Breaking Through the Dichotomy of the Tech Industry
“Superman does good, you do well.” This was a catchy grammar lesson from the popular TV series, 30 Rock. But for those of us in the tech industry, this hits home. We have accepted a dichotomy: You can do good or you can do well.
We see mounting evidence of a generation of disillusioned employees in the technology industry coming to terms with this dichotomy. Employees at Google and Amazon have staged walkouts to protest how their employers’ products and practices are failing society. Uncanny Valley, the memoir of a young professional trying to find meaningful work in the tech industry, became a New York Times Bestseller. Websites like Tech for Good offer tech employees sparse hope that they can still find work that doesn’t spark an overwhelming desire to wash one’s conscience afterward.
These examples reflect the growing dissatisfaction of the cohort that entered the tech industry inspired by the vision that technology and innovation were going to change the world. They’ve since had to lower their expectations, having learned that being successful and changing the world (for the better) are mostly mutually exclusive.
In his essay, It’s Time to Build, Marc Andreessen proposes that building products “is how we reboot the American dream”. But while launching products and startups give us the illusion of progress, studies show that technology hasn’t always made the world better.
The unregulated tech growth has led to digital pollution just as unchecked industrial growth led to environmental pollution.
Our products touch most aspects of people’s lives including their choices on dating, access to credit, whether they see a job ad, whether they get called for a job interview, and even whether they should be jailed. While each of these links is an example of a product that exacerbates the inequalities in society, the underlying product decisions weren’t deliberately malicious.
So why does this dichotomy of doing good vs. doing well exist if we don’t choose it? It turns out this dichotomy is baked into how we build products because we measure success on a single dimension: financial metrics. Lean Startup taught us to innovate faster by testing things in the market, seeing what works, and iterating. But to assess what’s working, we almost always look to financial metrics, typically usage or revenues.
An iteration-led approach can move financial KPI up and to the right, but it doesn’t always make our world better.
The post-pandemic recovery will only grow the existing inequality in our society. While a select few companies see record profits during the recovery, we’ll still have millions unemployed. The pandemic is nudging us towards the realization that there must be more to our work as product leaders than moving financial metrics. The post-pandemic economy presents us with an opportunity to rethink how we build products.
In 2017 Geordie Kaytes, Nidhi Aggarwal, and I developed Radical Product Thinking as a vision-driven alternative to the iteration-led approach for building products.
Radical Product Thinking is a big idea that you can systematically build successful products to create the change that inspires you.
Radical Product Thinking means thinking of your product as a vehicle for creating the change you want to see in the world. In the RPT way, you start with a clear vision for the change you want to see and then systematically translate that into strategy, priorities, and execution through your daily activities.
Does it mean I have to stop using Lean or Agile?
No, to be clear, this is not to dismiss Lean Startup. Lean and Agile are both excellent methodologies that I still use and highly recommend for execution. Lean and Agile give you speed in execution, helping you get to your destination faster. They just don’t tell you where you need to go. Vision-driven organizations often combine the best of all three methodologies. They use RPT to set the direction and then translate it into Lean and Agile execution.
How can I learn more about applying Radical Product Thinking?
Below is a list of links to guide you through the RPT steps of creating the change that you want to bring. You can also download the free toolkit here.
Vision: A good vision is not a soundbite or a brand tagline. Your vision must be so detailed that it must help you and your team picture the world you want to create. The toolkit and this blog post will help you craft a Radical Vision Statement in a Mad-libs format that you can use for a team exercise.
Strategy: A comprehensive product strategy helps you answer the following 4 questions. An easy to remember mnemonic is RDCL (pronounced ‘radical’):
1. Why does anyone engage with your product? What’s the Real Pain Point?
2. What functionality do they engage with? What’s the Design (functionality, and look and feel)?
3. How do we provide that functionality? What Capabilities do we need to develop (both tangible e.g. IP or technology, or intangible e.g. relationships)
4. How do we deliver the solution to the customer? What are the Logistics of our solution, i.e. pricing model, customer support, sales plan, etc?
Prioritization: One of the most important ways that we use vision and strategy in our everyday work is in the process of prioritization. Prioritization means balancing progress towards your vision with the realities of your business needs.
Execution: Here’s where your visionary thinking meets execution. Here’s how you can translate your vision and strategy into Agile and Lean execution.
Measurement: Here’s how you can measure what matters to see if you’re making progress towards your vision.
Hippocratic Oath of Product: When we build products, we take on a role very similar to a doctor’s: a doctor gets to the root cause of your health problem and prescribes a cure. We cannot build products as cures to problems if we don’t take responsibility for the well-being of our users.
Our current model of building products driven by financial KPI is ripe for disruption. It’s time to take a radical approach and build products systematically to create the change we want to see in the world.
Let’s break through the dichotomy in tech: You can do good AND do well.
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A big thanks to may-li khoe — our discussion spurred this article. She introduced me to Uncanny Valley and Tech For Good.
Product is a way of thinking. Radical Product is a movement of leaders creating vision-driven change — you can download the free Radical Product Toolkit, designed as a step-by-step guide to make it easy and practical to apply product thinking.
