Jeffrey Barr's Key Ideas from EMPOWERED
by Marty Cagan

Three critical differences between the strongest product companies and the rest: 

• How the company views the role of technology. 
• The role product leaders play. 
• How the company views the purpose of the product teams—the product managers, product designers, and engineers.

• The Role of Technology - Many companies still have the old IT mindset when it comes to technology. It's viewed as a necessary cost rather than the core business enabler. Technology teams are there “to serve the business”.
• Leadership - Does not empower the Product Team. Has a command and control style leadership. Acts in service to the business stakeholders, not to the team.
• Empowered Teams - Teams are not empowered to solve problems in ways customers love. Feature teams are responsible for pushing out features(output) rather than enabling outcomes.

In traditional organisations, Feature Teams focus on features and projects (output), and as such are not empowered or held accountable to results. 

Empowered teams are given problems to solve, rather than features to build. Empowered Product teams create solutions that are:

• Valuable (customers will buy the product)
• Viable (it will meet the needs of the business)
• Usable (so users can actually experience that value)
• Feasible (so the company can effectively market, sell, and support the solution).

Together, the teams own the problem and are responsible and accountable for the results.

Collaboration is at the heart of how strong product teams work. It's a combination of skills and mindset, and it often takes active coaching by the manager to help new product people develop this capability. 

Characteristics of strong product teams:

• Tackling risks early
• Solving problems collaboratively
• Being accountable for results.

To empower, decisions are pushed down to the product team level.

Three Snaky rules of Decision Making:

1. If you see a snake, kill it. (an important decision that has to be made)
2. Don't play with dead snakes. (don't revisit old decisions)
3. All opportunities start out looking like snakes. (opportunities often look like problems)

For product leaders, the product team is the product. 

Leadership is about recognizing that there's greatness in everyone, and your job is to create an environment where that greatness can emerge. People look to leadership for inspiration and we look to management for execution. 

To have truly empowered product teams, your success depends very directly on first‐level people managers. If you are wondering why there are so many weak product companies in the world, these first-level people managers would be the primary culprit.

• Staffing
• Coaching
• Team Objectives
• Deciding which problems should be worked on by which product teams.
• Sharing Strategic Context 

The litmus test for empowerment is that the team is able to decide the best way to solve the problems they have been assigned (the objectives). 

Unless leaders trust the teams this empowerment will not happen.

• Company Mission - The purpose of the company.
• Company Scorecard - Key performance indicators (KPIs) that provide an understanding of the overall picture and health of the business
• Company Objectives - Specific objectives the company is focused on for this year.
• Product Vision and Principles - The product vision is how we hope to meet customers' needs.
• Team Topology - Describes how each Product team will organise to deliver value.
• Product Strategy - Specifically how we'll meet customer needs in ways that work for the business.

• Focus on the outcome
• Consider all of the risks—value, usability, feasibility, and business viability. 
• Think holistically about all dimensions of the business and the product. 
• Anticipate ethical considerations or impacts. 
• Solve problems creatively.
• Persist in the face of obstacles. 
• Leverage engineering and the art of the possible. 
• Leverage design and the power of user experience. 
• Leverage data to learn and to make a compelling argument.

Leaders must focus on:

• Spending most of their time and energy on coaching the team.
• Being self-aware of insecurities. Insecure managers have a particularly hard time empowering people.
• Cultivating Diverse Points of View 
• Seek Out Teaching Moments - Many, if not most, people are not aware of their own potential. As a coach, you are in a unique position to help them see it.
• Continually Earn the Trust of Your Team. Coaching efforts will be ineffective without trust.
• Establishing personal rapport and trust by sharing some personal challenges.

The Purpose - The primary purpose is to help the product person develop and improve.

The Relationship - This is a relationship that depends on trust.

The Frequency - Should be no less than 30 minutes, once per week, and is sacred and not to be another one of those “You okay with skipping this week?”

Sharing Context - If you are to empower you must provide the strategic context.

Thinking and Acting Like a Product Person - Mainly about helping the product person learn to think and act like a strong product person.

A product organization's team topology answers questions such as: 

• How many product teams should our organization have? 
• What is the scope of responsibility of each team? 
• What are the skills required for each team, and how many of each skill? 
• What are the dependencies between the teams?  

Optimise team design for:

• Empowerment
• Ownership
• Autonomy
• Alignment

• You are frequently shifting developers between teams 
• You must frequently step in to resolve dependency conflicts 
• Your developers complain of too many dependencies on other product teams in order to ship simple things 
• Teams have a very limited scope of ownership 
• Developers deal with too much complexity in too many areas

If the company is still using feature teams, as most unfortunately are, then the OKR technique is going to be a cultural mismatch, and almost certainly prove a waste of time and effort. 

In the vast majority of companies that are struggling to value out of OKRs, the role of leadership is largely missing in action. 

Three prerequisites for OKR's:

• Move from the feature team model to the empowered product team model 
• Stop doing manager objectives and individual objectives, and instead focus on team objectives
• Leaders need to step up and do their part to turn product strategy into action.

You need to move your product organization from a subservient model to a collaborative model. 

Four focus areas:

• The Example Starts at the Top
• Focus and Strategy
• Establishing Trust
• Deliver on Promises 

Three steps to begin with:

1. Ensure you have strong product leaders in place.
2. Empower product leaders with the ability to recruit and develop the staff required for empowered product teams.
3. Redefine the relationship with the business.