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what is a product-led organisation

What is a Product-Led Organisation?

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What are Product-Led Organisations? And what makes them some of our favourite brands? Well, a product-led organisation focuses on the product to drive growth. The product leads the company strategy, while other teams support the product. Done well, this leads to products that we love!

Product Drives Strategy

In a product-led company, the product team sets direction. Product managers decide the roadmap. They choose future features.

Customer insights inform development. User research and feedback guide the product. Data analytics identifies opportunities. The company structure centres around the product team. Other roles serve product outcomes.

Our approach uses the Enterprise Change Pattern to enable an organisation to become more customer-focused and product led. The Enterprise Change Pattern harnesses the power of experiments to explore new ideas, identify opportunities, and uncover areas for improvement.

An Obsession with the User Experience

Understanding users is an obsession. The company watches how people use the product. In turn, this feedback informs iterations. Organisations experiment. They discover what works (and do more of that) and what doesn’t (and do less of that).

Product decisions start with the user in mind. User experience is the top priority. When people love a product, they will not only use it, but will recommend it to others.

Success metrics focus on usage and engagement. Streamlining adoption matters most.

Agile and Adaptable

A product-led company can pivot quickly. New user data means rapid changes. There is flexibility to adapt.

The priority is delivering value to users. If that means changing course, the company can respond.

This agility comes from the product team’s mandate. With empowered product leaders, the organisation moves fast.

Selling Through the Product

In a product-led company, the product sells itself. Users can access and test it directly.

This allows for free trials and freemium models. The product demonstrates its own value.

Sales and marketing support adoption. However, the product is the main channel to customers.

Long sales cycles are eliminated and users choose products on their own terms.

Why Product-Led?

Here are 5 Benefits for the Business of being Product-Led

  • Focus – The entire company aligns around the product and users.
  • Growth – Products that deliver value can scale quickly through word of mouth.
  • Customer-Centric – Users feel heard. Products meet their needs and are loved.
  • Agility – Fast pivots based on user feedback. Constant evolution.
  • Efficient – Less need for heavy sales and marketing spend to drive growth.

Examples of Product-Led Companies

  • Slack – Chat app which led growth through viral user adoption and easy integration with other products.
  • Zoom – Video call software that sold itself to remote workers. Zoom was one of the fastest-growing apps of the pandemic when meeting participants increased by 2900%!
  • Canva – Graphic design platform which grew rapidly based on user-friendly product experience.

When Product-Led Works Best

The product-led model shines for digital products and SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies. When the product can deliver value directly to users, it can become the growth engine.

It works for innovative products creating new categories. It also suits commoditised markets where competing on user experience matters.

Product-led may not work everywhere. Companies with complex sales cycles still need sales-led models. However, they can borrow from product-led principles.

Product-led puts the product at the heart of operations. When executed well, this creates fantastic user experiences. It also fuels growth through adoption.

Are you a leader in a product-led organisation? Struggling to move from strategy to execution?
Get in touch and let us help you.

Why experiments matter

Why experiments matter (and are essential to your organisation’s future success)

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As a leader, you know that change is inevitable in the ever-evolving business landscape. To stay ahead of the competition, organisations must continuously innovate, experiment and adapt to changing market dynamics. Companies must be willing to adapt and evolve, constantly testing and iterating to stay ahead of the curve. This is why experiments matter. By conducting experiments, companies can explore new ideas, identify opportunities, and uncover areas for improvement. This allows them to stay nimble and responsive to changing market conditions, and to take advantage of emerging trends and technologies.
Experiments are essential to the future success of any organisation.

Why experiments matter

How to approach experiments

Firstly, experimentation is not just about trying out new ideas. It’s about validating (or invalidating!) assumptions and learning from failures. Embracing experimentation requires a shift in mindset and culture, moving away from traditional hierarchical structures towards a more people first culture.

Our recommended approach for making change in your organisation is the Enterprise Change Pattern. This tried and tested method involves experiment ‘change cycles’ with the following key steps:

– Start with now
– Define the experiment
– Make the change
– Measure the impact
– Repeat

Use this free canvas to start creating your experiments

At each stage, leaders must involve and engage their teams and communicate effectively. Everyone is involved and able to share their hidden knowledge. In this way, an organisation can make group decisions quickly.

By employing the Enterprise Change Pattern, with our help, you can ensure that experiments are well-designed, carefully executed, and rigorously evaluated.

