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Hey Reader 👋🏻

At this point, I have spoken with hundreds of Head of People, CPO's and all types of HR Teams directly who are looking to implement the PX-as-a-Product approach.

A brief pause to reflect on that sentence... How f*cking cool that what started as a niche obsession for a few of us mad enough to step outside the lines, is now becoming something People teams of varying sizes from around the world are leaning into. Wild!

As a reader of this newsletter, you are also one of the pioneers leading the post-HR generation, so massive kudos to you! 👊🏻💜

Ok, back to the point...

All of the Leaders and Teams I speak to are excited about Product-Led PX... Most however, don't know where to begin. Which by the way, is totally normal - so if you are feeling that too, don't worry! It's not like we are swapping oranges for clementines here, this is a huge shift in how we think and work in HR. If you are excited but unsure... guess what, you are HUMAN.

Or maybe you are an AI, also possible these days I guess 😆 [pinch yourself, if it doesn't hurt... yup. You are an AI]

Even with the uncertainty of where to begin, all of the conversations I have had have left me convinced that the product-led approach to PX will become the dominant operating model of the most successful lean People teams in scaling businesses over the next decade and beyond. Afterall, that is why I coined the phrase “the Post-HR generation” in the first place.

It's time for a radical shift away from the HR playbooks and best practices. Traditional HR approaches just don’t work in early stage and high-growth companies. Honestly, I think even some enterprises are now cottoning on to the limitations of the institutionalised approaches of HR models of old (sorry Ulrich 🙏🏻).

As a relevant side note, I am actually joining Chris Metcalfe and Samantha Murray for a chat about the application of Product-Led PX in both start-up and enterprise level orgs - It's a webinar on 20th August, register and join the conversation if you can 🤘🏻

Ok, where to begin with PX-as-a-Product.

A pattern to my advice has also emerged during those many conversations I have had with People Leads and Teams which I have translated into a very simple 4 step approach which any People team of any size and stage - Stand alone, Lean, Enterprise - can follow to get started with Product-Led PX practices.

4 Steps to Product-Led PX

Step 1 = Mindset First 🧠

Whether you are stand-alone Head of People or setting out to lead your team through the HR to product-led PX shift - the first step is making sure everyone involved truly understands why this change is more than a just another semantic rebrand of “HR”.

To be honest, whether you are stand-alone or not, start with yourself. Make sure YOU understand the why behind the shift first. It can be easy to assume you do because you like the idea of working in a more Agile way, or that conceptually you can see how employees could be considered customers... But seriously, spend a couple of weeks immersing yourself in the content - read the books, listen to the podcasts, subscribe to the newsletters (well, you have already nailed this one, clearly 😉).

Once you feel like you can confidently explain PX-as-a-Product to a total stranger, not just describing the methodology, but clearly articulating the impact working in a product-led why can have and how it is fundamentally different to HR... Then you are ready to take the idea to your team (or maybe even your CEO 👀).

If you have a team, send them away for a couple of weeks to do the same - Then come together to discuss, challenge, dissent around the concept until everyone understands that product-led PX (however you execute) is about the People team becoming a strategic function of value creation and growth, not a passive function of support and service.

Only then have you established the mindset shift to move to Step 2 with clarity or intent.

Here are some good places for you (and your team) to go down a few rabbit holes:

🎧Podcasts: PX Espresso Hour, The Modern People Leader, Work for Humans​

📚Books: Built for People, The Lean Startup

📝Articles: Re-imagining Work as a Product​

📧Newsletters: Scaling Start-Ups, PX Espresso (😉), The Operating Model​

🔔Follow: Jessica Zwaan, Dart Lindsley, Dan Huerta, Stephen Huerta, Chris Metcalfe, Samantha Murray, Adam Axon, Marie Krebs, Alicia Grimes - Start these awesome folk and let their content lead you to others thinking along the same lines 🙌🏻

Step 2 = User Discovery 🔍

Ok, this is step 2 for a reason. You can not build truly impactful solutions if you don't truly understand the problem you are solving. A fundamental aspect of being product-led is that you obsess over the problem, NOT the solution. What you build should ultimately be informed by your deep understanding of the problem, not by the brilliance of your assumption laden solution.

Traditional HR is top down and solution led - We build solutions based on what feels important to HR, what a exec stakeholder told us was critical to them, what that unicorn tech company did which has to work here too.

Yeah. We have all done it.

