I’m responsible for this feature factory.

What would it be like to have an open conversation with your leader about why you never work on outcomes and instead work in a feature factory?

This is partly fun, partly true. The amount of truth is up to you to decide.

Your boss: “I’m responsible for this feature factory.”

“Ok” you say “can you tell me why?”

Your leader contemplates. “Well, a significant reason you work on features is because I am not collaborating and compromising effectively with my board room colleagues.”?

Gentle encouragement is going to be required to prise more from your leader. “Go on…” you nudge.?

“We collectively at leadership level don’t trust you enough to give you scope to build the things customers need. We want you to make the things that are more important to the shareholders, it’s because of our bonuses.” he explains.

Wow, you think. That’s brutal.

“Yes, I find it incredibly hard to convince other leaders at my level. Some of them are really open to discussing shared ground, but a few are invested in ideas that leave little room to walk back to the original strategy where we could form shared goals. If we did that we can negotiate whether their strategy is really the best one for all of us, not just their department. These colleagues are lost to conclusions they’ve already reached.”

“What sorts of conclusions?” you ask.

“We need to invest more in capabilities in their department, or the research confirms last years strategies should continue next year. Sometimes it’s less subtle, like 'just do it' how they want it done.’” he explains. “The input to the discussion is so concretely formed it’s hard to reverse back to ‘why?’”?

You consider a while, and ask “I’m wondering why don’t you involve the CEO? Can’t she encourage everyone to take a step back?”

“I do but often the CEO is not close enough to what’s going on, so compromise is the best I hope for. The gap between the real work and the executive team’s thinking is too large. The CEOs questions aren’t reinforcing clarity about where we want to go, and the lack of discussion about joined up customer-led outcomes means we at board level tend towards revenue driven growth goals. This creates heavier focus on sales & marketing activities and less on developing new strategies to support change and innovation for future growth.”

“Sounds like you could do with a better vision?” You ask. You know the company vision isn’t really adopted by your peers.

“Yes, to some extent. But I will probably refine the vision with my executive colleagues top-down and not involve you much.”

“Oh…” Another bombshell. After a moment’s consideration you ask: “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“It makes my job easier. Trying to convince my colleagues to listen to bottom-up input, customer feedback or any other data outside of their area requires them to let go of conclusions confirming their own view. They aren’t going to do that any time soon.”

“But why don’t you do more to push vision? Perhaps you can bring the customers problems alive at Exec level?”

“Why? Because it’s a huge amount of work to get outside-in evidence about customers needs and if it doesn’t fit just one leaders view, it will likely be diluted to the point of uselessness or worse, ignored. Leaders are focused on revenue growth and EBITDA, refining the machinery that worked previously is safe, innovation is too risky for everyone’s bonus. With some of the leadership team uninterested in anything outside their department, and the leadership’s focus on last years trajectory, I know that the collaboration necessary to build a really meaningful vision that could result in something special is doomed before it’s started.”

Outcomes are consequential to the quality of collaboration and compromise possible at leadership level. In the absence of this, a common language is formed based on features because it's easier to agree on.

This is how feature factories are made.