How to create a team structure based on innovation and experimentation - Chapter 5
This is a six chapter journey where I will share my process to get into an ideal structure.
Hi readers, my name is Michel Hauzeur, and I am a soccer lover and a father of my little warrior called Mila, Maya and Baloo (rescued dog)
Currently Product Design & Innovation Leader at Nearsure with 14+ years of experience in product & tech. I’m also a Co-founder of La corte de los Búhos, a Digital Transformation consulting company in Latam, and a Gamification consultant.
Mentor in the Product League and Product Makers Mentors program for 2+ years.
And 2023 Product-Led Alliance Award as Product Leader of the Year winner.
Six chapters journey:
Chapter 5: Center of Excellence definition (This article)
Chapter 6: Innovation and Experimentation through team building
Before starting, I want to thank you for reaching the fifth chapter!
Let´s continue…
Chapter 5: Center of Excellence Definition
Section 1. The Center of Excellence
Chapter 4 recap:
In Chapter 4, I talked about the implementation of the Team Structure, the results of the first experiment, and how we are structuring the second experiment with the team.
So far the second experiment is going well. The Product Practice decided to go with Test A and the Design Practice with Test B.
Product Practice results:
Mentors are creating two recurrent meetings every month.
Mentees are receiving enough support from the Mentor and the Practice Leader.
The Practice Leader has 1:1s to identify the individual progress and run a mentor alignment meeting to align processes.
Design Practice results:
The Practice Leader had 1:1s with each team member to validate the expertise and create knowledge groups.
Team Members have more time to dedicate to projects and initiatives.
The new model started and we are recollecting some data to validate metrics like Time Spent by Mentor, NPS, and Career Growth Advance, among others.
Next Steps:
Keep tracking data by practice.
Validate which test works better and adopt that one.
Keep iterating to improve team structure and skills.
Here starts the Chapter 5:
Let´s move to April of this year when we defined the initial team structure!
Part of my initial idea was to create a structure that constantly reaches growth! So we started by defining the Mentor Program, and now the Center of Excellence focuses on innovation and experimentation.
I started testing this vision a couple of years ago when I got the role of Head of Product, and part of my key results were supporting the career path of the team and the creation of new services.
At that moment, my idea was to design a variety of innovation teams to open doors for innovation and find speed. First, we start with a research team to get some insights about services our competitors were or weren´t offering, new opportunities, etc. Once we identify those potential services, we divide the team by service and start defining the structure, processes, templates, and costs, among others.
The experience was amazing, we were in that moment 10 people in the team, including me, closing initiatives and opening new ones so fast. With this experience, my idea was to replicate this same model for the new structure of 40 people.
The definition of the first version of the Center of Excellence was created by my two Practice Leaders, based on my vision of having a new category of people prepare for any challenge, to support the pre-sales team, and account managers by creating better storytelling and better proposals, and the goal of the 5 Million on ARR, I have been sharing with you in the past chapters.
Section 2. Structure
In the first version of the Center of Excellence (CoE) structure, we had a couple of conversations, iterations, and cool workshops.
Finally, we define having six (6) teams, everyone focuses on one specific goal:
Innovation and Research: Innovation is the key point to be different, then this team was focused on understanding the markets where we had actual clients and finding a way to bring innovation to our proposals.
Communication Team: I believe there are ways to create awareness, and one is by sharing free valuable content with others. Then this team was focused on content creation for our internal and external community.
Training and Development: I am a people first, which means that to find my growth I will need first to support the growth of my team, and by their results, I will grow with them. Then this team is focused on our studio, company, and client growth.
Strategy Alliances: An alliance means understanding what is happening around you, what opportunities you may have or find, what tools you will need to implement your service, and setting paths to show and grow yourself. Then this team is focused on finding new opportunities to find a place in our actual clients, where a role of product, design, or any service can change the course of the company or product, but at the same time will also find partners or events where we can increase our positioning in the market.
Proposal Team: There are always ways to experiment and iterate, and a proposal is one of those. Then this team is focused on iterating the content, design, and structure, among others, based on results and data.
Free model and Experimentation: I believe that Product-Led Growth is a powerful tool for every company, what you need to understand is your core and then design a new way to present your value. Then this team is focused on designing new ways of free offerings and experimenting across the studio to understand what works and what doesn’t. To understand problems and get into opportunities, I constantly use the Opportunity Solution Tree of Teresa Torres, which I have been explaining in the past chapters.
This is the structure we present to the team in one of our Studio Sync Meetings:
As always these kinds of ideas are optional for the team. I hate to obligate people to be where they don´t want to be or don´t belong.
We were happy about these teams but worried about controlling everything that would happen under this structure, such as the roadmap, people, and communication between teams.
The solution that came into my mind was creating a new role called Product Ops. I read the last book from Marty Cagan about “Transformed” and I assisted in a couple of events and webinars about product operations that resonate with my idea. Then I decided to assign this role to one of our Senior PMs to validate if everything worked as I imagined.
This is the new structure we have now:
In addition, we created a communication map, to organice what inputs and outpus every CoE team will have from each other:
It is one of the most beautiful places on earth:
Chingaza National Park, Colombia, South America
Section 3. First Iteration
As I explained before, to have some control we create the role of Product Ops to manage people, teams, communication, and roadmap. But we also define to select a representative in each team, to improve communication, roadmap, and alignment.
Once we launched the teams, people were excited and happy to participate! We started with around 60% attendance, which was a really good number.
Nevertheless, days went by (around three months), and the attendance was decreasing and the roadmap defined with every team wasn´t accomplished. Emotionally for the team was hard, for the Product Ops lead, the Practice Leaders, and for me was hard to assume that a model that was successful for 10 people wasn’t that much for this new structure.
But as I always say, “this is just one iteration”, so we launched a survey and had some 1:1s with the Product Ops Leader, Representatives, and Team Members to understand their pains, our mistakes, and other additional insights that may be worth it for us.
We got great insights, so we started redesigning and co-creating between the Practice Leaders, the Product Ops, and myself.
I invite you to read the last of this amazing journey of six (6) chapters. In this special chapter, you will understand the insights and a new iteration we are running and what is working so far. (Coming up in September)
Thanks for reading!!!
Check here my new templates in Miroverse
Don´t close this tab before sharing this content.
I think of myself as a product, so please leave a comment so I can keep improving my content. Thanks!