A Leverage Points Framework for Systems-shifting product management

Systems-shifting product management builds on the work of systems-shifting design which moves away from user centred practices in order to affect change by effecting systems.

How might product management use a Leverage Points Framework

Based on the Center for Humane Technology’s Leverage Points Framework, which is based on Donella Meadows ‘12 Leverage Points to Intervene in a System‘, here is version 0.1 of the Systems-shifting product management Leverage Points Framework.

A Leverage Points Framework for Systems-shifting product management

The core concept of a leverage framework is to illustrate that there are multiple points at which leverage can be applied to achieve an outcome, that depending on where on the lever the leverage point is the more or less effect it will have on the outcome, and that multiple leverage points can be used together to increase achieving the outcome.

1 – User action. Leverage applied here is about providing the means for a user to perform an action.

2 – Feature. Leverage at this point involves change to existing or new features in an attempt to achieve the outcome.

3 – Product. Product-wide changes or new products utilise leverage at this level.

4 – Business model. Changing business models applies leverage at this point on the lever.

5 – Organisation. Changes within an organisation can have high leverage on outcomes.

6 – Culture. Changing the culture has the highest leverage in achieving an outcome.

What might that look like in practice?

Example: Let’s saying we’re looking for ways to reduce misinformation on Twitter.

The lowest leverage change that could be made would be to introduce something that relies on a user action for achieving the outcome. That could be something like displaying a message asking the user if they want to read an article before they retweet it. Low leverage changes are quick to introduce but find it extremely difficult to achieve the outcome alone.

The second point on the framework is to introduce a feature that aims to achieve the outcome. This is higher leverage than point one as it is always available for all users and doesn’t rely on a user action. For our example this could be changing the algorithm to reduce the reach of retweets with links so that fewer people then click on and read the article.

Point three is at the product level. This means either wholesale changes to an existing product or a new product. For the purposes of this example lets imagine a very different Twitter where the algorithm tries to keep users in bubbles, reduces the number tweets in users’ timeline that are counter to views they’ve shared, or anonymises content to expose users to different perspectives but prevents the originator from being attacked for expressing them.

Point four is about how changing the business model can achieve the outcome. Twitter relies on driving user engagement in order to create ad spend in order to generate revenue. If social media sites over a certain size were considered a public good and part of the essential infrastructure of countries there could be an argument for governments contributing to revenue in return for Twitter reducing the need for increasing user engagement with certain types of content.

Five is leverage at the organisational level and could include changes to the company structure, incentives that drive behaviours, success measures, the diversity of people working there, how inclusive open to different points-of-view the corporate culture is.

The sixth and highest level point of leverage is to change the culture. This means changing what society considers acceptable behaviour, legislating against certain organisations and public figures to prevent misinformation, or putting memes to work against misinformation.

Or a simpler example: increase revenue.

  1. Send a user more emails, so they click more links, and buy more stuff.
  2. Introduce a feature that users pay more for.
  3. Introduce a product that solves a different problem, and which users pay for.
  4. Change the business model. Move upstream in the value chain, e.g. from buying something from another business to producing that thing that other businesses buy from you.
  5. Restructure the organisation to downsize departments with higher costs.
  6. Change the culture, create a trend so that more people desire what you produce.

Why do product managers struggle to achieve outcomes?

Because they almost always work at the lower levels of the lever. Why do product managers work at the lower levels? Because organisations often really don’t want to change in order to achieve outcomes, especially if they feel they are succeeding with their current features, products, business models, organisational structures and cultural view of the world.

Not only is is hard to do, it’s also difficult to be sure you’ll achieve the desired outcome. Any action in a complex system will have unintended consequences, but higher leverage changes are more likely to have vastly disconnected consequences which are impossible to tie back to the change.

Systems-shifting design for charity products and services

I have a hypothesis about product success: users are far less important than we think. How and where a product intersects with other systems is far more important for achieving outcomes.

Human-centred design, the dominant mindset for product design, places the user as the most important consideration, but this, I think, is built on the assumption of the user as separate from the world around them. If we think of the user as just one actor in the network of systems that makes up the product, then this

Rightly or wrongly, charities are often held to a higher ethical standard than commercial enterprises for how they design and build products and services, and I think as the ideas around systems-shifting design take hold we’ll see more charities designing for how to products interact with other systems to affect change and achieve outcomes rather than the user-centred approach for products that seek to change behaviour.

