Next up in my blog series on “Anti-patterns that Doom Product Owners to Fail” I discuss what happens when Product Owners operate from a place of fear. Negative feelings and emotions are often the root cause of fear: fear of failure, conflict, or trying new things. But failure and conflict can lead to learnings that drive meaningful change.
Afraid to Fail
Problem
I think everyone has a natural fear of failure. You may fear disappointing someone, or you might see failure as a black mark on your reputation. As a child, I was absolutely devastated when I forgot to do a school assignment and thought it was the end of the world. But it wasn’t.
Solution
Failure should not be feared. However, this may be an organizational or cultural problem, rather than a personal one. If that is the case, it will be harder to address the issue. But if it’s a personal fear of individual or team failure, you need to figure out how to stop fearing failure. You need to feel psychologically safe to fail, and that starts with you recognizing that failure is a natural and expected part of life, essential to our growth and development. (NOTE: there’s a great book out there called “The Worry Cure” that I highly recommend to anyone who lives in terror of failure.)
Won’t Experiment or Innovate
Problem
If you aren’t trying new things or creating a hypothesis and testing it, your product won’t have anything that delights your customers. Products that don’t spark excitement or joy will quickly be abandoned. Your competitors surely seek to take market shares away from you, and if you aren’t the innovation leader, you will instead be a laggard.
Solution
You can’t rest on your laurels if you want to build a product that your customers can’t live without. Boring products won’t make it. You must constantly evolve your product, so it meets customer expectations and market demands. To do this, you need to do experiments, get feedback, make improvements or enhancements, and then rinse and repeat.
Not viewing Failure as a Learning Opportunity
Problem
When failure happens (and it will), if you don’t learn from it, you will continue to repeat the same mistakes that led to the failure happening. This is a lost opportunity.
Solution
Every single failure teaches you something. If you are open and honest in your Sprint Retrospectives, you should address any failures as learning opportunities. The whole idea is to reflect on what caused something to fail and to adjust your process to improve the outcome the next time. Don’t let a good failure go to waste – use what you learned and get better because of it.
Avoiding Conflicts rather than Facing and Resolving them
Problem
I’ll be the first to admit that I am very conflict-adverse. I tend to flee from conflict rather than addressing it. This is a problem – a big one. When you don’t face conflict, feelings start to fester and while ignoring the conflict is one tactic you can use, it won’t end the conflict. Instead, it will continue to grow until it reaches a tipping point, at which point it could lead to serious negative consequences.
Solution
Conflict is a necessary and natural part of life. You may categorize conflict as positive or negative, or healthy or unhealthy. While unhealthy conflict generally isn’t very productive, healthy conflict can lead to some of the best, most creative ideas. If everyone always goes with the flow, and no one ever questions the status quo, no new ideas will be generated. (NOTE: if the conflict is negative or unhealthy, it still needs to be dealt with before it leads to a bad outcome.)
Final Thoughts
It’s not good to live in fear. Fear often holds people back from being willing to innovate. It’s important to recognize that failure is only bad if you don’t take away any lessons and apply them to your next attempt. It’s okay to try new things, test them out, and let them fail. And remember that healthy conflict leads to innovation, without which your product won’t delight your customers.
Now, it’s your turn. What other fears have you seen Product Owners exhibit? I happen to be an introvert, so fear of disappointing stakeholders might be on my list. Let me know what’s on your list in the comments below!