“Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” – General George S. Patton, Jr. Patton was quite a character. From what I know of him, it sounds like...
What do the following people all have in common? – Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape – Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon – Steve Case, co-founder of AOL – Michael Dell, founder of Dell – Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle –...
By Marty Cagan and Felipe Castro Marty’s Note: My co-author for this article is the product coach Felipe Castro. I have known Felipe for many years, and he has collaborated with me on the outcome and OKR-related content in each...
At this point, many people have heard about, and/or shared their thoughts on the “founder mode” discussion kicked off by the Paul Graham essay. I weighed in on this myself earlier in the article Coaching Founder Mode. But after reading...
Continuing on the theme of sharing more of the lessons learned from companies that are embarking on transformations to the product model, in earlier articles we discussed transformation regrets, the problem of managing the transformation as a project, and then...
In this article I’d like to highlight an anti-pattern that my partners and I have witnessed at several companies that are embarking on transformations to the product model. It’s an understandable anti-pattern, but it’s also more than a little bit...
Sometimes naming an important but nuanced concept can give that concept real power. I would argue that’s what happened when we named the concept of product discovery, and I’m seeing the same thing now with the product operating model. The...
I was speaking to someone recently that had just finished reading the new book TRANSFORMED, and a question she asked caught me by surprise. She was saying how her favorite part of the book was reading the case studies about...
Overview Since the first edition of INSPIRED was released in 2008, there have been occasional groups and book clubs that have reached out asking for some suggested discussion topics. These requests have gradually increased, but with the release of TRANSFORMED,...
By Lea Hickman and Marty Cagan Recently we’ve been writing about two very common and very problematic forms of theater: product management theater, and product leadership theater. We’ve been intentionally trying to shine a bright light on these behaviors, as...
This page is here to hold questions and answers that come up once the TRANSFORMED book is published and we can no longer add them to the “Objections” section of the book. ADDITIONAL OBJECTIONS AND QUESTIONS “Our product managers are...
The Root Causes of Failed Transformations It is an open secret that the vast majority of attempted digital transformations fail. Companies spend millions of dollars and years of effort, yet fail to make meaningful change. The only real question is...
For those of you that have been following along on the progress of the new book TRANSFORMED, the content is now roughly three quarters of the way there. The remaining sections discuss how to address specific objections, and overcome inevitable...
By Jon Moore and Marty Cagan This is the third of the three-article sequence diving into what is meant by meaningful transformation. So far we’ve talked about the need to change how you build, and the need to change how...
We are working on the next book in the SVPG series called TRANSFORMED. It addresses the very difficult but critical topic of how a company can transform from the rest to the best. As you may know, we often test...
