), is also likely something you are either already doing, well or badly, or at least something you have heard of. There is a lot already written on OKRs and I won't add much more than a general overview to the conversation. I will, however, include references for your further reading. The remaining two dimensions of healthy organizations are talked about far less than they should be. The fourth, organization structure, deals with the both the organization chart, usually shorthand for exactly who in the company reports to whom, as well as the way in which teams are structured. These do not have to be the same, and there are many advantages to making them explicitly different. The fifth and final dimension, sustainable workloads, is overlooked by all but the most enlightened and advanced organizations. Companies have a potentially infinite amount of work. But when teams feel as though the total amount of work is consistently beyond their capacity, their morale flags and their performance suffers. You can do a lot of good for your company by taking the time to measure and socialize your capacity to do work as a whole organization, and then set expectations around that capacity. References Deming, W.E. (1982) 'Out of the Crisis'. Gothelf, J. and Seiden, J. (2023) '[OKR Book (in progress)]'. Leto, K. (2021) 'Hiring Product Managers: Using Product EQ to Go Beyond Culture and Skills'. Lichaw, D. (2023) 'The Leader’s Journey'. Rumelt, R.P. (2011) 'Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters'. Skelton, M. and Pais, M. (2019) 'Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow'.
Management
In the Management dimension, we evaluate the effectiveness of your management practices. This includes assessing decision-making processes, performance management, and resource allocation. Strong management ensures that your organization can navigate challenges, capitalize on opportunities, and sustain long-term growth through informed and strategic leadership. This is a diagnostic for teams building products and product companies. And yet, we often find that companies who have the potential to be the most innovative, who have brilliant product ideas, capable technical know-how, and a keen eye for design, still fail to make progress because their managers lack a basic understanding of what it means to manage people in a mindful product company. After all most managers in tech did not receive any real training in management before getting the job. They were usually just the most capable individual contributor and were rewarded for their efforts by being promoted. That's a pretty radical shift from being the best engineer on the team to the person who now has to manage a bunch of engineers. The best place to start is getting yourself organized. References Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990) ‘Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience’. Deming, W.E. (2000) 'The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education'. Heath, C. and Heath, D. (2007) ‘Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.’ Kaplan, R.S. (2011) 'What to Ask the Person in the Mirror'. Pink, D.H. (2009) 'Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us'. Sinek, S. (2009) 'Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action'. Taylor, F.W. (1911) 'The Principles of Scientific Management'.
Culture
The Culture dimension explores the values, behaviors, and social norms that define your organization. This involves assessing employee engagement, diversity and inclusion, and the overall work environment. A positive and inclusive culture fosters innovation, collaboration, and employee satisfaction, which are crucial for sustained success and growth. Peter Drucker famously said, "culture eats strategy for breakfast." This isn't to imply that strategy is unimportant. But, no matter how good your strategy is, when it comes time to execute, if the people in your organization aren't unified by a common culture there will be trouble. What do I mean by culture? In this book, we use the same definition of culture that was used in the book, Startup Patterns. That definition was: "Culture is a way of life of a group of people--the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next." Let's unpack that for a moment: Behaviors, beliefs, and values that are accepted usually without thinking about them. They are passed around your organization by imitation from one person to the next, along a subconscious communication channel. In a social system, generations are grandparents, parents, children, and grandchildren. In the context of businesses, though, generations could be seen as successive waves of employees who come and go. It can also represent the promotion path of individuals, who often learn their habits from their boss. Culture begins to take shape very early in an organization. In fact, as soon as you have more than two people, norms will begin to emerge for how they communicate with one another, what they agree is true about the world, and who they see as their allies and adversaries. These unspoken rules of communication crystalize very quickly in human groups, and then define and shape behavior in subtle and implicit ways. Think about it. What could be more powerful than culture in affecting how people in your organization behave? In large organizations, changing culture can be very difficult due to the sheer size and complexity of the organization. There are many layers of influence, much of which goes unquestioned. And most managers learned how to manage by watching their own manager's behavior when they were a junior, rather than explicitly learning management through training. If very senior bosses behave in a certain way, it is usually because that behavior has served them well in the past. Since managers tend to copy the management style of their own boss, senior leaders pass this management behavior along to their reports. In fact, they likely reward the behaviors that they deem appropriate for bosses to enact, thus further recreating management styles for the next generation of leader. Swimming against this current can be a challenge. However, at the same time, culture is very fluid, and you can start affecting it from anywhere in an organization. It takes focus and persistence, but it can be done. Despite the subconscious transmission of culture, ultimately, leaders can influence their company's culture. But they have to be aware of the various patterns at play, and take action to guide those patterns in one direction or another. In a startup, a growth stage company with hundreds of people, or even a department or division within an organization, you have more of an opportunity to influence culture in a positive direction. But it is going to work best if you can start as early as possible. References Dweck, C. (2006) 'Mindset: The New Psychology of Success'. McAfee, S. (2016) 'Startup Patterns: How great startup teams work'. Edmondson, A. (2018) 'The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth'. Kilmann, R. (2023) 'Mastering the Thomas-Kilmann Instrument (TKI)' Mironov, R. (2008) 'The Art of Product Management'
