FREEMIUM Chapter 5
Creating and Managing Growth Teams -- Politics and Realities (with Ben Williams)
Are we going through PLG one step at a time?
Yes… Yes we are.
Chapters 1-4 were all about setting up the argument for PLG, how it came to be, how it works, and what the core principles are.
Now we move into Part II of the book, entitled “PRODUCT-LED GROWTH IMPLEMENTATION AND TACTICS.”
Up first: How to build and manage a growth team. For this chapter, I partnered with my friend, Ben Williams, who has built and managed multiple growth teams at scale, including at Snyk, Cloudbees, and IBM.
For startups, building a growth team is somewhat easy (although integrating marketing and engineering can still be a challenge for some people with more traditional experience). For established companies, this is a huge bet, and it comes along with resistance and a gravitational pull back to what people are familiar with. We cover all this and more in Chapter 5.
Below is a podcast version of the chapter, along with graphics, a written summary, and a self-evaluation exercise.
Enjoy!
XOXO,
-db
Chapter 5 Podcast
Chapter 5 Images
Figure 5.1: Growth Team Structure
Figure 5.2: Growth Team Roles
Chapter 5 Summary
Growth teams are small, cross-functional teams focused on specific growth objectives
Growth teams are organized by objective, not function
Growth teams focus on learning in the pursuit of impact
Growth teams measure themselves against a Product Growth Model that contains the key assumptions around various growth levers
Growth teams architect Growth Loops and iterate quickly through growth experiments to create the cumulative impact of improvements across growth levers
Chapter 5 Manager Minute
Thinking about your own company, take time to reflect on the following questions:
What is our primary strategy across these five growth levers? (circle one)
If Growth Teams are defined as being inclusive of both marketing personnel and engineers who can work on product, how many Growth Teams do we have at our company? List as many as possible:
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If we were to spool up one additional Growth Team, on which area of the business would we want them to focus?
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