Drucker's Blueprint - Product Owners Build Executive Skills

How do you train the next generation of executives? This is one of the critical questions Peter Drucker, a founder of modern management theory, explores in his seminal work titled The Effective Executive.  Drucker identified many skills an effective executive must have. They must be able to work through others who have different skills than their own. They must also integrate disparate local optimizations into an effective, systemic whole.

Over the previous two entries in this series, we explored how these skills overlap with effective product ownership. But neither of those posts have touched on the single greatest value Product Owners can provide to an organization.

It all starts back with Drucker’s driving question: How do we train the next generation of effective executives? What experiences, skills, or training could make us confident they’re ready to lead? After all, once a new executive is leading, the fate of the company is quite literally in their hands.

Let’s explore this question through a simple example. Consider a chef. How might you train an effective chef?

Chefs don’t learn to cook effectively by reading recipes; They must actually practice. That is, they must COOK! If they don’t cook, they might have the head knowledge of what it means to properly cook a fish, but without a skillet and flame to hand, they can never truly know whether they can cook it. In short, the reason we trust a chef is NOT because he has read innumerable recipes. But because he has cooked numerous fish, and now consistently does so well!

It is the same with executives. Unless they’ve had real hands-on practice leading, we won’t know if they have the needed skills. Furthermore, we need them to practice in unfamiliar situations. In fact, Toyota has seen this too. They actively created such practices for their own leaders by moving them into new positions within the plant. They might send a potential leader from the assembly to practice leading in the paint shop.

Did you know that your agile transformation ides you the same opportunity? Drucker identifies many skills an effective executive must develop by practice. Like codifying local optimizations or working through others for example. During an agile transformation, your Product Owner practices these effective executive skills. They are codifying local optimizations into new business processes and are working through their teams to effectively pursue a new organizational value.

Product Ownership is a great testbed for your potential future executives. They will develop the new skills they will need to become effective executives. If you approach your agile transformation this way, you get more lasting value from it. The practice for your leaders will pay far greater dividends than any software ever could!