Why the Squad Model is Not Working For Your Product Organization

A key benefit of the Squad Model is that it decentralizes decision making. This allows a product organization to establish multiple, concurrent teams. Each team can be empowered to make decisions autonomously and quickly to achieve goals. However, decentralization can only work effectively with predefined agreements and true commitment from the CEO to enforce governance.

Below are common killers of the Squad Model. Work with your CEO to address them. Note: I will refer to Squads as SETs (Small Empowered Teams), based on our particular practice of this model.

Despite genuine interest, some CEOs have a command-and-control management style that prevents the Squad Model from flourishing. If your CEO’s impulse is to make, or weigh in on, all decisions, then decentralized decision making will bottleneck.

The new operating model needs leaders to manage from the problem space. Starting with the organization’s mission, leaders should define impactful problems for their teams to solve (translated into annual and quarterly goals), rather than prescribing projects to implement.

The CEO has every right to spot check any point of production, influence solutions, and veto / ratify decisions. However, if they are focused on the highest-leverage activities, they should rarely be prescribing, or overriding, small “what” and “how” decisions. A common dynamic that undermines the Squad Model is undisciplined executives who focus teams on how something is done (execution style) versus outcomes (results).

Assess if a decentralized model is appropriate for your organization:

Executives define why, SET Leads define what, and SET Members (e.g., engineers, designers) define how.

For each level above, leaders must proactively define:

Often, in day-to-day practice, executives violate the agreed upon roles and responsibilities. The CEO must enforce that no one violates policies, even if they are trying to drive results.

Ideally, executives will give SETs meaningful problems to solve (problem-led approach). If they want to define solutions for a SET to execute (solution-led approach), then all the details must be provided.

A common pitfall is when an executive tells a team to build something but does not provide enough details. The resulting dynamic is, “Guess what I want, and I’ll tell you if you’re right.” This results in bad products and frustration (particularly when the team is held accountable for the executive’s decision). Ask executives to either give teams the space to solve the problem in their own way, or give them all the decisions needed to deliver.

If an outside leader consistently overrides a SET Lead’s decisions, gradually no one on the SET will listen to her. Undermining the SET Lead will cripple the team’s combat effectiveness. When an ownership dispute like this arises, a ranking manager must adjudicate quickly (escalating to the CEO, if necessary). Decisions must be acknowledged, documented, shared, and, most importantly, enforced. Enforcement is where most organizations fall short.

Define and referee role definitions:

A counterproductive dynamic within the Squad Model is when executives define what results (or how much work) a SET is accountable for without getting input from the people involved.

To avoid an unrealistic outcome, a product manager must ensure her team can truly make its own decisions, such as de-scoping features, extending the release date, or getting additional resources. If not, quality will suffer and the team would have been set up to fail.

To preempt this situation, a team must develop the skill of consistently providing accurate estimates on the level of effort of various initiatives (e.g., development days).

If believable estimates are not provided by SETs, executives have no choice but to guess (spoiler alert — they will guess that you can do more). Get this data to negotiate realistic expectations with your executives.

Stop the downward spiral of your team being pressured to deliver quickly. You will be forced to take shortcuts, but omitting steps such as user testing, refactoring code, adding test coverage, and instrumenting analytics will make you short-term fast but long-term slow. This is Product Debt, and you will pay for it one way or another.

Ensure that executives are truly allowing your team to make its own decisions. Only then can you commit to outcomes and be accountable for them.

I often see nominally independent product teams being micromanaged. Changing organizational habits is difficult and will take time. Focus your energy on advocating and coaching, and getting your CEO’s full commitment to a smarter way of working.

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