Weeknotes #274

Photo of the week:

One day something else will be looking at whatever we’ve left behind

This week I did:

Architecting for uncertainty

We’re getting into the hard work now. Well, the developers are, I just try not to cause too much confusion. It’s a bit of challenge for us to figure out how to build a product that will most likely have to be able to do things in the next six to twelve months that we don’t know about yet. It means being slower and more considered now to architect the systems in more complicated ways to give us flexibility later but that’s better than taking the easy route now and having to fix it later.

My idea that product management is about interfacing, integrating and iterating came into play this week, mostly around the integrating part. I’ve been thinking about where in their different systems and processes different channels might touch and begin to test ideas for a multi-channel approach. Those touch points will be where in the journey a user can switch from one channel to another, mostly on the assumption that the current channel isn’t working for them.

Irregular

I started a newsletter about the idea as the fundamental unit of value. I only have three subscribers, and I don’t know how regularly I’ll send it . One of things I often toy with is how to decide where to write things. Should it be a blog post, go in a newsletter, be a Twitter thread, or probably better for everyone, just an idea in my notes. Giving the newsletter something specific to be about should help me decide which writing goes where.

Centering values

I’m still (slowly) working through the Humane Technology course and am on the module about values. It starts by talking about the myth of neutrality in technology, people and metrics and goes on to talk about how we might approach developing a values rather than metrics and market driven approach to product development.

Blog posts

I wrote a few blog posts this week (well, nine). Some express a single idea and some try to bring ideas together. I’m trying to be more relaxed about writing blog posts and not have to feel like every one needs to be research and have references. They should be more a way to express ideas in progress rather than present finished thinking.

And thought about:

Whole person product management

I’ve been thinking a bit about how product management is presented in blogs and books as being about models and frameworks but when you get into it, it’s all about people. User needs should express actual people’s goals, values and aspirations. The pretend objectivity of prioritising by mapping items on two by two grid when really it’s the conversations between people that actually make the decisions. The roadmap that presents a finished vision of the product when really it’s a point-in-time summary of lots of thinking. I wonder if there’s a need to admit that effective product management cannot be done solely by relying on the concepts.

Where in the value chain

I’ve been working on the idea that the reason for the variety of definitions of product managers and types of product management work is that product managers work on different parts of the value chain. Some, maybe in an early stage start-up, might work cross the entire value chain, whereas in a different type of company a product manager might work more around the interface between company and customer, and in another type of organisation the product manager works only on a specific part of the value chain to do with the technology. This might help to explain the differences but it should also mean that we think of product management as equally important wherever in the value chain it happens.

Starlings have us beat

I was thinking a bit more about stigmergy again and whether it could be used within an organisation instead of strategy. Since writing that post I’ve started to wonder if actually stigmergy does already occur in organisations through informal information networks whilst strategy continues to be applied through formal hierarchies of authority. Maybe it’s obvious that both would have a place in a modern complex organisation. Maybe it’s naive and simplistic to think that an organisation could run effectively in the way a flock of starlings or an ant’s nest does. I’ve often thought that organisations have ‘shadow strategies’ that drive the things people actually do. Maybe that’s stigmergies at work.

This week I read:

System-shifting design

I read the Design Council report exploring some of the known issues with user-centred and solution-focused design and the emerging practice of social design that is “challenging the deep structure of current systems and working at different levels of a system to drive change“. I first heard about Social Design in the service design course I did and am interested in how it can be applied to product management. I think it’s long overdue in recognising the downsides of designing for an idealised user and can hopefully help us consider more about where are the right places to interact with systems to affect how they work.

Optimising the live virtual learning experience

This framework for improving VILT (Virtual Instructor Led Training) within organisations has some suggestions on improving learning. It doesn’t have much depth as to the rationale for improving learning in organisations, other than a few mentions of things like employee retention, but it’s another angle on the evolving space of online learning. It started me thinking about whether there’s any correlation between how much an organisation invests in the learning of it’s employees and how successful the organisation is (or to be more specific, how successful it is in responding to change and innovating).

Bootstrapping

I started reading the minimalist entrepreneur by Sahil Lavingia, who built Gumroad. From what I’ve read so far, it’s interesting how it reflects many of the trends I see in the creator economy, things build an audience before you build a product.

My growth area this week was:

Keep your head up

Trying to shift focus from the specific details of solution design to how we deal with the uncertain future.