Organisations that prioritise experimentation have been shown to have higher rates of innovation, better decision-making, and increased revenue growth. However, as a leader, you recognise that experimentation involves risk. Using the Enterprise Change Pattern helps to control that risk.

Building a culture of experimentation

Of course, it’s not just about the process of experimentation. A people-first culture is also essential to the success of any experiment. Leaders must empower their teams, encourage diversity of thought, and foster a safe environment for risk-taking and learning. Your team must feel safe to fail, knowing that mistakes are opportunities for learning and growth. And you must give them the resources and support they need to carry out their experiments effectively.

Transformational leaders must lead by example and create an environment that rewards curiosity, experimentation, and learning.

“To successfully innovate, companies need to make experimentation an integral part of everyday life—even when budgets are tight. That means creating an environment where employees’ curiosity is nurtured, data trumps opinion, anyone (not just people in R&D) can conduct or commission a test, all experiments are done ethically, and managers embrace a new model of leadership.”

– Harvard Business Review

Ultimately, experiments are essential to your organisation’s future success. They are a powerful tool for driving innovation, improving performance, and staying ahead of the competition. By embracing the Enterprise Change Pattern and fostering a people-first organisation, leaders can create a culture of experimentation that drives innovation and growth. Remember, experimentation is not just about trying out new ideas. It’s also about validating assumptions and learning from failures.

We can help you to design and measure experiments using the Enterprise Change Pattern, especially if you would like to run multiple parallel experiments. Ask us how.

Neurochemical cocktails for facilitators

Neurochemical cocktails for inclusive workshops

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What are neurochemical cocktails and how can they help us run more inclusive workshops?

Our Director of Coaching, Gemma Honour, recently ran an interactive webinar with Agile Coach, Myron Parks. In it they explored what it means to be neurodivergent and how we can support each other and aid communication, especially in the workplace, by understanding neuroscience. You can watch the webinar on-demand over at AWA Global.

Towards the end of the webinar, Gemma and Myron shared their ‘neurochemical cocktails’ model. They developed this together, as part of the Innovation and Leadership Mastery program. It is a way of looking at creating workshops that activate certain neurochemicals in the brain. By doing this, we can optimise for different states.

Their model and thinking was developed from research based on Neuroscience for Coaches by Amy Brann.

Gemma & Myron developed a ‘neurochemical cocktails menu’ to help facilitators and coaches to plan workshops using different activities to target and ‘trigger’ neurochemical states that will help arrive at specific outcomes.

For example, let’s say you want to run a workshop for a completely new brand. You want to optimise for creativity, so you choose to create that kind of ‘cocktail’, adding a shot of dopamine and a splash of aminobutyric acid. The first will put your participants in a moreish mood and the second will activate their focus or flow state.

So, how can you target these neurochemicals? Well, you might consider choosing the following activities for your creative workshop…

  • Start with a mindful check-in
  • Listen to some music
  • Provide a choice of materials for people to use
  • Break down your activity into small tasks with visible output

Find out more…

Our experienced coaches are experts at targeting these different neurochemicals and helping everyone to feel safe, included and able to contribute and add value.

If you’d like a free copy of Gemma and Myron’s ‘neurochemical cocktails’ menu, please fill in the short form below and we will email you a copy.

Neurochemical cocktails menu

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Finally, contact us to find out how we can help you make your organisation more inclusive and harness the power of neurodiversity!

The four essential skills needed to make change stick

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Creating lasting change is often easier said than done. You start off with good intentions and high hopes, but struggle to maintain your efforts over the long term. However, research has shown that there are certain skills that can help organisations make change stick. Understanding and mastering these skills can help you create lasting change that can have a positive impact on your organisation.

 

So, what are the four essential skills needed to make change stick?

One, Training

Training is about learning and the transfer of vital information and experience. It ensures that everyone is aligned on vocabulary, has the building blocks for ways of working, and knows what to do.

Two, Learning

Learning is a vital part of any change initiative, and we have arguably the best change programs in the world. AWA Global, our partner, has pioneered not only the whole field of organisational change but also the ways that people are trained by putting the learner first and providing “learn by doing” experiences.

Three, Coaching

Coaching and mentoring are about putting what you’ve learned into practise day-to-day and making sure it’s done well. Coaching ensures that you’re ready with great solutions and a smooth path to success when new situations arise. Even ones that you didn’t cover in training!

