Thread by @JessTelford

I've always felt there was something wrong / silo'd about the way big companies work, which crippled their ability to grow.

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In my teams which were speciality focused, a culture of "throw it over the fence" naturally emerged - each speciality has a strong silo surrounding them, often with the (well intentioned) blessing of managers ("Don't talk to the developers, you'll break their concentration")

There's a tension between what the individual (maybe even the entire specialist team) wants to achieve and what the business wants to achieve, eg; "perfectly architected, bug free code" vs "grow monthly recurring revenue".

Sometimes a story can be told which bridges the two different goals, sometimes structures (like OKRs) can make it seem like work is going in the right direction, but the end result is never quite right.

True for big companies and startups alike.

OTOH, my teams which were highly cross-functional, or had very clear and frequently used lines of communication between specialties were by far the most successful.

The specialists still do what they do well, but they all do it in service of the business goal.

The impact of aligning on business goal means the conversation _for everyone_ (not only managers) changes from
"how do we build/market/sell feature X"
to
"will feature X move us toward our business goal? What building/marketing/selling does it need? Is feature Y a better choice?"

There's a great summary of why being aligned with cross functional teams matters, and practical tips to get there from @SeanEllis in his interview with @intercom
art19.com/shows/inside-i…

Traditionally a "Funnel" of some sort is used to align everyone ("Increase the top-to-bottom conversion of signups"), which has different disciplines focused on different layers in the funnel: Marketing filling it, Product building it, and sales/support closing it.

But each step in the funnel is still silo'd. And what's worse; it's a singular focus on only one portion of the user lifecycle, potentially discounting other areas that could have high value for a single speciality (eg: Product can't fix bugs elsewhere while focused on signups)

Something that just clicked with me, and accurately reflects the most successful teams I've worked on, is the approach of ditching funnels in favour of Growth Loops
reforge.com/blog/growth-lo…
(by industry greats @bbalfour, @onecaseman, @kevinakwok & @andrewchen)

Everyone should be able to correctly answer "How does your product grow?"

That answer should fit into the Growth Loop:

Input (eg; New User) ➡️ Action ➡️ Output ➡️ Reinvest into Input ↩️

With a compounding return for each time through the loop, you can quickly see big benefits.

Without tearing down those silos, and without aligning cross functional teams around a specific and measurable Growth Loop, companies will stagnate, startups will die, and engineers will forever be deemed as "Off Limits".

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