Preparing Leaders and Stakeholders to Support Product Operating Model Pilot Teams

Teresa Torres and Hope Gurion argue that a champion such as a CEO can start a product operating model shift, but it stalls without support from leaders and stakeholders across the company. Pilot teams need managers and stakeholders who agree on meaningful outcomes, who share the belief that outcome-driven work is the right way to operate, and who learn to manage by outcomes instead of outputs. The authors also stress that pilot teams must be transparent and collaborative, showing their evidence and bringing trade-offs back to stakeholders for joint decisions. The piece matters because org transformations often train product teams while forgetting that the rest of the organization must change too.

01Key takeaways

• Get explicit agreement from direct managers and key stakeholders that the pilot's outcome is meaningful before starting.
• Make sure every leader gives the pilot team consistent messages about why outcome-driven work matters.
• Offer coaching so managers learn to ask evidence-based questions instead of dictating features.
• Show your evidence and trade-offs openly so stakeholders can trust new information and decide together.
• Ask each stakeholder which decisions they want to join, such as opportunity selection or solution ideation.
• Start with a few pilot teams so the rest of the organization is not changing all at once.

02Key sections

Stakeholder buy-in on outcomes

Leaders must agree that a pilot team is worth trying and that each team's target outcome is meaningful. Key stakeholders outside the team should also have a say in choosing that outcome.

Mixed messages and uneven change

Executives and middle managers change at different paces, so pilot teams can receive conflicting signals. This disrupts the team and undermines the pilot.

Leaders learning to manage by outcomes

Managers used to dictating features need coaching to ask good questions and examine evidence rather than issue orders. Leaders often feel loss of control and fear accountability for uncertain results.

Transparency and collaborative decisions

Empowered teams do not decide alone; they do exploratory work, surface trade-offs, and decide jointly with stakeholders. Teams should ask stakeholders which decisions they want to be involved in.

Adapting to different stakeholders

Some leaders want to follow every learning cycle while others only want to know what will be built, so teams must tailor how they share their work.

03From the post

“A single champion can often inspire an organization to shift to the product operating model—especially if that champion is the CEO or CPO. But that’s only the first step. Your transformation will get stuck without support from people throughout your company. Over the past few months, I’ve”

04Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.