If You’re Not Ready to Take Risks, You’re Not Ready to Succeed.
Risk-averse teams will never unleash their true potential.
Risk-averse teams will never unleash their true potential.
How do you make decisions?
Do you focus on mitigating risks or maximizing opportunities?
What matters most for you, the consequences of failure or the prospects of success?
When teams focus on mitigating risks and avoiding failures, they dramatically diminish their potential. You cannot succeed without taking risks. Yet, decision-makers are often afraid of embracing risks. The unknown frightens them. No wonder only a few companies stand out.
“You can’t make decisions based on fear and the possibility of what might happen.”
― Michelle Obama
One of the most important learnings I had as a Product Owner is almost nothing is worse than not making a decision. Even a bad decision yields learning. The avoidance of making decisions gets the team stuck and sinks the motivation.
Let me share some stories where taking risks led to success and not taking led to mediocrity. I hope you can benefit from these stories.
Don’t Follow Orders. Follow Directions.
After almost five years of working on the same product, I decided to move on. I longed for something different. Although I wasn’t clear about what I wanted to do, I was clear on what I didn’t want. I had several interviews, and I removed my application whenever I heard words like requirements, yearly plan, steering committee, etc.
It took months of interviews until I finally decided to sign with a startup. Honestly, I had no idea what awaited me, yet I was super excited about it. When I joined them, the CEO told me, “You’re the Product Owner. I give you directions, and you make decisions. That’s how we will work together.” His words gave me the confidence I would have the flexibility I needed. However, what he meant by directions was slightly different from what I expected. Here are some examples:
Develop ten variants of our landing page and find what works best
Create an app for clients to ensure they understand what’s going on
Ensure our infrastructure uses top-notch technology as our investors are picky about it
Whenever he came with “directions,” I felt trapped. I could do as he said, or I could take risks. Initially, I was on the first part. And I remember the reaction of developers when I told them we would build ten variants of our website, “Are you out of your mind? What’s the point in doing that?” I paused and reflected. I had a choice to make, either stick with the CEO’s request or follow my intuition. Ultimately, I said, “Our conversion rate sucks. Either we get better at it or get out of business.” That fired the team, and we started brainstorming on our opportunities and how we could change our scenario.
As a Product Owner, I took the risk of going against the CEO. We ignored his request, but we didn’t miss the problem. We did what we should do instead of what we were told. I didn’t try convincing the CEO with reason; I left him in the dark for a while, hoping the results would talk by themselves. Ultimately, we optimized our conversion rate to a sustainable level. Had we done as the CEO wanted, we wouldn’t get the results the business needed. I knew the risk I took; I could lose my job if we had failed. But following pointless orders would be worse than being unemployed.
My learning: Product Owners should focus on creating value instead of protecting their job.
Don’t Let a Plan Get In the Way of Momentum.
Continuing the startup story mentioned before, we identified a potential idea and wanted to validate it. Our business was about helping car owners sell their cars for a fair price without stress. Our idea was simple, send an inspector to the car owners’ home, inspect the vehicle, put it on the auction platform, and make a purchase offer. The whole process would take just an hour. The idea sounded promising to us, but we had to validate our assumptions.
Would car owners allow an inspector to go to their homes?
Would we find enough interested car dealers in such a short time?
Would we be able to make a fair offer to the car owner?
That’s when I had my first Design Sprint (based on Google Venture’s method). Until now, I get goosebumps when I remember the amount of learning we created in just a week. We validated our assumptions and noticed we would need some adaptions to reach the expected results.
The board gave us three Sprints to implement this idea, no more than that, because they wanted us to focus on the roadmap afterward. We faced many trade-offs with delivering our Minimum Viable Product (MVP). We had to cut some corners, though the team was uncomfortable with it. Yet, we agreed to do our best during these three Sprints and measure the outcome with our clients. We hoped the numbers would back us up to gain more time.
As we finished the second Sprint, we released a beta version and learned a lot from our clients. It didn’t take long to identify some roadblocks, and we had to adapt the course of our third Sprint to increase engagement. The problem came after we finished our last round. We still had known issues to fix, and developers wanted to address the tech debt created to enable the MVP. Unfortunately, that’s the moment the roadmap got in the way.
Management didn’t want to invest any longer in this initiative. They wanted proof it would create the value expected before putting more money into it. And that’s when they decided to avoid risks and follow a plan. We were forced to come back to our roadmap plan. It was such a pity; we lost momentum. And ultimately, our solution ended up as a failure; with the open issues, clients didn’t use it any longer, and developers felt disappointed.
When organizations focus on predictability, results are often disappointing.
No matter the situation you’re in, you should be the one driving your actions. When I look back at both stories I shared, the first one I took risks by going against the CEO, while the second one I bowed to the board decision. I acted like a victim of the circumstances and failed. At least, I learned a valuable lesson: don’t behave like a victim. Nowadays, whenever I identify this pattern, I immediately search for ways of switching from victim to hero of my story.
Follow Your Vision, Not Your Plan.
Why do companies focus so much on developing a prescriptive roadmap? Think about it for a minute. We are humans, and we love security. A plan gives us the illusion of safety. And yet, it limits us more than you can imagine.
Consider the situation I’ve just shared. We identified an opportunity connected to our vision, and we made progress with it. Thanks to Scrum, we identified critical points to address, we were confident we could generate the expected results, but we needed to continue working on it. That’s when the plan got in the way.
Instead of promising results, executives agreed with investors we would implement three different business models during the second semester of 2016. The inspection at the car owners’ home I mentioned was one of them. I was pissed off. Our focus was on keeping promises and meeting deadlines instead of delivering real value.
If you want to ensure meaningless results, follow a plan. To thrive, you’ve got to embrace the unknown.
My Learnings From My Mistakes
I shared two situations with you. The difference is clear, but let me share the lessons I learned from them.
Going back to the first example, although the CEO was intimidating with his requests, I opted to take the driving seat and do what a product professional would do; focus on creating value. When I told the CEO we got the expected results, he was relieved and didn’t care about not following his “directions”. My learning: focus on creating value even it means going against your boss.
When I look back at the second situation, I failed as a Product Owner. The conflict was on the table, and I didn’t react; I bowed to the management directions instead. Even if that made no sense, I became a victim and ultimately felt powerless. At the end of the semester, we tested three business models, none of them were successful. My learning, don’t shy away from conflicts.
Did you like this post? What about becoming a Medium member to benefit from unlimed reading? By doing that, you also support writers like me and thousands of others 😊
Special thanks to, Fredrik Carleson, Paweł Huryn, Willem-Jan Ageling, and Sjoerd Nijland for reviewing this piece