Empowered: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products by Marty Cagan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Very crisp overview of what patterns make modern technology driven product company and product organization great: empowered product teams driven by a real product vision and strategy and managed by dedicated managers that know how to formulate real and exciting problem, hold teams accountable and coach people to become their better selves: servant leadership. Targeted to Product leaders, whom I’m certain there are a lot out there that need to read, understand and practice this book. A must read I will revisit many times, just like Inspired.
– An empowered team does not equal a team that decides on a company direction, a focus for a quarter or a company bet to take. That is an executive decision that the team needs to trust as much as the executives need to trust the team to know how to solve the challenge or get to the goal.
– Empowering teams have full decisional power over the problem/opportunity they are assigned, not on identifying the opportunity itself.
– Alignment is not just pointing to a north star and handing out a compas, it requires real work with teams.
– Autonomy does not mean self reliance but ownership of solving a problem that matters together with others.
– Leadership means active engagement. I call I servant leadership, but that’s anything but standing aside and let whatever happen.
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