Be among the first to get the latest insights from LEI’s Lean Product and Process Development (LPPD) thought leaders and practitioners. This podcast was delivered to subscribers of The Design Brief, LEI’s newsletter devoted to improving organizations’ innovation capability. This month, we explore software development and its myriad of challenges. Software isn’t just a tool—it’s a driving force behind innovation, shaping everything from functionality to user experience. Join us as we dive into how software is transforming design.
What do Melanie Perkins, Brian Chesky, and Larry Page have in common1? They’re all true product artisans: those rare creators who blend skill, passion, and attention to detail to create truly exceptional products. They don’t just build products—with a deep, hands-on connection to customers and their teams—they craft valuable and resonant experiences. Great design, after all, isn’t about features; it’s about creating something that connects deeply with people. A winning product offers not just functionality but a sense of joy, ease, and meaningful engagement.
These artisans have also managed to build brands that remain influential for decades. What allowed them to transform that first great product into a lasting legacy? To realize their vision, product leaders (1) surround themselves with the right people, and (2) stay involved with the product team long enough to ensure their vision is fully realized. However, once the business grows they must start empowering other leaders. On Lenny’s Podcast, Brian Chesky emphasizes that CEOs shouldn’t fear “diving into the details” or leading from the ground up. Hands-on leadership is not the same as micromanagement. He argues that stepping away from the product too early and distancing oneself from the details can result in a lack of clear direction and the rise of bureaucracy.
This careful handover between the original product creator and future product leaders is a crucial step for scaling the company. The challenge is to ensure that the next generation of leaders continues to innovate while preserving the product’s essence and collaborating effectively to maintain product cohesiveness. Different product teams will naturally tend to drift apart over time unless their leaders align on this common vision.
Building apprenticeship at scale
Julie Scherer, chief product officer at Motive Medical Intelligence, knows this challenge well. Based in San Francisco, Julie has been at the helm of Motive’s digital product strategy for years, ensuring their solutions are not just functional but transformative for healthcare professionals. She pours her heart into every detail, refining the product to secure Motive’s lead in the competitive healthcare sector, where it is a leading provider of advanced analytics solutions.
As the company has grown, however, Julie’s leadership is being stretched to its limits. While she has a strong team of technical experts, the main challenge of the company has shifted. Julie is no longer just concerned with growing and improving the product, but also ensuring that her teams could continue the work with the same vision and attention to detail that fueled Motive’s early successes.
Julie discovered a way forward through lean product design and development. She picked up a book and began practicing lean principles and tools with her teams. However, she quickly realized that her real challenge was to create an apprenticeship system where the lean tools serve as scaffolding for developing future chief product engineers—leaders who, like Julie, would understand both the craft and the business of building great products. Her goal is now to embed the artisan mindset throughout Motive, ensuring that her teams don’t just follow processes but build products that deeply resonate with users and reflect strong collaboration.
Julie aims to foster the next generation of chief product engineers. These artisan leaders could come from anywhere in the company—UX, Product, Tech, or Marketing. They often reveal themselves through a deep curiosity about customer needs and a passion for technology. They are willing and able to connect the various specialists needed to design, build, test, launch, and market the product. They are the ones who excel at bringing a diverse team together and inspiring them to work toward a common vision.
One of the tools that Julie is using to train future chief product engineers is a customer complaint analysis board. This exercise provides a framework to identify the clients’ stable preferences: those nonnegotiable, instinctive requirements that drive their choice when searching for a solution. Instead of glossing over complaints or basing product decisions on general trends, the key is to take each individual issue seriously. Every time a new complaint arises, we must ask ourselves three critical questions:
- What is the client trying to achieve, and what constraints do they face? This question helps the team grasp the specific context in which the client is using the product and uncovers why their experience may be more challenging compared to others.
- How does their perception of how the product should work differ from ours? This helps the team reassess their design choices and see if client needs or circumstances have shifted.
- Why is this difference surprising? This explores the gap between assumptions and reality, helping the team avoid rushed decisions and uncover missed insights.
In Julie’s case, the customer complaint analysis along with other lean product design and development tools are not only providing new insights; they are shifting the team’s focus from meeting deadlines to delivering real, meaningful value to each customer.
The driving force behind scaling product-led companies
The main challenge I see in software product design is that once a product gains traction and the company begins scaling, its founders let go too soon. Caught up in day-to-day operations, internal politics, and external pressure from investors to grow sales quickly, they divert their attention away from the product itself. To keep up, they build bureaucratic structures to support growth and establish rituals and processes to maintain the product. However, in doing so, they stop showing direct interest and involvement in the product, losing the vision and driving force they once provided.
While frameworks like agile, widely used in the high-tech world, can help manage growth, they often fragment the product vision by spreading responsibility across different people with limited influence. When this happens, the focus shifts from maintaining a cohesive, innovative product to merely delivering features. But letting go of the product ultimately means letting go of growth.
Additionally, many modern product teams lack accountability for profitability, resulting in development and innovation without a clear understanding of the impact on the bottom line. As a result, the company suffers in multiple ways: progress slows significantly due to legacy systems, cash flow diminishes as lead times increase, and the organization becomes increasingly bogged down by inefficiencies that are difficult to overcome.
We can avoid this trap by building an organization around chief product engineers—leaders who understand the full spectrum of product creation, from user experience to technical trade-offs and financial performance. This means cultivating a system where every team member contributes to product success, learning through apprenticeship, and growing into roles that embody both craftsmanship and business sense. The real challenge is building an organization where product vision, customer value, and business outcomes align seamlessly. By perpetuating an artisan mindset, companies can grow without losing sight of what made their product unique in the first place.
- Melanie Perkins, the creator of Canva design software; Brian Chesky, the creator of Airbnb; and Larry Page, the creator of Google Search. ↩︎
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Designing the Future
An Introduction to Lean Product and Process Development.