Four, Facilitation

Facilitation is all about making the most of the time people spend together. Making decisions at the point of work with everyone involved is a key factor in devolving decision-making and enabling rapid adaptation and delivery. This can only happen when experienced facilitators are present. Big-room planning and decision-making always have experienced facilitators present to ensure that the right actions and outcomes emerge by the end.

You need all of these skills to make organisational change work. Our coaches bring these skills and transfer them over time to internal people, making change a normal and sustainable part of organisational life.

 

Get in touch to find out more about how BryterWork can help.

What kind of leader are you?

Why not use SCRUM, SAFe, Spotify, or any other framework?

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Most of the Agile frameworks are not actually frameworks (e.g., Spotify, Disciplined Agile, etc.), and even if they were, a framework for agility is an oxymoron.

Agility is a people-based approach to devolving decision-making to the point of work in a safe and efficient manner. Installing frameworks and telling people how to work is the antithesis of the culture that is required to make agility work. This is why so many people fail at agility and think it doesn’t work.

There is enough experience being shared in the global community to now know that the frameworks may provide some benefits but do not deliver enough change to meet today’s demanding needs. They are expensive, alienating, and don’t do what you expect.

Much of our experience with change has been rescuing organisations that have tried using the frameworks but failed. We are happy to help if this is the case, and we are happy to help you create a better way of working.

Get in touch to find out more about how BryterWork can help.

Restructuring Work

Is agile dead?

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The words “agile” and “agility” are met with mixed receptions these days, with some people saying it has been proven not to work, or even that “Agile is dead”.

Is agile dead?

What we do know is that work is not getting easier. 

  • Time to market is shortening, 
  • Product and service lifespans are decreasing
  • Building products/services is getting more complex
  • With more moving parts and deeper skills required than ever before

Staff are demanding meaning from their work and asking organisations to show how they are contributing to make the world a better place. People expect career growth, more challenging and responsible positions, and more decision-making power.

 

So, is Agile dead?

Well, perhaps the ‘old’ Agile is dead retired. Or perhaps it is evolving into something better and Bryter..?

Our approach focuses on outcomes, people, and risk reduction. If we follow these pillars of change, then we know we will succeed. We may use things from the world of agile, but at its heart, finding new ways of working is about changing what is in our heads. When we change how we see the world, each other, our products, and our customers, we have a chance of making it better.

Our focus is always on people over process.

Why a big consultancy might not be right for you

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Many of the consultancies have some good ideas, but the cultures that run inside the organisations themselves prohibit them from building people-based cultures inside their clients’ organisations.

Would you trust a company to build an inclusive and open culture when they do not have one themselves? The overheads of large consultancies require them to ‘land and expand’ and get as many junior people onboard as possible to make the numbers work.

Organisational change is not a junior role. It requires specialists who have dedicated their life’s work to making other people’s working lives better. It requires people who live the way they expect others to follow. Why would your staff try new ways of working when the people teaching them don’t follow them themselves?

Most consultancies’ primary business is not organisational change. They are asked to do the work because they are already inside their clients’ organisation for some other reason. This does not make them competent or capable in this area.

We live and run our own business the same way we teach others to run theirs. This is a powerful message for anyone who wonders if our approach works or not.

If it didn’t, we wouldn’t be here.

We only focus on change, and we focus on large organisations and how to do it well. We have set the bar through certification, training, and coaching in this area, and we know how to make a difference.

Get in touch to find out more about how Bryter Work can help.

Introducing Bryter Work

We’ve launched!

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Hello we’re Bryter Work.

Our mission is to help you build a Bryter working world, with happier teams who make better decisions and deliver better outcomes.

Bryter Work is a people-focused consultancy, that builds your confidence and capability both in making change and how to measure that change. We do this by creating inclusive cultures where innovation and high performance thrive through value-driven, highly-targeted workshop-based solutions.

This gives you the business resilience to meet any challenge and continue to change and adapt as your market or environment demands.

Bryter Work was created out of AWA Global, co-founded with Gemma Honour and continues AWA’s mission of ‘Making working life better’. 

 

So what does the word Bryter actually mean? 

Read AWA’s Bryter Work launch article to discover the story of our name and what the Bryter values are.

Since the pandemic, companies have experienced enormous cultural shifts. Has this has affected your organisation? 

Perhaps you find that staff are harder to retain and keep engaged? Or has the change to a less office-based way of working meant that your company culture has disappeared? Are your existing ways of working just not working?

Our unique coaching approach helps address problems like these by helping you to build a business that is better to work within and has the vision, strategy and leadership to succeed and adapt to change.

Find out how we can help you.