Liberating Structure to create successful products and solutions?
Chandan Lal Patary
Empowering Business Transformation | Author of 8 Insightful Guides | The Scrum Master Guidebook | The Product Owner Guidebook | The High Performance Team Coaching Guidebook | The Leadership Guidebook
Why should Product Managers apply the LS (Liberating Structure) principle to create successful products and solutions?
When we deal with complex product solutions, there are too many variables and too many unknowns.
Today’s digital transformation progresses through complex magnitudes. Technology and complex user behaviors force us to think differently.
Most of the time, individuals get into ambiguous situations, as the way forward is not so distinct.
Chance is that we may fall trapped into the old habit which is controlling!
Control influences innovation in the negative way, but it will bring short term results. Fear is a big driver for shot term gain!
How can we unleash the power of a product owner or product manager in the product development life cycle?
Most of the coaches are employing the Liberation structure principle in their facilitation sessions.
We are also coaching our product owners and product managers, why not the Product Management team use the same to build successful products and solutions?
We recommend that this LS principle can be adopted by the product owner during their disparate meetings to figure out the complex issue.
I could see with these guidelines some kind of positive ambient can be produced. Have you worked on these?
Let us examine how these are relevant in the product development context
Liberating Structures:
Never Start Without Clear Purpose:
Most of the product owners invariably start with product vision and chop down that product vision into sprint vision. The team recognizes the purpose of the product and does the same with sprints.
Let the product owner persistently apply the purpose-driven Agile ceremonies.
Challenges: There is no time to establish purpose and transfer the same well. No one cares to propagate the purpose repeatedly. Some time purpose is not simple enough. Some time purpose is outdated and initial people who build the same leave the team!
Engage In Seriously-Playful Curiosity:
The boundless curiosity brings innovation into the work context. Product owners for the best product are immensely curious to know more about the customer requirements and many other product requirements.
They encourage the team to be curious, to get the benefit of the curiosity. I have worked with many great product team members who have this skill. As a Product Owner, encourageOwner, encourage people to ask silly questions or guide them to think like children. Allow them to feel like it is ok to fail.
Challenges : People are under pressure to release something remarkably fast. On paper, everyone is empowered to think, but in reality everyone is overbooked! Where is the time to do playful curiosity
Invite Creative Destruction To Enable Innovation:
Most of the time in backlog grooming sessions, product owners can apply this technique to bring out the best from the team. Encourage people to speak out without fear. Give them ambient to convey their mind. In the product discovery session, when things are not so clear as things are evolving, that is the time where product owners can demonstrate such traits.
Challenges: Culture is not enabling such things to take effect. Leadership does not want things to look so awful; they are intimidating all these experiments and at surface level, go for it but under the carpet they are criticizing so no one is daring to do this.
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Emphasize Possibilities: Believe Before You See:
During the sprint demo, the working product has been demonstrated to all. This will establish the possibility, based on the working software, to expand the image of what else can be done. Never grant negative comments to kill the power of expanding possibilities.
Challenges: The discussion in the meetings is not welcoming new thoughts; team members are not allowed to challenge their seniors. Open criticism makes it burdensome for people to express their thoughts.
Amplify Freedom AND Responsibility:
As a Product owner, let us use the “fail fast” thoughts and let this thought dominate the flow. The major learning comes when we experiment freely and rapidly. The fear-free culture will encourage people to take ownership and find out about the unknown. Let us not put too much role and constraint on stiffening freedom.
Challenges: Leadership style is outdated. The old school of thought is pushing all the programs and initiatives. They fear losing control.
Practice Self-Discovery Within a Group:
Allow team members to find their own solution. Let them discover the solution by passing through the pains and gains. Highly diverse teams are good for the product and solution. They will be produced to be part of the team. Evade top-down solutions and provoke team-centric solutions.
Challenges: Team members are not sophisticated enough to go beyond established boundary. They are very hectic with business as usual work and are thoroughly overbooked.
Learn by Failing Forward:
The maximum learning comes when we experiment with something and it did not proceed as we had expected. We learn and prepare better. Small risks are better as it have less impact. The new product feature is invariably gone by small iterations and impact analysis of that iteration. Take the call as a product owner on how much risk a team can take and move on. Do we have to be successful all the time? Memorandum this answer in the perfect manner.
Challenges: There is no such word call failure! It is not expected for people to fail as they are professional and mature! That is, the culture has been established. It is feasible only in powerPoint.
Everyone wants 100% success; tolerating failure is?less, Blame?is?easy,?Plan?for success and ensuring no one fails is common. So over a period of time people realize it is just in presentation.
Build Trust As You Go:
A great product built by great team members. A great team member forms with many months and years of working collectively. Those journeys are strengthened by considerable team support and holding each other in all the time. Turbulence at time demands more trust among team members. A great product owner knows this part.
Challenges: Though every PO tries to ensure trust elements live in the ecosystem BUT owing to some pressure, they give importance to other elements But trust
Practice Deep Respect for People and Local Solutions:
Understand the people’s expertise for their contribution. In a great product, every team member creates a space in their team through their expertise and support. Encourage the skill and capability development with the periodic acknowledgement of their contribution.
Challenges: It is there in town-hall meeting. It is there in power sessions and presentations. It is not visible to ground-level team members.
Include and Unleash Everyone:
In all the agile ceremonies, it is significant to engage all the team members for a better solution. Encouraging everyone to talk and share their comments, Call out their name if people hesitate to make the comments.
These techniques will alleviate any product owners to become better by developing a better product and solution;
After talking with the product owner, they felt wow satisfaction as the team outcome has improved. All these develop positive mindsets among team members.
Challenges: There is bias in people’s mind. There are silos in the team, there are lobby in leadership, there are barriers in department, and teams. Team members are struggling to exchange their communication and thoughts.?
Can we help these Products team members?