What paths do leaders take in an organization transitioning to a product mindset?

Becoming agile and transitioning to a “product mindset” are now necessities for organizations that want to improve performance while facing the numerous disruptions we now experience.

Issue: The potential frustrations caused by these transformations are rarely mentioned, particularly the evolution of the manager’s role. In this series of articles, we address this issue head-on, providing guidance on how to overcome these challenges.

In today’s second episode, we focus on the new roles that leaders will have in the future in product mode organizations.
5-minute read

Find the different episodes in our series:

1. Why transitioning to the product mode represents a loss for managers
2. But what becomes of the leaders in a product mode organization
3. As a Manager or a Top Manager, how empowering my teams is the most important thing I should do and how do I do ? (French)

Fewer leaders. The verdict is harsh. In an agile enterprise, where, as we saw in the previous article, teams are autonomous and empowered, managers lose a significant part of their operational purpose.

So, how can we “repurpose” these positions without a team, especially in the more rigid French regulatory context? That’s what we’ll explore in this article.

What happens to Top Management?

At this stage, a distinction is necessary. Let’s start with Top Management. In a product mode model, there are fewer managers… but there are still managers! “No agile enterprise without leaders in teams, without leaders in key positions, especially in the animation of autonomous teams,” rightly writes my colleague Ludovic Marty, Managing Director at Tasmane, in his Position Paper on the subject.

Their position remains, but their role changes. Here’s a summary of the role they must take on in this new context:

Transmit the vision

Without a vision, autonomous teams can quickly go in all directions, lacking overall coherence and clear prioritization. The leaders in such organizations must indicate the strategic direction the company should take in the coming years. But they must also regularly convey their enthusiasm to the teams to motivate them to head in that direction!

Define the frame

This point is closely related to the previous one but goes beyond it. Leaders in a product mode organization are the guarantors of team alignment. This is through the vision, as mentioned earlier. But also by providing resources to the teams so they can achieve the set objectives. Concrete example: managers must ensure that teams measure their performance correctly (velocity, productivity, etc.) and thus have the ability to improve progressively. In summary, leaders are animators and orchestrators whose influence is indirect on operations: they trust the teams to find solutions to problems, setting their own modus operandi.

What happens to middle managers?

Let’s now move on to middle management, the positions that are actually most affected by these new organizational methods. At Tasmane, we have identified three possible paths in these cases.

The mentoring path

The first possibility is to position oneself in service to the teams to help them grow and progress. This is referred to as a “Servant Leader.” The idea is to help teams truly become autonomous by improving their skills. This mentoring can focus either on operational excellence, such as delivery practices, strategy alignment, or the dissemination of best practices. Or on “managerial” mentoring to work on the team leaders’ posture.

The expertise path

The second possibility is to become an expert. An underestimated path in France but extremely useful for a team and fortunately gradually emerging in companies. Often, middle managers reach these levels of responsibility because they are good at their job, and a way must be found to reward them to retain them. Due to the lack of a career path that values expertise, both in terms of status and compensation! This can translate into people who are no longer in their place, who engage in micro-management to maintain their link with the field, or whose expertise diminishes without the adequate means to maintain and renew it. A product mode organization is an opportunity to valorize the quality of these underutilized potentials. Especially since these Senior profiles, also called individual contributors (IC), often bring a decisive added value to projects: solving complex problems, sharing deep technical or business expertise, launching new products…

The path of community animation

Finally, the third possibility is community animation. Transversality is a difficult but crucial notion to grasp for a product mode organization. Success in this area often requires dedicated functions that break down barriers between autonomous teams. Thus, these professional communities (sometimes called Practices or Chapters) can share best practices or resource challenges (staffing, tools, HR…). In other words, this role serves to facilitate interactions when the organization is composed of multiple entities. In summary, these middle managers can find significant roles by following the paths of mentoring, expertise, or community animation.

Here are the main possibilities for the evolution of these middle managers. However, it is possible to find other creative solutions based on the specificities of one’s company context.

Take, for example, this large French retailer we assisted some time ago. We imagined the implementation of autonomous teams, one “responsible” person, and… one “challenger” person, usually the head of another Business Unit.

Their goal? Challenge the team’s ideas in light of their business vision. In other words, managers become ambassadors of perspectives. Marketing will challenge finance, IT will challenge procurement, and so on. This aims to increase alignment across the entire structure and create synergies beyond the silos of different services.

To conclude on a reassuring note: just because new organizational methods require fewer managers doesn’t mean these individuals have no place in them.

Like in a movement of creative destruction, transitioning to the product mode condemns certain roles that have become obsolete but creates new ones necessary for the smooth functioning of a networked structure. The path to the agile enterprise involves fostering an agile culture… even for professions!

To delve deeper into this subject, we invite you, in this 3rd and final episode of our series, to consult Ludovic Marty’s white paper, which further explores the topic.

Key takeaways

In a product mode organization, leaders are still essential for conveying the vision and setting the framework… … but the function of middle management is clearly being questioned. These individuals can find significant roles by following the paths of mentoring, expertise, or community animation.