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Event: Product Ops Berlin Meetup 2024/11 (in person) / POPS x Product Ambulance Xmas Event 2024/12 (online)

After the Transformation is often before the Transformation: Big changes, usually from the top, chase each other but the same problems persist. But what if we could change that? We've all been through a reorg or three - where senior leadership comes at us with a new team structure that will definitely be better than the last, and will finally empower us to become more Product-Led™️ But given how many transformations fail, is it time we started looking at how sustainable change really happens in an organisation? And is it time to call the top down model into question?

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When POPS organiser Antonia Landi asked me for a talk on bottom-up transformation and sustainable change I immediately sensed an opportunity to show, don’t tell: by co-creating the presentation rather than acting as a single authoritative speaker. The result is accordingly way better than anything I could have done just on my own. We merged perspectives from several disciplines with a framing that eases the transfer for product people.

Spoiler: top-down is not necessarily a problem but change by decree is. We want change by attraction.

👇 Find a short summary below the slides

https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVLMIcN0s=/?share_link_id=701862302401

Summary

Key Takeaways

• Change by attraction works much better than change by decree
• Successful organisational change requires building legitimacy through transparent, inclusive processes that align with shared values and norms
• Complex change spreads through regular interactions in small groups at the periphery, not from highly connected central nodes
• Effective change strategies involve starting small, leveraging networks, iterating, and building adaptive capabilities over time
• Key skills for change agents include empathy, self-awareness, systems thinking, and modelling desired behaviours

Topics

Understanding Power and Legitimacy

• Power in organisations stems from the ability to influence behaviour and actions
• Legitimacy is critical for sustainable change – it means authority is perceived as valid
• Building legitimacy requires aligning with shared identity (norms, values) and knowledge (data, processes)
• Lack of legitimacy leads to resistance, disengagement, and “legitimacy deficits” over time

Challenges with Top-Down Change

• Top-down approaches often rely on coercion and compliance rather than commitment