Imagine a company that spends a year building an iPad app—and on launch day the product owner says: “Now it’ll be interesting to see if anyone uses it.” In this episode, Marcus Hammarberg and Tore Fjaertoft share why organizations keep installing frameworks like software, why it still doesn’t work, and what they’ve learned from places like Spotify about treating your way of working as a product in itself.
When Copying Without Adopting Becomes the Norm
“It becomes more about following whatever this framework tells you to do, rather than to understand what the problem you’re trying to solve is all about.”
Marcus and Tore met at a consultancy in Malmö and within 15 minutes realized they shared the same frustrations—despite coming from opposite directions. Marcus comes from the ground up as a software developer and coach, while Tore works top-down with leadership teams on product organization design. Both had worked at Spotify and both had seen organizations copy famous frameworks and models without adopting the underlying mindset. The telltale sign, as Tore describes it, is when people focus on compliance rather than being pragmatic—following the manual without questioning whether the way they’re working is actually serving the organization. As Marcus frames it through Cynefin, product development lives in a domain where best practices don’t even exist—only emergent practices that you discover by trying things out.
Treat Your Process Like a Product
“The easiest way for us to explain things has been: take the mindset you use for your product, and then use that same mindset when you’re approaching how you set things up and how you work internally.” Continue reading BONUS: Why Copying Frameworks Fails—Building Great Product Organizations From the Inside Out, With Marcus Hammarberg and Tore Fjaertoft
