What kind of culture is a better process to get you better outcomes?
I had an interesting interaction on a post recently, but in Portuguese, which I later summarized on a LinkedIn post and I think is worthy also further elaborating on it here…
The context was a kind of model suggesting different levels of what I suppose we call “maturity”, until you get to “product culture”. This was challenged on the grounds of product culture in and of itself not being an assurance of success.
And in fact, one could argue that it is worse than that, that your customers couldn’t care less about nearly everything you do internally, for as long as they feel like well-served by your offering. That's right - and here's non-exhaustive meaningful things your customers couldn't care less about:
How you are organized (unit, department, teams, etc.);
How you operate, how work flows and gets done (for as along as your product/service gets to their hand when they need);
What kind of culture you have - even if it is more oriented to projects or products;
What kind of methods, frameworks or techniques you use - including whether you are doing Agile or not;
This one will sound harsh, which doesn't mean it is not true - they barely care whether you have nobler purposes for doing what you do or are just doing it for the money (profit). Although I do recognize here that this is somewhat changing through the ages, and should be for the good.
To be clear - all of that is just to say that, ultimately, the customer really cares about what they can see and experience, how they feel when they use our product, or need to connect with us for some reason or not, and how satisfying all those experiences are, and stuff like that.
That said, and I know here I'm borderline contradicting myself, it would also be fairly considered rational to imagine that, just the means don't normally justify the ends, one would expect that better means tend to produce (although not guarantee) better ends. Put in other words, it is a probabilistic matter: what kind of process or ways of doing stuff will more often than not generate the desired outcome.
There's a quote I read from a book ("Start At The End") that captures that idea well, in my view:
“We’ll prioritize outcome over process, while recognizing that some processes get you better outcomes”. - Matt Wallaert
Now, back to the original point, could we argue that having a so-called "product culture" would fit that criterion of a process that get you better outcomes?
I believe some would make that argument. And to some extent I can see where they come from - but I have slightly different views. To start with, I am not convinced that there is such a thing as a "product culture". I am not particularly a fan of that notion - which might surprise some, being I myself currently a leader in product management!
The thing to is that thinking "product", and how you go about managing them, has less to do with a "culture" (as in the practices and how you go about getting stuff done), and much more to with an approach towards dealing with problems. Where you have the clarity of not converging and fixing to a solution before you have a higher level of conviction that the designed option will with some degree of likelihood deliver the outcome, or at least will help you to learn more so that you are closer to get there - thus being fundamentally an experiment.
And that brings me to the punchline, so to speak. In essence, the kind of cultural trait that, in my humble opinion, brings about what it takes to increase your probability to get the outcomes more in line with what your customers need (watch the nuance here - not necessarily want) is to have a learning organization.
One that aspires for making things better relentlessly on a daily basis, on a highly factual and evidence basis, but also willing to take that learnings, process them, and is prepared to take bigger leaps every now and then. Put in one word:
Adaptive.