At Work with The Ready – Episode 23: Adopting a Product Mindset in Organizations

Hosts: Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin
Date: November 11, 2024

Overview

In this episode, Rodney Evans and Sam Spurlin dig deep into what it actually means for organizations to adopt a “product mindset.” Despite widespread rhetoric about being product- or customer-centric, the hosts argue that most organizations merely pay lip service, continuing instead to orient around leader preferences and internal opinion. Through candid discussion, examples from both client work and their own careers, and a healthy dose of metaphor (oysters, clams, chowder, and hockey pucks), Rodney and Sam break down the pitfalls, emotional challenges, and pragmatic steps needed for real change.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Scene: Personal Reflections on Craft

Timestamps: 02:01–04:35

• Check-in Question: What's something related to your craft that you've recently learned or relearned?
  • Sam: “I'm better at this work when I'm a little bit more toward kind of the intense side of a continuum... But in order for me to do that, I have to take very seriously deliberately disengaging with the work on a daily or other sort of rhythm.” (02:27)
  • Rodney: “I've been very focused on some macro-level work... What I'm relearning right now is like, it's not enough to just be working at the strategic level... I need to really also, in order to do that well, be paying attention to a much, much, much wider environment...” (03:10)
• Explores the importance of stepping outside day-to-day execution to see broader industry trends—a lens that will tie into the product mindset discussion.

2. The Problem: Declared Customer Centricity vs. Leader Centricity

Timestamps: 04:46–08:01

• Organizations declare a desire to be product- or customer-centric, but their “operating system” remains focused on satisfying leaders’ opinions.
  • Rodney: “We say we want product. What we actually do is leader focus, which increases our need for customer focus.” (05:59)
• This creates a cycle where customer needs are increasingly neglected, despite being included in mission statements and strategies.

3. Balancing Opinions, Trends, and Customer Voice

Timestamps: 08:01–10:17

• It's not about leader’s opinion versus customer voice versus external environment—real product stewardship means integrating all three sources.
  • Rodney: “I think the job is always going to be to evaluate and balance and make bets informed by all three.” (08:01)
• Leaders must bring an external, forward-looking perspective and stay rooted in customers' actual needs.

4. The Output Game: The Hammer-and-Nails Trap

Timestamps: 10:22–12:50

• Many organizations design solutions they’re proud of and then go searching for problems to solve.
  • Rodney: “I got this hammer, where the fuck be the nails? Because I need to go do something with it. And then the job also, and my comp and my metrics and my, like, promotions... are based on my ability to convince others that they have nails, which just is like backwards.” (11:18)
• This “output metrics” orientation leads to work that looks busy but may be disconnected from real value.

5. The Difficulty and Fear of Holding Opinions Lightly

Timestamps: 12:50–15:29

• Product teams face intense pressure to be right about their solution, even though meaningful product work actually requires being wrong, learning, and pivoting.
  • Rodney: “[T]here's a lot of pressure to be right... Often... there's not a lot of flexibility for just being really surprised by what users do with it or how it resonates.” (13:04)
  • Example: The “killer app” for a product was not what Rodney expected—a humblebrag for being open to being wrong.

6. Incentives, Feedback Loops, and the Service Mindset

Timestamps: 15:29–19:21

• People act rationally in service of how they're compensated and evaluated. Declaring a “product mindset” is moot if the compensation system—and resulting behaviors—don't shift.
  • Sam: "...it's not enough to just say we are now product led and actually, you know, looking at compensation and other things that are getting in the way from being able to do that." (15:29)
• Service functions (ex: HR, IT) often default into "white glove service" and stop-drop-and-roll for leaders, reinforcing the old paradigm.

7. Internal Customers: Employee Experience and the Psychic Cost of Bad Tools

Timestamps: 19:21–25:21

• Internal customers’ needs are often overlooked, resulting in bad software, cumbersome processes, and overlooked pain points.
  • Sam: “I have been periphery to or just on the edge of a lot of very, very large organizations that seemingly hate their employees by what they force them to do or use on the inside.” (18:34)
• Rodney notes that in some organizations, dealing with broken systems is treated as “a brain vacation” rather than a fixable problem—and that’s telling of the organization’s OS.

8. Measuring Value: Lifetime Employee Value and Re-deploying Resources

Timestamps: 25:21–27:09

• A better internal metric: Value created by the employee, which reframes HR and internal functions as product creators aiming to boost employees' ability to contribute.
  • Rodney: “HR should be creating products that increase every employee’s value and ability to create value.” (24:23)
• Example: Scrapping underused benefits and redeploying funds toward initiatives employees actually value.

9. Product Mindset Means Facing Hard Truths (and Conflict)

Timestamps: 27:09–29:53

• A true product mindset forces organizations to confront tough questions about what is actually valuable—requiring harder conversations, transparency, and vulnerability.
  • Sam: “At the end of the day, you are making something that you're proud of and that people are actually using. So like, are we willing to make that tradeoff or not?” (26:57)
  • Stepping away from the “sandbox game” of work—making presentations, running meetings, but not producing real outcomes.

