(2023-09-09) Cutler Tbm231 Productivity The Clash

John Cutler: TBM 231: Productivity (The Clash). When times are good, companies develop a mix of good habits and bad habits. When times get tough, they can no longer get by with bad habits. And in many cases, the habits that were a good fit for boom times are no longer a good fit for leaner times.

I recently posted on LinkedIn about productivity. Adam Yuret posted a very interesting reply: A major issue is American individualism in leadership culture. Systems thinking... are all things most enterprise executives I've encountered reject as "excuses" for individuals not being accountable. (Or... They want to stick with magical thinking, and leave execution as Someone Else's Problem.)

Adam and the executive operate within different cultural frameworks and paradigms. While clashes are a constant, my guess is that "under threat"—the threat of layoffs, pressure from investors, increased blame-placing—that these differences get amplified.

This is how I interpreted the recent statements from Brian Chesky regarding product management at AirBnb

Itamar Gilad noticed the same thing: Chesky was apparently not happy with how democratic, distributed, and data-driven AirBnB has become. He felt that made the development process slow, expensive, and lacking in cohesion. ((2023-09-09) Itamar Gilad On Linkedin Why Did Airbnb Kill Product Management)

Consider this quote from a product manager (large, enterprise-focused B2B SaaS): When things were booming, our executives were spending like crazy. They had no strategy. And now they have the gall to come in here and talk about productivity? They want the same output; meanwhile, we're digging out from the debt of all their crappy decisions for the last couple of years. They say we're now in 'war-time', but that assumes we were in 'peace-time'. We weren't: we were in crazy-time.

Or a founder at a very fast growing startup: I get the empowerment thing, but there is a level of hubris here on the part of our product managers. The second we ask for any kind of visibility they push back. The second we ask for a timeline they push back. I understand! I was like that. But this is non-trivial. This is literally our survival as a company on the line.

In each of these examples there are is a clash.

Imagine two companies

One company positions productivity as a collectivist effort at doing more with less but doing so by focusing more, working more sustainably, making the hard decisions

Another company positions productivity as a game of metrics, measurement, accountability

Which do you find yourself drawn to? Why?

If your company is currently mired in discussions about productivity, realize that this is a proxy discussion for something else.

Keep that in mind when you try to address this "rationally". It probably will not work.

You are threatened. They are threatened. You’ll have to work through it.