Stop "copying" and turn to creating your own "DNA."

🏗️ "Corporate Product Operating Model" = Stop "Copy" and turn to create your own "DNA."

When "title, position is not equal to duty" and "having an Engineer in the boardroom" is more important than you think.

Over the past decade, virtually every organization has declared itself a Tech Company, or at least between Digital Transformation. Terms like Agile, Scrum, Spotify Model, Squad-Tribe-Chapter Guild have been used as shortcuts to success. Many executives believe that if organizational structures and processes look "like" global technology companies, business outcomes will improve.

But the truth is that copying Org Chart never makes an organization become Spotify, Google or Amazon. What often happens is that it gets a new name, a new ritual, a new technique, a full meeting room, but the value sent to customers (Customer Value) and business outputs do not move, or sometimes even backwards.

Marty Cagan, a global product expert and author of the book Transformed: Moving to the Product Operating Model (2024), frankly points out that most organizations do not fail because they lack talent or technology, but fail because they get lost in "form" rather than "substance," trapped in rituals and Titles.

"Are we building products that solve real problems for customers and create value for businesses?"

This article does not invite you to copy anyone, but rather to systematically question how the product Operating Model that suits your organization should be "designed" and what is the essence that should not be reduced to the slide structure.

1. Product Manager ❣ Order Receiver

The most common trap in organizations that claim to do Product is to reduce the Product Manager role to "Backlog Organizer" or "Ticket Writer" according to top-down orders, especially in organizations that narrow the Product Owner role to a purely operational position.

In a strong Product Operating Model, the Product Manager is not hired to "run" but is hired to take responsibility for difficult decisions and subsequent results. This role must bear three-dimensional questions at the same time:

* Value: What is about to be created, is it really valuable to the customer? Or is it just a boardroom assumption?

* Viability: Is this consistent with business models, strategies and organizational constraints?

* Accountability: If the results are not as expected, who are the people to explain, learn, and orient?

Product Manager in this sense is not a coordinator, but a real problem owner and outcome owner.

If your Product Manager still has to wait for the command to "What features to do?" that role may not be different from the renamed Project Manager, and the organization is deluding itself into doing a Product.

2. Return the chair to the Engineer in the decision room.

One of the most serious structural mistakes is to view an Engineer as just an Executor or a Recipient, when, in reality, an Engineer is a group of people who understand the limitations and potential of technology in an organization.

The question to ask is, the person who can make Product real is Engineer, so why aren't they sitting in a room that decides what to build?

* In an effective Product Operating Model, Engineers must play a greater role than evaluating Feasibility. They should be involved from the Discovery stage, from questioning, experimenting with guidelines, to offering solutions that executives may not see from a strategic angle.

* A lot of innovation stems not from PowerPoint, but from Engineers knowing how technology can "turn the game around" the original problem. Cutting Engineer off from the Roadmap is therefore not just a cultural problem, but unconsciously cutting off enterprise innovation opportunities.

3. Product Designer is someone who makes it more beautiful, which is to make the value "accessible."

In many organizations, Product Designer is also limited to making the UI beautiful or moving the pixels according to the Requirements that are passed on from the specification documents, but in the real Product Operating Model, this role is responsible for the whole system "experience," from the point that the customer does not know the Product to the date of the decision to use it or discontinue it.

* Imagine two banking apps with similar functions. The first app has beautiful buttons, good colors, but customers often transfer money in the wrong account, can't find the menu, and aren't sure if the transaction is successful yet. The other app may not whiz, but the step sequence is clear, warning before pressing wrong, and makes the user "confident" every time you click. The latter app is the product designer.

* Product Designer must answer the question of how customers can understand the value of this product, how to use it without confusion, and how they feel when interacting with it. His work is not purely artistic, but a combination of human behavior, technology, and practical context.

For example, if an organization wants to add a subscription conversion, the Designer's question is not "What color should the subscription button be?" but "Where do users hesitate? Why not subscribe? And how do we reduce that friction?" which may end up reducing the steps, adding descriptions, or redesigning Flow entirely.

"So beauty is just the end result, not the main goal of this role."

4. The indispensable dimension is "Strategy - Discovery - Delivery."

The reason why copying other people's models often fails is because each organization has a different business context, people, and culture. The best thing to do is not to adopt the finished model, but to design your own Product Operating Model with three key dimensions that need to be connected all the time.

* Product Strategy: What problems do we choose to solve? And why is this problem more important to business than others? For example, a company may have ten features, but Strategy will help determine which features affect revenue, growth, or survival the most.

* Product Discovery: When choosing a problem, how do we know if the solution is thought to be "Yes?" Not just guessing Discovery is a range of experiments, talking to customers, doing a Prototype test, and accepting that the first idea may be wrong to learn quickly and at a low cost?

* Product Delivery: No matter how good an idea is, if the team is not built or delivered too slowly, business opportunities disappear. Delivery is the ability to create practical, quality and consistently delivered to customers.

Think of a team that has a clear strategy but does not do Discovery. They often create things that no one uses. On the other hand, a team that Discovery is good at but Delivery is soft, will only get good Insight in a drawer but never on the market. And if there is Delivery alone without Strategy, the team will be busy with tasks that do not produce significant results.

"Without a dimension, the team will fall into a trap, building something that no one uses or can't build until it loses business opportunities."

5. Communication trap with management?

Many Product teams often complain that executives don't understand Product, like to order, change their minds often, or interfere with Micro-management, but Marty Cagan once said, "This problem in many cases is not the management, but the way the Product team communicates."

Imagine two kinds of dialogue.

* The first is "The team wants to do this feature because the customer should like it." The executive immediately asks back why it was worth it and how it targeted the company? "When the answer is unclear, what follows is command and control."

* Another is, "We found that the core group of customers is deprecated because of this procedure, and if solved, it increases the reuse rate by X%, which directly affects revenue." Dialogues like this automatically change the executive role from "command man" to "support man."

"If you can't explain how what you're doing will solve business problems, you're never truly free to make decisions."

A good Product Operating Model must connect team goals to organizational goals. As the language of the conversation changes from Feature to Outcome, from Roadmap to Impact, management patterns naturally move from Command & Control to Empowerment, and trust is gradually built up from portfolio, not from position.

So design a process to suit a job, not a role.

The Product Operating Model design is not the most perfect Org Chart hunt, but a return to honestly asking yourself,

* What is the work the organization really needs to do?

* Have we put the right person into a process that allows him to maximize his potential?

* Stop giving employees a title, but delegate authority and responsibility to solve problems because the Product Operating Model is not on paper, but in the way you think, how you make decisions, and the culture of your organization.

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