10. Loving the Problem: Why Most Orgs Don’t Make Time for Real Sensemaking

Timestamps: 29:53–31:05

• Most teams spend so little time getting to really know the actual problems facing the customer; data is simply used to confirm what’s already believed.
  • Rodney: "There’s so little time and space to like really understanding whatever the numbers are that are driving our business… instead really being like, really having time for the sense making. To your point about loving the problem." (29:53)

11. Feedback Loops: Why They’re Rare and Hard

Timestamps: 31:05–32:05

• Internal service teams rarely seek real, actionable feedback. When they do, it’s superficial (“am I a good partner?”), instead of outcome driven (“did we solve your critical problems?”).
  • Rodney: “When I was an HR person, I pretty rarely asked my clients for really specific feedback...” (30:22)
• Fear, inability to act on feedback, and misaligned incentives make real improvement rare.

12. The Challenge of Cross-Functional Collaboration

Timestamps: 32:05–34:38

• Most organizations are bad at cross-functional work, which is core to product building. Lack of working agreements, shared purpose, or even mutual trust impedes real progress.
  • Sam: “Building products is an inherently cross-functional endeavor. And in a lot of organizations, doing anything cross-functionally is death.” (31:50)

13. Defensiveness, ‘Didn’t Build It Here’, and the Trap of Blaming the User

Timestamps: 34:38–38:08

• Teams often insulate themselves from tough feedback by blaming the end user (“they're stupid” or “they just don’t get it”), feeding a culture of defensiveness and “didn’t build it here” syndrome.
  • Rodney: “My greatness is misunderstood and if these people knew what I know, then they would use what I made… Who fucking cares? It doesn’t matter.” (35:01)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Rodney:
  • “We say we want product. What we actually do is leader focus, which increases our need for customer focus.” (05:59)
  • “If the clients are just like cool, you show yourself out, then it doesn't matter… Your idea doesn't matter. The potential impact doesn't matter if the person who has to use it won't.” (36:00)
• Sam:
  • “Anytime we're dealing with a lot of complexity... I just get very skeptical of one person being the receptacle or the container of all of that complexity and trusting that what comes out the other side is the best thing that could happen.” (08:06)
  • “Building products is an inherently cross-functional endeavor. And in a lot of organizations, doing anything cross-functionally is death.” (31:50)
  • “There is real psychic damage happening every time somebody has to open up this half assed tool to go do a thing...” (18:34)
• Memorable exchange:
  • Sam: “I got this hammer, where the fuck be the nails?” (11:18)
  • Rodney: “Those [IT downtime] days were the shit because, like, they were boring and stupid rather than being stressful and stupid.” (21:46)
  • Rodney: “I’m a crone now. Yeah. I’m just like, that’s... I think that I still think that’s how it should work. And unfortunately, I know that it doesn’t anymore.” (38:09)

Practical Takeaways (The “Pearls”)

Timestamps: 39:00–44:26

1. Value Stream Mapping (Sam)

• What: Gather a cross-functional group; define the end value delivered to the user; work backward step by step to understand what must be true at each stage.
• Why: Uncover friction, hidden waste, and gaps between intention and reality.
  • “I’ve never not gotten a bunch of really actionable and useful things out of a 90 minute value stream mapping exercise with a cross functional team” (40:17)

2. Validate There’s a Real, Felt Problem (Rodney)

• Step 1: Spend time up front learning and gathering evidence—does a clear problem exist, and do customers acknowledge and articulate it?
  • “If they don’t see it as a problem and can’t say it, just stop right there. Don’t go try to convince them that it’s a problem.” (41:55)
• Step 2: Test for problem-solution fit before “product-market fit”: Does your solution, as judged by actual users, solve the need and generate willingness to pay (or invest time/effort)?
  • “If you are not doing something for them that taken away, they would source elsewhere and pay for out of their budget, you do not have product market fit.” (42:09)

3. Beware Stated vs. Revealed Preference (Sam)

• “There’s a huge difference between stated preference and revealed preference. Even someone saying they will pay... versus actually clicking the button and putting their credit card in—those are quite different things.” (43:17)
• Ask: “How else have you tried to solve this, and who else have you hired to solve it?” If no one, the problem isn't pressing. (44:04)

Conclusion

• A true product mindset isn’t about process, labels, or leader decrees—it’s about continuously seeking evidence of real, user-recognized problems, building lightly, and being brave (and humble) enough to pivot rapidly in the face of reality.
• The journey from service or output mindsets to genuine product centricity is hard, requiring coordinated incentives, brave cross-functional collaboration, and a willingness to be wrong.
• As Rodney puts it: “Your idea doesn't matter. The potential impact doesn't matter if the person who has to use it won’t.” (36:00)

Contact:
If you have an organizational pattern you’d like discussed, email: podcast@theready.com

Engineered by: Taylor Marvin
Produced by: Jack Van Amberg

“Let’s wrap it up. This is good. We found that pearl. Couple of pearls, actually. And now it’s time to make a necklace.” – Sam (44:28)