
You need to think like a coach when you lead a product operating model transformation.
After all, a considerable part of your role is to architect a vision and set goals for achieving it. When you hit resistance, you rethink. And redirect. And rethink again.
Until you encounter so many obstacles that you start plugging these types of prompts into ChatGPT:
- “Why do our teams keep working in silos despite all our efforts to collaborate?”
- “I’ve spent months trying to get Engineering and Product to align. Why is this so hard, and what actually works?”
- “I’m tired of stakeholders bypassing our product process. Give me a script for pushing back without burning bridges.”
The good news? You’re not alone. In a survey we ran last year on product operating models, 97% of respondents said they’d faced at least one roadblock while shifting from project to product.
Alan Manuel, GVP, Product Management at Planview, explains how your mindset factors into the success of your transformation.
“One of the biggest lessons in trying to achieve a product operating model is that approaching change from the perspective of a change agent alone almost never works,” he explains.
You need to think like a coach and a player to be an effective leader.
“You’re teaching people how to become great product managers or product engineers or how to work within a great product organization,” continues Alan. “But you can’t do that effectively without understanding product thinking.”
The 12 Essential Shifts
After years of working with tech and business leaders across industries, Alan has identified 12 essential mindset shifts that help leaders effectively implement product operating models: Perspective, Guidance, Timing, Constraints, Pacing, Principles, Audience, Ownership, Customers, Objective, AI, and the First Transformation.
We’ll unpack the first three shifts below. Listen to Alan explain the rest in this quick 21-minute talk.
#12 – Perspective: The Foundation of Change
Perspective refers to how a person views things. In transformation, success heavily depends on leaders and coaches understanding and adopting the perspective of the teams they’re trying to change.
While transformation may seem unique because it introduces new concepts, structures, and terminology, it’s similar to how product teams already work.
Here are some of the parallels between product development and transformation:
- Product managers continuously instrument their products, gather data, experiment, and iterate to improve
- Similarly, transformation leaders instrument workflows and improve how people work together
- Both processes rely on iterative optimization and learning from mistakes
What might seem exciting to transformation leaders, like flow, value stream management, and governance changes, often appears as an obstacle to product managers focused on shipping products. However, you can bridge this gap by framing transformation in familiar terms of measurement and iterative improvement.
This understanding helps create better collaboration and more effective transformation efforts by aligning with how product teams naturally work and think.
Read Next: Scaling Flow at Vanguard: A Journey from Pilot to Enterprise Transformation
#11 – Guidance: Making Change Accessible
Guidance represents the collective instructions provided to teams transitioning to a product operating model. It’s delivered through various formats like training, presentations, documentation, and videos.
While transformation professionals naturally want to be thorough, especially given new roles and changing work patterns, it’s best to strike a balance between depth and efficiency.
Being too thorough often leads to excessive time spent debating minor details. This approach is sometimes called the “using Waterfall to be Agile” approach because you try to decide everything about your future operating model before you even start using it.
Instead, accept that not all answers will be available at the beginning. Define the “80% use case” – the point when 80% of day-to-day situations are covered – and then move quickly to implementation.
This practical strategy achieves two important goals: It saves time by avoiding endless debates about edge cases and enables teams to take ownership of their products and the processes for building them.
Read Next: 8 Roadblocks in the Project to Product Journey You Might Be Facing
#10 – Timing: The Rhythm of Change
Lasting change takes both time and timing.
As a transformation leader, you think long term to ensure that the right groups and processes change at the right time.
Most product managers don’t think like that. They think about the features their customers need today (or maybe needed yesterday), what the competition has just released, or ways to stay innovative.
In short, while you’re thinking of long-term actions, product managers are thinking about near-term actions.
You’ll find common ground when you:
- Focus on communicating immediate benefits rather than just long-term value
- Show how changes will deliver concrete advantages: better data, new insights, or unlocked resources
- Frame meetings and process changes in terms of their direct impact on the next product release
When you connect each transformation step to immediate product wins, you turn potential resistance into forward momentum.
Read Next: Verizon’s “Secret Weapon” for Keeping Their Product Vision on Track
Explore the Rest
Now that you’ve uncovered the details for the first three mindset shifts, see how to implement the remaining nine: Constraints, Pacing, Principles, Audience, Ownership, Customers, Objective, AI, and the First Transformation.
Watch Alan’s full presentation: “Unlearn What You Know: Stop Thinking Like a Coach and Start Thinking Like a Player.”