In this episode, Aimé reflects on two Product Owners — one who showed him what greatness looks like, and one who taught him the cost of structural malpractice. The contrast is structural as much as personal.
The Great Product Owner: The PO As Activator
“Our product owner was really able to persuade the larger group of 60 people and activate them.” – Aimé Flemm
When Aimé’s company moved to LeSS, they collapsed seven Product Owners down to four — and effectively one head PO who had to step up. “All of a sudden had this one product owner who needed to step up his game — to become this leader who’s visionary, who has some kind of charisma.” The structure forced the role to grow.
The new PO had to lead 60 people, not five. And he did it. Not by writing more stories or shoving work harder, but by becoming an activator — visionary, charismatic, able to rally people behind a product direction. Aimé’s framing: structure created the conditions for greatness.
Reduce PO count, increase scope per PO, and the role has to step into real product leadership. “It doesn’t happen too often that you get the opportunity to really have THE product owner in the company, and just the one.”
Self-reflection Question: Does your structure give your PO room to be a leader — or does it force them to be a story-writer for one team?
The Bad Product Owner: The Team-Manager-In-Disguise
“What this product owner really did was just managing the team. He had the power to hire and fire, to decide on promotions, pay raises.” – Aimé Flemm
Aimé’s second PO ever was the opposite of an activator. He was a team manager in disguise — with full hire/fire authority and control over promotions and pay raises. He showed up about 15 minutes a week. “Just telling them, ‘oh yeah, this is good, you should do this and do this,’ and then he was gone for the rest of the week.” What followed was textbook decay: an avoidant team, no initiative, refusing workshops and improvement work.
“It became a collection of individuals, all on their own island. Just fixing their own work, just to make sure that they looked good.” Aimé himself couldn’t push back — his own job security ran through the same person.
As Vasco named it in the conversation: these aren’t product owners — they’re output owners. Work-shovers. Proxies. The dynamic kills product value over time, because nobody is steering toward the customer.
Self-reflection Question: Is your PO an activator who rallies people behind a vision — or a proxy who shoves work from one inbox to another?
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About Aimé Flemm
Aimé Flemm joins us from the Netherlands. Our guest is an organizational design coach who starts where most agile transformations stop. He works at the structural level: redesigning the incentives, reporting lines, and systems that either enable or quietly kill agility. His belief: you can’t coach your way out of a broken org design.
You can link with Aimé Flemm on LinkedIn.
