One Step Away From Company Goals

The Impact First Product Team Model focuses on aligning product work directly with business outcomes to ensure teams deliver meaningful value and remain resilient during challenging times.

Why Impact Alignment Matters

• More product managers and teams are getting laid off when they can't demonstrate clear business value
• Daniel Ek (Spotify CEO) during 2024 layoffs: "We still have too many teams doing work around the work rather than focusing on opportunities with real impact"
• Even if executives ask you to build something, you're still at risk if that work doesn't drive meaningful business outcomes
• Teams that can't articulate their direct contribution to business success are most vulnerable during cost-cutting

Three Steps to Becoming an Impact First Product Team

1. Set Team Goals Close to Company Goals

• Keep team goals no more than one step away from company goals
• Don't let goals get "cascaded into oblivion" through multiple layers of abstraction
• Use a single "why statement" or mathematical operator to connect your team's metric to the company target
• Example: If company goal is $100M revenue, your team goal might be "convert X single-product users to multi-product users" (with clear math showing the revenue impact)
• Ask yourself: "If you were the CEO of this company, would you fully fund your own team?"

2. Keep Impact First at Every Step

• Don't just set impact-focused goals at the beginning of planning cycles and forget them
• Continuously reference your impact goals during OKR discussions, strategy sessions, and sprint planning
• Avoid getting lost in the "middle layer" between impact and day-to-day work
• Don't obsess over perfect execution of frameworks (OKRs, etc.) at the expense of actual business impact
• Visualize progress toward your impact goal regularly (e.g., drawing a timeline showing current state vs. target)

3. Connect Every Bit of Work Back to Impact

• When prioritizing, express impact in the same unit of measure as your goals
• Replace abstract scoring systems with concrete estimates of contribution to your team goal
• Example: Instead of rating "impact" as 1-5, estimate "how many users this will convert"
• Be willing to pursue high-impact work even when it requires coordination with other teams
• Recognize that high-effort, high-impact work often delivers more value than easy, low-impact tasks

Breaking the Low-Impact PM Death Spiral

• The Death Spiral Pattern: Teams take on low-impact work → Product becomes more complex → More coordination layers needed → High-impact work becomes harder → Teams take on even more low-impact work
• Warning Signs: Teams focus on "adding little features" and "making cosmetic improvements" rather than addressing core business needs
• Breaking the Cycle: Individual product teams must proactively seek high-impact work, even if it means more executive scrutiny
• Courage Required: Must be willing to push back on low-impact requests, even from executives

Practical Implementation Tips

• When executives request features, don't say "yes" or "no" - present options with trade-offs and recommendations
• Express impact in concrete business terms that executives understand (revenue, user conversion, etc.)
• Understand your business model deeply - this reveals what truly matters to your organization
• Recognize that constraints (regulation, B2B dynamics, quarterly targets) are not obstacles but guides for your work
• Accept that some factors affecting impact are outside your control, but you're still accountable for outcomes