Antipattern #6: Losing momentum
To avoid losing momentum in your transformation, you need to show swift results to turn Doubters into Believers.
Note: this is the sixth article in the series on anti-patterns when moving to the product model. Here’s the first anti-pattern: "Giving too much autonomy, too soon".
The button, the start button. It’s there. You stare at it. You’re hesitant.
You know that once you press it, the clock starts ticking for the transformation.
Expectations are high. It's exhilarating—the beginning of the journey.
But if you lose momentum, trouble starts.
Let’s revisit the “loop of transformation failure” from anti-pattern #1.
Take a moment and glance at it.
When you begin a transformation, engagement is high. Just like at the onset of the loop above, you hear leaders declare, “Let’s give teams the freedom to innovate!”
There’s a “wild west” energy of breaking new ground, venturing into new territory. Senior leadership is bought in (or at least that’s what they’ve stated), and as you walk around the office, there are warm smiles. There’s an air of confidence. Entering meeting rooms, you hear loud laughs reminiscing about how it “used to be,” and now, how it’s all going to be different.
But… what’s not so visible is that not everyone’s on board.
Doubters and Believers
In any type of change, you have Believers, and you have Doubters.
The Believers are the ones you hear in forums, meetings, and workshops, talking about all the benefits of this new way of working. They’ve watched webinars, read books and blog posts, and shared links with their coworkers on Slack. When you meet them, you can instantly discern that they believe this new way of operating will not only benefit their team but also ultimately their careers. They’re bought in and are spreading the sermon.
The Doubters, on the other hand, are realists lurking in the background. They’re passive. They have a “let’s wait and see” mentality and are not so vocal in the beginning.
If the Doubters don’t see a clear connection between how this change benefits their roles and teams, and if they don’t see tangible results, they’ll start to become more vocal. When the perfect moment appears, they emerge and start asking tough questions to undermine the change.
The Doubters are the ones who see themselves as experts, the smartest people in the room. They like to be in the limelight. In the product model, they worry they won’t be needed as much and that this change will threaten their role and approach to leadership. You won’t hear the Doubters’ candid thoughts in public forums, instead, they share their views behind closed doors. Doubters keep a list of arguments in their back pockets.
Firsthand, I’ve seen transformations fail when Doubters win over senior leadership, persuading them to revert to how it was before. In essence, they feel they haven’t seen results that this new way of operating creates value. They argue that the “old way” was better, easier, and involved less friction. Now, they say, “It’s harder to get stuff done.”
The change journey
Leading change is hard. It’s not a linear process. The road might seem clear in the beginning, but as you embark on the journey, you’ll hit roadblocks and snags. Being a change leader is not for the faint-hearted. You need to be resilient and have an open mind that there are aspects you simply can’t control.
Justin Kruger and David Dunning, two researchers in social psychology, studied how we, as humans, tend to overestimate our skills when learning something new. As we progress, our confidence often drops significantly. This is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect.
In a transformation, there are similarities. As I mentioned earlier, at the beginning, engagement is high. The Believers feel a strong sense of confidence, convinced that this change will solve many problems. There is, perhaps, a bit of naivety at play. Unfortunately, I’ve seen—and personally experienced—countless times when Believers are hit with the “Valley of Despair.” In workshops, town hall meetings, and water cooler chats, they face tough questions, negative energy, and smirks that say, “I told you so.”
When do you know you’ve hit the “Valley of Despair”?
You can instinctively sense that expectations haven’t been met.
Believers are slowly becoming Doubters.
There are fewer smiles in the room.
There is awkward silence. People are less vocal.
You feel that colleagues are starting to “protect their necks.”
This is a crucial moment in the transformation. The only way to overcome this hurdle is to show results and stay the course. So, let’s move into how to avoid this valley by taking a side path.
