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Dysfunctional culture - the reason your product failed


Making products successful is tough. It requires a lot of skill, even more hard work and a great dose of luck. Most importantly it requires everyone to work together and towards the same objective. This sounds obvious but people aspects, or culture, often become the reason your product fails.


All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way
Leo Tolstoy


It's exactly like that with cultures - when it's broken it is broken in a unique way. So here I'd like to describe only a few cases of dysfunctional cultures that are the most prominent in startups and large organisations.

Startup - I have a vision

When we think of entrepreneurship or startup, we think about a visionary founder. A tech genius or a witty businessperson who found an important gap in the world and will work tirelessly to fill it. This is true to a degree, however, if a founder believes too much in being a genius - it could cost them their dream and lead to business (and product) failure.

At the beginning of every startup the founder(s) usually know the most about the problem they are trying to solve and the customers they want to serve. That's why in the very early stages startups don't need PMs, their founders act as PMs. However, as the business and the organisation grow, founders find it more and more challenging to lead the company and product manage at the same time. At this point, they need to focus and ruthlessly prioritise. Usually, that means letting go of day-to-day building products and focusing on growing the business. Yet it's a hard ask with some people. They fell in love with the product already and won't let other people take the lead.

At "best" this results in founders still making all the strategic and some of the bigger tactical decisions. At "worst" - they would review each and every product decision, impeding progress and destroying the product team's autonomy. When this happens, product managers become just lavishly paid note-takers, quickly burning out and then leaving. And not only PMs, but the entire product team that wanted to be empowered is finding themselves micromanaged. Such work culture almost certainly leads to product failure or unrealised potential.

Corporate - You have to talk to me

If for startups the main danger is one person having too much responsibilities and power, then for the bigger organisations it is the opposite - many people having some power to block the progress. Every enterprise PM would know how much time and effort they spend on "stakeholder management". It is just another way to say they need to work and build successful products in spite of their organisational culture. They need to navigate bureaucracy and overcome it, instead of being supported and empowered by their organisations to do their best work.

Another common problem in large companies that is deeply rooted in our human psychology - losses loom larger than gains. Middle managers and senior leaders would rather maintain the status quo than take risks. It's totally logical as they have more to lose including their status, bonus or maybe even their job. Being a PM in a highly bureaucratic environment is really tough - in addition to doing our jobs, we need to constantly build bridges, navigate the complexities of who is who, get countless approvals, and just generally sell, sell, sell.

One of the worst things that could happen to a product is for it to be designed by a committee. Unfortunately, this almost inevitably happens in larger organisations where everyone wants to have a say while still leaving the PM accountable for the outcome. And then you know the drill - if a product miraculously succeeds it's because everyone did great, and if it is failing - you, PM, are to blame.

Pick your poison

Organisational culture might be broken in multiple ways. Startups tend to overly rely on the genius of their founders while bigger orgs are stagnating due to inner bureaucracy. Counterintuitively, both can create semi-successful products. How? Some startup founders really are geniuses and if they work hard they can lead both their companies and products to success. And larger companies can throw much more money at the problem until something sticks.

As a PM deciding where to work, you need to understand the pros and cons of every environment. Your challenges, often your entire job, will be completely different depending on the organisational culture you find yourself in. Building successful products is hard everywhere. If you manage to find a culture that supports you on this journey - cherish and promote it as you are the lucky one!

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