Hey, happy Monday!
I am writing this note just back from the Product Management Day in Rome.
It was incredible! 200 live professionals and more than 100 online, 12 guests, and more than 9 hours of talks.
So many people came by the booth at STRTGY, flipped through the first chapters of the book on OKRs and took home prints of the strategic canvases to work on their goals right away. I am overjoyed that 44 percent of the crowdblishing goal has already been reached.
You can also pre-order it today on the publisher’s website if you want:
- Take advantage of the 20% discount (from €35 to €28)
- Have your First and Last Name on the thank you page.
- do not pay delivery charges
I am especially proud to have taken the stage with my colleagues from the Product Manager Alliance (PMAll) to present the first Product Manager Professional® certification, which-at this stage-will have 4 areas of focus: discovery, strategy, delivery, metrics.
If you are interested in being among the first to be certified or to certify your team’s skills leave your details at productmanageralliance.org or contact me personally.
What is in today’s note?
I had the pleasure of having (more than) a wonderful chat with Fabio Armani, one of Italy’s leading agile coaches. In this note I leave you his interview that addresses on a more human and deeper level the topic of Product Management.
Fabio sees products as a tool to improve humanity provided he is able, as a leader, to reconfigure organizations to reconnect value – economic – and human values. A call to action to change things – while there is still time for humanity.
Before I leave you to your reading, I wanted to tell you that on Monday, July 18 at 6:30 pm we will have thelast STRTGY Meeting of the season with the Head of Design of the world’s most innovative companies! Clear your schedule, I would love it if you could attend.
Which company am I talking about? Reply to any newsletter (I read all emails), I am curious to know who you think is the most innovative global company right now.
ALWAYS MAKE PROGRESS ⤴
-Antonio
● PMDAY22 / Align value and values.
The product is a living being
A: Hi Fabio, introduce yourself to the community.
Fabio: Hi, I am Fabio Armani: Lean Agile Coach & Trainer. I have a degree in astrophysics. I am a 63-year-old artist, musician, university professor, visionary and meteor.
My life’s challenge to help companies and their people change for the better-I like to call myself a servant leader. If I’ve succeeded, I’d rather have the people I’ve served say so.
I have worked with the C-Levels of several companies, small, medium and large – BNL, Cerved, Dada, Delta Tre, ENEL, KPMG, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, Neomobile, TIM, I could count more than 50 companies, hundreds of teams and thousands of people – completely transforming their skin and mindset. I am infatuated with everything that is related to customer and end-user satisfaction, while I am definitely far from everything that is purely commercial.
Despite my age, I have the same dreams as a 16-year-old boy and still think that humanity has a chance to be able to change the world and its ecosystem.
A: What is your definition of a product?
Fabio: For me the product is a living being, something that has to do with us humans in a very deep way, an artifact, artifact with which to empathize.
It is related to the concept of value and, for me, values. Hence, “there can be no value without ethics and values.”
The product should not be a mechanism to make someone rich-perhaps outrageously so-but a process of future humanity and the ecosystem that fosters interchange, bringing value to those who create it and those who receive it.
The product is an exchange commodity to create value and values.
I liken it to a plant, a tree, an animal–human beings are animals too–a living thing, something that keeps growing and that we make together with the end user in a process called co-creation.
I want to be explicit: we need to change and adopt a philosophy Zero Tolerance for everything that is unethical. Soft and inclusive with people and hard on everything that is amoral, unethical, and ecosystem-unfriendly.
In companies, it is important to talk about the product and not the project.
Changing the world one product at a time
A: What must a company do to initiate this change?
Fabio: It is imperative to start living with the logic of an ecosystem.
It is an important and profound step that is about a mindset revolution, a paradigm reversal. It is not to be approached lightly. It certainly does not have to do with practices or processes.
Deep change must start with the teams and not the people at the top. The hierarchical pyramid must be overturned: in my vision there must be no leaders who profit from the lives of others. We are in an exponentially changing world, on the edge of chaos. Deterministic logics are as obsolete as they are absurd.