How to avoid this anti-pattern
The unfortunate truth is that this anti-pattern can’t be completely avoided. It’s part of the cycle of change. However, you can prevent the fall from being too steep by focusing on two major ingredients:
Show tangible results
Empathize with Doubters
Show tangible results
Further down, you’ll find a list of tangible techniques and actions you can take. Generally speaking, to win people over and create momentum in the transformation, you, as a change leader, need to convince the rest of the organization that this new way of working is better than how it used to be. You need to win hearts and minds. You do this by combining both storytelling and hard facts.
One of the most effective transformation techniques is to use pilot teams—teams that are ready and able to show the way. As a change leader, you need to closely follow these teams and collect stories of their success.
For example:
They’ve done user research and gathered thought-provoking insights on users’ needs.
They’ve launched a live experiment in a short amount of time.
They’ve overcome some gnarly dependencies and collaborated with other teams.
They’ve worked with sales & marketing to define a new go-to-market approach for their product.
So, go out and collect stories to share with your organization. But remember, you also need to understand the Doubters and what’s holding them back from becoming Believers.
Empathize with Doubters
Doubters are pragmatic. If they see benefits, they can be won over. The key is to understand where they’re coming from and their concerns. Identify the biggest Doubters in your sphere of influence and socialize with them. Have a coffee or lunch. Get to know them better and empathize with their situation. You may find that their concerns are completely legitimate and that you’ve missed important pieces of the puzzle.
The Doubters’ worries might be:
“I consider myself an expert. I’ve spent so much time with customers. I know a lot about their wants and needs. I feel that, with this way of working, we’re giving teams too much autonomy. The teams don’t know customers like I do.”
Answer: “You are a valued expert. The teams need to know what you know. Perhaps you could present at our next show-and-tell session to share your knowledge?”
“I don’t think we have enough guardrails for teams. By letting them loose, they could fail, and it could have a dire impact.”
Answer: “Failing is part of the plan. Failing will make the teams more competent, but you’re right, they need to have guardrails so it’s safe to fail. How about this: let’s organize a session to define a list of safe ways that teams can do experiments?”
“I feel like I’m losing control of what they are doing.”
Answer: “What control are you looking for? Are there specific metrics you would like to monitor? Or is it the progress of teams’ efforts you’re concerned about? Would you be interested in being invited to the weekly OKR sync meeting where teams share their progress on goals?”
What you could try
Here are some quick wins that you could consider as first steps to show swift results:
Create a Product Visiontype
Invite senior leaders to participate in a one-week Product Vision Sprint to co-create a Visiontype—a prototype of the future customer experience 3-5 years from now. This approach effectively aligns senior leadership, shows quick results, and communicates strategic context.
Conduct an analytics audit
If there’s limited understanding of the strengths and weaknesses in your product experience, bring in a data analyst to assess the health of the product suite and identify key improvement areas. This can lead to important “aha” moments.
Generate data dashboards for teams
Have a data analyst create self-service dashboards that display key metrics for each team’s features and performance. This effort accelerates a shift to a data-driven culture, moving conversations from gut feeling to a “let’s test it” mindset.
Staff a temporary growth team
In partnership with marketing, form a cross-functional team to tackle bottlenecks in the early part of the funnel. There are often many opportunities for quick wins to improve new customer conversion and activation—efforts that tend to be highly valued by senior executives.
For example, a team I worked with increased new customer conversion by double digits within a few weeks simply by refining the copy and layout of a key page in the customer acquisition funnel.
These are just a few suggestions—I’m sure you have even better ideas.
What techniques could you use to launch high-impact, low-effort efforts that lead to tangible results?
Key takeaways
To avoid losing momentum in your transformation, you have to show swift results. You need to tell the story that this new way of operating brings more value than before. Doubters are lurking in the background, and if they don’t connect the dots on how this change clearly benefits them, they will back-channel the transformation, ultimately jeopardizing your entire change journey. Together with your peers, identify efforts that can quickly create high impact to turn Doubters into Believers.
What’s next
Next up, we’ll discuss the value of Design—with a capital D—that often gets deprioritized when moving to the product model, leading to dire consequences.