With product-led PX the critical skill for you and your team (at least those on the team who will be closest to end-users / stakeholders) to develop before going any further is getting equipped to cut through the bullsh*t. Just because a stakeholder is loud, doesn't mean their problem is a critical one to solve (you know the sort of stakeholders I am talking about... 👀😆).

Learning how to ask the right questions to uncover what is actually a critical and high impact bottleneck / opportunity and what is just “noise” is crucial. As you know, lean People teams have next no time and budget to waste, you HAVE to put what you have into solving real employee (and business) problems that tie directly back to business impact, not just shipping endless “feature requests” and low impact programmes because you were told they were needed.

There are obviously tons of ways to go about User Discovery, so go down a rabbit hole on this too - research different techniques, compare notes, come up with an approach which feels right, but make sure you have an approach defined!

The approach I am currently in love with after my advisor Liesa introduced me to it is, The Mom Test by Rob Fitzprack.

The book (and technique) is written for entrepreneurs and founders to test their early stage ideas, BUT the conversation frameworks and core concept are PERFECT for People Teams to use to cut through the noise and uncover the real problems to solve.

Step 3 = Prioritisation🚦

Right, step 3 - Now you have developed the skill of uncovering the right problems to solve, now you need to establish concrete ways of choosing what problems to solve first, which to keep in your backlog, and which to scrap altogether.

Again, loads of ways you can do this, I have written a lot about prioritisation and shared multiple frameworks which you could use (RICE, MoSCoW, ICE, Kano etc) - but for ease of getting started, I suggest using my Impact ROI model (revisit that model in more detail here: PX Espresso: 075)

In simple terms: document all the bottlenecks, pains, and opportunities surfaced during your user discovery (call this your backlog). Then, use a simple 4 box grid to decided what to work on first: 2 axis - Impact (high to low), Effort (high to low),

Prioritise High Impact + Low Effort activities, discard Low impact + High effort. Discuss and review High Impact + High Effort (sometimes these are the most critical, despite the effort outlay), use Low Effort + Low Impact activities as “fillers” only when you have capacity.

Once you have your backlog created and prioritised, you are read for Step 4...

Step 4 = Agile Execution 🐈

Most HR projects and programmes are delivered in using the Waterfall project management approach: i.e Come up with the end solution (in a silo), create a project plan for delivery, work through each stage in sequence (with little to no testing or user feedback), deliver your solution as the final milestone of your project plan...
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There are multiple issues with this approach for modern People teams. One is that is far too slow and two, it is “solution first” which often leads to an end product which is built on assumptions, delivered late, and often with extremely low engagement once launched. Yup, we have all been there with this one too! 😱

Instead, adopt agile principles and work in short sprints - there is a lot of jargon surrounding "Agile" so I will explain this in the most simple way possible: break the project down into smaller chunks of work, build with your end users, not for them, share unfinished but usable prototypes, gather real feedback, and iterate during 2-4 week blocks of work, informed by end-user feedback, aligned to real business impact.

At the end of each sprint pause and recheck alignment, priority and impact. Simple as that!

All of this made 1000x easier by visualising your workflow in a Kanban board, be that physical or digital, visualising your workflow and managing your work in progress is the key to agile execution.

As with each step - spend a little bit of time researching Agile and Scrum, you will find that these approaches are far more accessible and simple to execute than the jargon suggests. You don't need to become Scrum certified or bring in an Agile coach (although time and budget allowing, do those things) - you just need to grasp the basics and stick to these 3 principles:

• Visualise your workflow
• Ruthlessly prioritise
• Work in Sprints

That’s it… Seriously it doesn't have to be any more complicated than following these 4 steps to get you started. Don’t rush through any of the steps and do them in sequence. Make sure you (and all involved) have a firm grasp of each of stages before moving to the next.

Most People teams want to get straight to Agile Execution, because it sounds cool… 😎 However, skipping straight to Agile Execution of traditional HR just means you are getting more efficient at delivering low impact solutions… 🫠

Start with mindset first, get really clear on the why behind the how of product-led PX, then work your way through the steps to get to Agile execution at a pace that feels right for you, your team, and your org.

If you do that, you will become super efficient at delivering high impact solutions, at a greater frequency, and with business alignment.

That's change. That's impact. That's growth.

OK, that’s a wrap for this week.

Grab your coffee and open up your inbox same time next week for more insights, tips, and resource flags on how to smash HR silos, add strategic value and turn your People function into a growth driver 🚀

With love,

Luke ✌🏻

PS, when you are ready you might like...

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