How to do it concretely? Different forms of organization can be adopted, for example HSD, Holacracy and Sociocracy 3.0.
Companies need to be sustainable-both ecologically and humanely, espouse new values, and understand that we can change our evolution.
A: One of your ambitions is to help organizations become product driven because it is the only way they can change the world, one product at a time. Is that correct?
Fabio: Yes! But I’m not the only crazy person who thinks that way.
Almost all the leaders in this movement believe that the purpose of the Product Owner or Product Manager is not to point out and define what the features of a product are. Rather, his or her mission is to change the world into a better place, as Jeff Patton puts it.
A: Can you help us distinguish the roles of the Product Manager, Product Owner, and Project Manager?
Fabio: We divide the figures with the prefix product from the one with the prefix project as they belong to two different domains.
The role of the project manager comes from a traditional world, and his task is confined to bringing to fruition the outputs passed to him by stakeholders.
One clarification: I have been a member of the Project Management Institute (PMI) for over 35 years, so utmost respect to fellow project managers. In PMI, a project is, by definition, something that has a start date and an end date, often with a defined scope within what is called the iron triangle.
Instead, the product is like a living thing: it is born, it develops, it has a long life, it also has children and a slow death, within the circle of life.
The distinction between Product Owner and Product Manager is related to a problem of nomenclature and, if you will, semantics.
The Product Manager (product manager) came into existence well before the Product Owner (product master), which moreover is specific to one methodological framework: Scrum.
So, we could say that product manager is the more generic and less specific term.
If we use logic, or rather linguistics, we should say that the second (PO) is the most important figure, owning the whole product and connected with company, business and end customer.
Unfortunately, in very many contexts and in practical implementation, the Product Owner plays too much of an operational role: strange to say, but some methodologies (such as SAFe) have turned the logic around by making the Product Manager’s role more important.
It is important to shorten the value chain, between the end user and the product: the more direct the connection, the more value and value the product will bring.
Product strategy should be in the hands of one person who is in charge of the entire Life Cycle. As Mary & Tom Poppendieck say , “From concept to cash.”
Contributing to change
A: The title of your speech was very unique: “surfing the edge of chaos.” The theme is related to theexponential evolution of the market and technology. Who is your talk dedicated to and what did people bring home?
Fabio: The focus is on individuals and interactions, not on processes and obviously not on tools.
All of us-young people more-are experiencing an exponential evolution that requires a huge paradigm shift.
This exponential change is a fact. I am not here to say whether it is positive or negative. The fact remains that historically and statistically humanity has never acknowledged its systemic errors by going so far as to make terrible choices. We are the first living species on Earth that has the terrible (I would say obscene) power to destroy itself and many, many other species (excluding bacteria, viruses and little else)!
There is still a way out. I would like to give some cues to at least stir consciences.
I am especially addressing the C-Levels especially those who think they can bring a small difference and change. Managers have great responsibilities; I ask them to radically change their mindset soon.
I talked about complexity, Leading on the Edge of Chaos, the Butterfly Effect: each of us in our own small way can activate change because we resonate with other objects and other people, thus initiating the exponential effect.
To all people I say, wake up and contribute to change.
A: Is there a resource you would like to recommend to further explore the themes of your talk?
Fabio: Two out of all, a book and an event.
Leading Exponential Change: Go beyond Agile and Scrum to run even better business transformations., a very nice text.
We can no longer hide from exponential change and must lead it, be proactive and give it our all. It is a chance and an opportunity.
The event is the Product Ownership Camp. I have always been interested in this topic: in fact, in 2012 together with Stefano Leli I designed a Camp that is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year.
A high intelligence community made up of Product Owners, Product Managers, Managers, and Lean Agile coaches coming together for a long weekend of comparisons, insights, and games centered around the concept of product.
At my age I feel an ethical duty to give back to others and to be aligned with a sense of progress (not just technical progress). See you there.
