By Marty Cagan · svpg.com · LinkedIn
This piece profiles Datasite, formerly Merrill Corporation, a financial-document printer that had to reinvent itself as cloud demand grew. The company was slow, hierarchical and risk-averse, so it reframed its culture around giving people the freedom to challenge the status quo and learn from failure. Authority shifted from job titles to influence, and ideas stopped being buried under endless scrutiny. The author argues this people-first approach drove faster product delivery and measurable revenue growth. For product leaders, it illustrates how culture and decision rights shape a company's ability to innovate.
01Key takeaways
- Expect skepticism when introducing new ways of working, especially in risk-averse organizations.
- Replace heavy, multi-round approval processes that turn new initiatives into death by analysis.
- Let influence, not job title, determine who can drive decisions and move work forward.
- Make it safe for people to experiment and learn from failure to keep product teams innovating.
- Tie cultural change to concrete outcomes like delivery speed and revenue to show its value.
02Key sections
- The starting point
- Merrill Corporation was a print business facing customers moving to the cloud. Its culture was rigid, siloed and hostile to collaboration.
- Rebranding around a new vision
- The CEO set a vision of a fast, decentralized business and rebranded as Datasite after divesting its legacy printing unit.
- Freedom to grow as a core principle
- Leaders found people were wary of new ideas, so they committed to letting employees question norms and learn through failure.
- Shifting where authority comes from
- Influence replaced title as the source of authority, and new ideas were freed from endless enterprise-level approval loops.
- Results
- Faster delivery of customer-facing changes and a revenue rise of over 30% in 2019 suggested the cultural shift paid off.
03From the post
“A partnership dedicated to teaching best practices to product teams and product leaders”
Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.