Chapter 22. Safety and Learning
In addition to reward structures that prevent people from innovating, the culture of the organization plays a big part. You might not be judging your teams for success based only on outputs, but they may still not be willing to try new things. Why? There may not be enough safety in the organization to fail and learn.
Marquetly was successful because the CEO and leaders held back while the teams were experimenting, even if that made them squirm a bit. Product managers need a certain amount of trust from the organization to have room to explore different options. To really push boundaries, teams are going to have to try some perceivably wild stuff. It might not be the solution you originally thought of and the teams might not have all the answers at the beginning, but if they are not allowed to explore these weird paths, they will never push the status quo. The status quo is safe. The status quo keeps you from innovating.
This doesn’t mean that we should be failing in spectacular ways. With the rise of Lean Startup, we began to focus on outcomes, yes, but we also started to celebrate failure. I want to be clear here: it is not a success if you fail and do not learn. Learning should be at the core of every product-led organization. It should be what drives us as an organization.
It is just better to fail in smaller ways, earlier, and to learn what will succeed, rather than spending all the time and money failing in a publicly large way. This is why ...
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