This piece hits so close to home. I would love to read up more on companies where the model you described works in practice. What are the lessons learned? How are these orgs and reporting strictures designed? How are people handling multiple product lines successfully?
It's almost fascinating to watch how product people evolve from having borderline ultimate control over the vision, development direction, and P&L when the product is at its earliest stage, to having close to none once an organization is sufficiently big.
It boils down to the autonomy of each individual being reduced as we build the structural hierarchy. While we treat that as obvious, it is not.
Of course, a high degree of autonomy creates different challenges altogether. It's enough to look at Spotify. Their apps are a literal UX person's nightmare, and that reflects how their product organization was structured back in the day (the (in)famous Spotify Model).
The opposite example would be Amazon, with thousands of ongoing live experiments at any given moment. They make sure they're all aligned through a set of metrics and an automated rollback mechanism. If something doesn't help the bottom line, it gets scraped, sorry.
A side thought: influence or control over the product does not necessarily translate to impact. Look at the early-stage product development and you'll see plenty of bad calls, building stuff that shouldn't be built in the first place, wasting money.
This piece hits so close to home. I would love to read up more on companies where the model you described works in practice. What are the lessons learned? How are these orgs and reporting strictures designed? How are people handling multiple product lines successfully?
probably best as a 1:1 discussion - hit me up on LinkedIn t.co/ib or continue the conversation with my digital clone https://lemonaid.app/
It's almost fascinating to watch how product people evolve from having borderline ultimate control over the vision, development direction, and P&L when the product is at its earliest stage, to having close to none once an organization is sufficiently big.
It boils down to the autonomy of each individual being reduced as we build the structural hierarchy. While we treat that as obvious, it is not.
Of course, a high degree of autonomy creates different challenges altogether. It's enough to look at Spotify. Their apps are a literal UX person's nightmare, and that reflects how their product organization was structured back in the day (the (in)famous Spotify Model).
The opposite example would be Amazon, with thousands of ongoing live experiments at any given moment. They make sure they're all aligned through a set of metrics and an automated rollback mechanism. If something doesn't help the bottom line, it gets scraped, sorry.
At a meta-level, it's all about striking the balance between autonomy and alignment (https://brodzinski.com/2025/05/role-of-alignment.html).
A side thought: influence or control over the product does not necessarily translate to impact. Look at the early-stage product development and you'll see plenty of bad calls, building stuff that shouldn't be built in the first place, wasting money.
It's not just ineffectual. It's plainly harmful.
I really like the autonomy / alignment 2x2 in your post!
It comes from Stephen's Bungay's The Art of Action, which I wholeheartedly recommend.
will check it out