Via Lenny’s Podcast

“. . . the product function itself, [which was] wildly understaffed with really talented people, [was] without a single spiritual leader on top of it to drive consistency and process excellence, [and] had become locally optimized but globally incoherent.

If you know Conway’s Law, you are destined to ship your org chart. So with a locally optimized, globally incoherent team, you had a locally optimized, globally incoherent product experience that needed to be resolved.”

— 10 contrarian leadership truths every leader needs to hear | Matt MacInnis (Rippling), at 19:57

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When Matt MacInnis (Chief Product Officer and former longtime COO at Rippling) jumped into the CPO role, Rippling’s product function was “locally optimized but globally incoherent”—talented people doing excellent work in their specific domains, but without consistent leadership driving process excellence across the organization.

“If you know Conway’s Law, you are destined to ship your org chart. And so with a locally optimized, globally incoherent team, you had a locally optimized, globally incoherent product experience that needed to be resolved.”

His first 11 months focused on:

• Establishing clarity on “how we do things around here”
• Implementing better processes, better general leadership
• Hiring and firing to get the right people in place
• Building basic foundations before worrying about higher-order concerns on the team’s “hierarchy of needs”

The lesson: Before you can achieve strategic product excellence, you must have organizational coherence.