How to Empower Teams in 2024 - Product Management in the era of Founder Mode
A tactical guide for product leaders navigating the tension between autonomy and execution. Featuring battle-tested frameworks from Epic Games, Affirm, and Miro's hypergrowth journeys
Do we even want to be empowered anymore?
The term "empowered" has become tech’s most controversial buzzword. Discord's founder Jason Citron recently said the word "empowerment" triggers him:
It’s part of the ongoing change of heart in tech after Paul Graham coined the term, "founder mode.”
Across tech, there's a growing movement against delegating product decisions.
Whereas Marty Cagan’s Empowerment was the the theme of the day for a while, it feels like things have flipped.
And guess what? CEOs are not entirely wrong for flipping.
Most "empowered" product teams are a disaster. They chase local maxima, build features that don't align with company strategy, and waste resources on low-impact work.
I’ve seen this firsthand.
But empowerment matters
But here's the thing:
You cannot scale without empowering your teams.
Let me say it again: founder mode, by definition, cannot scale. There are always going to be parts of the business that need to delegated.
When I was founder at Rap to Beats, I tried to stay deeply involved in every product decision. The result? I became a bottleneck, teams lost motivation, and our velocity plummeted.
The same pattern has played out in conversations with VPs of Product at Meta, Google, and dozens of high-growth startups.
Eugene Segal saw this too while leading product teams at Miro during their hypergrowth phase.
Re-Introducing Eugene
So we’re back together after our deep dive on Eugene’s real-life job search to talk team empowerment. We want to create the most tactical guide yet published on the web.
If you enjoy this, do check out Eugene’s content and newsletter!
The 10 Principles of Empowerment
Given you do need to empower our teams, but you need to operate in the era of founder mode, we've developed a different approach to building empowered teams.
We boil this down to 10 key core principles of empowerment:
Let’s break down how to use these in much more detail.
Today’s Deep Dive
The Critical Elements Most Leaders Miss
The Complete "Full Stack PM Ownership" Playbook
Implementing Impact Cards: A Complete Guide
The Exact "Speed Lanes" Process
Trust-Building Frameworks
How to Scale
1. The Critical Elements Most Leaders Miss
What we’ve found is most experienced product leaders intuitively get the 10 principles.
But what do they miss? 4 things. And all 4 stem from one core insight:
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