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Read time: 2 minutes

Hey Reader 👋🏻

From the many (100's) of conversations I have had in the last year with People Leaders exploring product ways of working, the biggest blocker is often the perceived complexity in shifting from a HR Org, to a a Product Operating Model.

Don't get me wrong, a full product operating model transformation at scale does come with more complexity, absolutely no doubt - I am currently working with a 15,000+ headcount org making the shift, and it is a big undertaking - but for smaller People functions, or lean PX teams operating within a larger HR Org, it doesn't have to be complex at all.

The reality is that most People teams say they want to be “more product-led”, but very few can realistically overhaul their entire HR operating model to make that happen (understandably so).

So, I want to share a smaller, more practical place to start — one that works even inside traditional HR orgs: Product Trios.

The Product Trio model is not something I have created, it's been around for a number of decades - I was inspired by models shared by Marty Cagan (Silicon Valley Product Group) and Teresa Torres (Continuous Discovery Habits) - no doubt they were also inspired by similar models before their own.

What happens in most HR and People teams:

• Work is still delivered in silos
• Problems are handed off between roles
• Decisions get escalated upwards
• And “delivery” starts before the problem is fully understood

The result?

Well-intentioned initiatives that:

• Take too long
• Solve the wrong problem
• Or look good on paper but struggle to land in reality

For lean People teams - or PX teams embedded in big HR orgs - this is especially painful. You want to work differently, but the system won’t let you. Product Trios offer a way to deliver more value without replacing the system you’re operating in.

The good news is, the Product Trio model is very simple, versatile, scalable, and perfect for lean teams to adopt.

Product Trios

A Product Trio is a small, non-hierarchical working group that owns a problem end-to-end with shared accountability.

In classic product teams, the trio is:

• Product
• Design
• Engineering

Product Manager: frames the problem (not solutions), defines success metrics and outcomes, brings stakeholder context. Anchoring question: “Is this worth solving, and how will we know if it worked?”

Design Lead: advocates for users, shapes flows and feel, leads prototyping and testing, surfaces behavioural and emotional insights. Anchoring question: “Will people understand this, trust it, and want to use it?”

Engineering/Technical Lead: grounds ideas in technical reality, guides implementation and architecture, flags risks early, protects sustainability. Anchoring question: “Can we build this well, safely, and sustainably?”

rios work through joint problem framing, co-led discovery, and shared decision making.
​

Whether you are a team of one, or a 3 or 5 person lean team - the trio are roles to play and questions to be answered. They are not all in encompassing jobs in and of themselves... You can use the trio model in People / PX teams to solve problems alongside core HR work. The trio as questions become:

• What problem are we solving and why does it matter? (product)
• What do employees actually need, feel, and struggle with? (design)
• How do we make this real, workable, and adoptable inside the org? (engineer / technical)

One person can play more than one role.

The roles stay consistent — the people can flex.

Clearly there are layers of strategic alignment (prioritising which problems to solve) and capability building (i.e discovery, design, product management), which I am deliberately skipping past, because I want you to understand the core function of a product trio philosophically and how you could apply it - skills and practices be learned on the job!

How this works in practice (lightweight, not a full transformation)

1. Form trios around problems, not roles or projects

Instead of assigning work by function:

• “This is a design task”
• “This is an HR task”

You form a trio around a clear problem to solve:

• Poor onboarding experience
• Managers avoiding feedback
• Performance cycles creating anxiety, not clarity

The trio owns the problem — not just the output.

2. The trio frames the problem together

Before jumping to solutions, the trio aligns on:

• Who is affected?
• What’s broken or missing today?
• Why this problem matters now
• What constraints we’re operating within (policy, tech, culture)

This alone removes a huge amount of wasted work.

3. Discovery and delivery happen side-by-side

Instead of:

• “Design first”
• “Then delivery”
• “Then change management”

The trio:

• Tests ideas early
• Pressure-tests feasibility upfront
• Makes trade-offs consciously
• Learns before committing fully

This is where product thinking actually shows up — not in tools or templates, but in how decisions are made.

4. The trio owns outcomes, not just activity

Success isn’t:

• “We launched a thing”
• “We ran a workshop”
• “We shipped a policy”

It’s:

• Did behaviour change?
• Did friction reduce?
• Did this make work meaningfully better?

That ownership stays with the trio — not pushed upwards or sideways.

❌ Solution-Led HR Approach

• HR designs a solution in isolation
• PX is brought in late to “make it nicer”
• Delivery is constrained by decisions already locked in
• Adoption problems show up after launch

✅ Problem-Led Product Trio Approach

• A trio forms early around the problem
• Insight, experience, and feasibility are considered together
• Trade-offs are explicit
• The solution fits the organisation as it is, not as we wish it were

Where this works especially well

The trio model works particularly well in lean People teams (1–5 people) in start-ups and scale-ups - OR within PX / EX teams embedded in traditional HR orgs - Teams who want product thinking, but are enable (or don't want to) implement a product operating model transformation.

The beauty is that you can run Product Trios alongside an existing HR operating model - not instead of it. If you have capacity for solve one problem using a trio alongside your core HR load, you can! You can scale up and down the number of trios aligned to problems as your capacity allows.

It's a great Product OS light model.

If you want to experiment this week:

• Pick one People problem you’re already working on
• Form a trio to represent each role value (product), experience (design), and feasibility (technical/engineering)
• Spend 60 minutes framing the problem together
• Delay solutions until all three perspectives are present

You don’t need a huge product transformation moment to work like this - you just need the structure and intent.

Give it a go and let me know how you get on!

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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