I have seen too many product organizations where the Product Owners are not empowered to actually own their products. Too often it is someone “above” them dictating or managing what they are doing, when what should be happening is servant leadership supporting the Product Owner.

 Product Organizations need to be collapsed so that only the essential people are involved, no question there is a need for sales and marketing professionals and many supporting players but it is in the executive and leadership realm that middle management needs to be removed and true servant leadership needs to be established. The leader of the product organization should have Product Owners reporting directly to them and they should not be telling POs what to do but only “where to go” to fulfill the strategic goals of the company, then standing back and letting them go there by any means they deem productive.

 Product leaders need to support their POs, coach them, mentor them, empower them and stay out of their backlogs, stay away from suggesting features or being involved in design. They should help create the OKRs and KPIs used to measure the success of the products, they should run interference and provide air cover for experimentation and failure.

 Product organizations need middle management like a fish needs a bicycle. Let’s collapse the organization down to its essentials and truly lead them into successful delivery of business value.