The Hidden Work of a Product Operating Model
- Layla Foord
- 17 hours ago
- 5 min read
Most product organisations don’t struggle because their teams lack talent, frameworks, or motivation.
They struggle because the environment around those teams is unclear.
There’s usually a strategy somewhere. People broadly understand the ambition. The roadmap is full, everyone is working hard, and from the outside things look productive.
And yet decisions keep drifting upward.
Teams check things with leadership more than they expected. Priorities move around more often than anyone planned.
Roadmaps stretch and bend depending on who is asking the question.
People start adding more process in the hope that things will settle down.
Over time the organisation starts to feel busy but strangely fragile. A lot seems to depend on a few people holding everything together.
When I see that pattern, it’s almost never a delivery problem, it’s usually an operating model problem.
What a Product Operating Model Actually Is
A product operating model is often described as a framework or a diagram. Something you draw on a slide to explain how product, engineering, design and commercial teams work together.
In reality it’s much more practical than that.
It’s the set of systems that help everyone in the organisation take their first, next best step.
It answers questions people are quietly asking all day without necessarily realising it.
Why are we here?
What are we trying to achieve right now?
What constraints are we working within?
Who owns what?
How do we make decisions when things are unclear?
What trade-offs are acceptable?
When those answers are visible, something interesting happens, people move with far more confidence.
Not because they’ve been told exactly what to do, but because the environment makes the next step obvious.
The Skeleton
I often think about a healthy operating model a bit like a skeleton. The skeleton isn’t there to restrict movement. It’s what makes movement possible. Without it, everything collapses into a soft mass of effort. Muscles pull in different directions and the body quickly loses coordination. With it, movement becomes fluid, fast, coordinated.
When the structural elements are clear, teams don’t need constant direction. They already understand the shape of the system they’re working inside.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Across the different companies I’ve worked in, from large platforms through to scaling technology organisations and mission-driven environments, the same patterns tend to show up when that structure is missing.
Early in my career at SEEK, for example, the company was already large and successful, but like many growing technology organisations, product teams were expanding faster than the operating environment around them.
Everyone was capable. The ambition was clear, but decisions about priorities, investments and ownership were often happening informally. Teams would move forward, then pause, then re-check alignment with leadership. A lot of smart people were doing a lot of coordination work.
What helped wasn’t adding more delivery process.
It was clarifying the system around the work and making strategy visible in a way that translated into priorities. Making ownership boundaries clear so teams knew where they could move independently.
Making decision pathways explicit so things didn’t constantly escalate upward.
Once those pieces were in place, something shifted.
Teams moved faster, but leadership spent less time in the weeds.
I saw a similar pattern later in high-growth environments like Envato and GO1.
Scaling companies often reach a point where they’ve outgrown the informal operating model that worked when the company was smaller.
In the early days a founder or a small leadership group can hold the whole system in their heads. Decisions move quickly because everyone is in the same room, literally or figuratively. But as the organisation grows, that implicit model stops working. People still want autonomy, but the environment around them hasn’t caught up.
Strategy lives in a few conversations.Ownership overlaps.Decision making becomes fuzzy.
Teams don’t slow down because they’re incapable.
They slow down because they’re trying to be responsible inside an unclear system.
And responsible people escalate decisions when they’re unsure.
The Structural Pieces That Matter
This is where the operating model starts to matter.
Not as a piece of documentation, but as a set of structural agreements that shape how the organisation moves.
Strategy boundaries
Strategy needs to translate into real boundaries.
Not just aspirations, but clarity about which problems matter most right now, which customers we’re prioritising, and what trade-offs we’re prepared to make.
Ownership
Ownership needs to be visible.
Teams should know what they’re responsible for, but also where collaboration begins and where decisions move to leadership.
Decision pathways
Not everything needs consensus.
Organisations work better when it’s obvious which decisions sit with teams, which involve architecture or commercial commitments, and when leadership should step in.
Rhythm
Finally there is rhythm.
Not just sprint cycles, but leadership cadence.
Strategy reviews.Roadmap alignment.Investment checkpoints.
Moments where the organisation pauses together, recalibrates, and then moves again.
Predictability Without Restriction
None of this is about control, in fact, a well-designed operating model does the opposite and it gives people more agency. If everyone understands the purpose of the organisation, the constraints we’re working within, the goals we’re pursuing, and the trade-offs we’ve agreed to, then people don’t have to wait to be told what to do - they can move.
One of the tests I sometimes use is that if most of the leadership team disappeared for a day, would the organisation keep moving?
What about a week or even a month?
Not perfectly, of course, but would people still know how to make sensible decisions and keep things progressing? If the answer is yes, the operating model is probably doing its job. Because the goal isn’t to make leaders more central, it’s to design an environment where people can do their best work without constantly needing permission.
When that happens, leaders are freed up to do the work only they can do:
Setting direction.
Sensing changes in the environment.
Adjusting the system when it needs to evolve.
The organisation moves with more predictability, but also more freedom and the quiet chaos that often sits underneath fast-growing companies starts to resolve into something much healthier.
Just clear enough that everyone knows their next best step.
The Work I Find Myself Drawn To
This is the work I find myself returning to again and again. Not writing strategies, but shaping the environment that allows them to work. Most organisations don’t lack smart people or strong intent. What they lack is a system that makes the right actions easier than the wrong ones.
The work of a product operating model is often quiet. It sits underneath the visible work of roadmaps, launches and metrics. But when it’s done well, the change is noticeable and teams stop waiting for permission. Leaders stop being the centre of every decision and the organisation starts to move with a kind of calm predictability.
Not because everything is controlled, but because everyone understands the purpose, the constraints, the trade-offs, and how decisions move. At that point the system begins to carry the weight of the organisation.
And people are free to do the work they came there to do.
I'll be running a talk and workshop on this topic at this years Leading the Product - Leaders Forum. Hope you can make it.
-Layla
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