Leadership
The Leadership dimension focuses on the capabilities and effectiveness of your leaders at all levels. This includes assessing their ability to inspire, motivate, and guide their teams towards achieving organizational goals. Effective leadership drives vision, fosters a positive work culture, and ensures that your organization remains resilient and adaptable in a dynamic business environment. There are certain fundamental aspects of leadership that are the same no matter what type of organization one is leading. At the same time, leadership in a product company assumes a particular shape. It requires a certain familiarity with the realities of product development that lead to attitudes and behaviors that might be different were one leading an orchestra, a cargo ship, or an army. We've attempted in this chapter to lay out some of the basics from leadership that would apply anywhere, and layer on to those basics the nuances that matter most when building a mindful product company. Fundamentally, good leadership stands upon good communication skills. Good leaders speak and write clearly, listen well, and understand their team's needs. They build and maintain strong relationships, motivating their team to reach their goals. Leaders motivate those they lead through their words. Those words inspire, inform, guide, and nurture the teams they lead to execute with as much freedom, flexibility, and autonomy as possible. Establishing clear roles and responsibilities is critical to good leadership. Every team member should know exactly what their job is and why it matters. This clarity boosts efficiency and productivity, creating a solid base for innovation. Decision-making is also key to good leadership. Leaders need to make smart, timely choices that consider the team's and the company's needs. But they also need to understand when to delegate decision-making to others, as we discussed in Management. Succession planning and mentorship are also fundamental to good leadership. Preparing for future leadership changes is crucial to keep the company strong, and every leader should have a successor or two whom they are preparing to take their place. Additionally, a mentorship program ensures skills and knowledge are passed down and around, turning workplaces into grounds for continuous learning. Lastly, recruiting and onboarding are part of good leadership. A leader ensures each new hire is not only a fit but is also quickly integrated into the team. Every addition should bring the company closer to its goals. In the following pages, we'll break down how strong leadership makes these elements work together in building a successful, mindful product company. References Marquet, L.D. (2013) 'Turn the Ship Around!'. McChrystal, S. (2015) 'Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World'. Humble, J., Molesky, J., and O'Reilly, B. (2014) 'Lean Enterprise: How High Performance Organizations Innovate at Scale'. Gothelf, J. (2020) 'Forever Employable: How to Stop Looking for Work and Let Your Next Job Find You'. Lichaw, D. (2023) 'The Leader's Journey: Transforming Your Leadership to Achieve the Extraordinary'.
Mindfulness
The Mindfulness dimension evaluates how well your organization integrates mindfulness practices to enhance focus, clarity, and overall well-being. This includes assessing stress management, work-life balance, and the promotion of mental health. Incorporating mindfulness into your organizational practices can lead to improved productivity, better decision-making, and a healthier, more engaged workforce. This chapter encapsulates the core content from the Mindful Leadership program, which was originally divided into three components that we coined The Three Pillars of Mindful Leadership: The Grounded Self Effective Communication Tipping the Organization Over time and many revisions and iterations, and with the helpful feedback from many participants in the program, we have tuned and modified the original structure. The three pillars are still here in essence, though we have migrated some of the topics to other chapters in the diagnostic. Within this chapter, you will experience the Grounded Self through looking at finding your purpose so that you can align your work with your values, reducing the amount of noise you face every day and improving your focus, overcoming what we call internal barriers that keep you from reaching peak performance, and uncovering hidden biases that can damage your relationships and cause you to make poorer decisions. We then get into Effective Communication skills, through developing empathy with both yourself and others, embracing your truth and being able to speak up when you need to, and learning how to wield power in a way that is both responsible and compassionate. Finally, from Tipping the Organization, we have already covered the concepts of empowering teams through increasing their autonomy and improving flow in the organization. Now, we will finish with a deep dive into the mechanics of mind games in the office. This chapter will not only empower you to make change in your organization, it may just push you to make certain changes in yourself that, while sometimes uncomfortable, will make you a more effective leader. References Berne, E. (1964). Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships. Feldman Barrett, L. (2017). How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain. Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Kaplan, R. S. (2011). What to Ask the Person in the Mirror: Critical Questions for Becoming a More Effective Leader and Reaching Your Potential. Karpman, S. (1968). The Drama Triangle. Transactional Analysis Bulletin, 7(26), pp. 39-43. Jamieson, A., & Gower, B. (2020). Radical Alignment: How to Have Game-Changing Conversations That Will Transform Your Business and Your Life. Voss, C., & Raz, T. (2016). Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It.