We’ve Invested in Agile, Design Thinking, OKRs… So Why Aren’t We Seeing the Payoff?
It surprises me how many organizations I meet that have already invested heavily in modern ways of working. They have smart people, proven methods, and no shortage of initiatives. And yet, many still feel they aren’t reaching their potential. They see wasted effort, siloed decisions, and poor alignment between strategy and execution. They see talented teams become frustrated when their best ideas never make it to market.
The problem isn’t a lack of intelligence or good tools. It’s the inability to embed these methods into the culture and get all sides of the business aligned around them. It isn’t enough for a development team to work with world-class practices if the business side operates on a different logic. Real progress requires the full cross-functional skillset working in a shared way, reinforced by upper management through priorities, governance, and daily messaging.
That’s why change management has to sit at the heart of any attempt to modernize product management. Recognition of the need is not enough. The difficult part is getting people to actually change how they work.
A Practical Framework, Refined for Effectiveness
That challenge is exactly why I built the Strategy by Design (SxD) framework. It’s an accumulation of product strategy best practices I have refined over more than 30 years. It is broad by design, encompassing the needs of both leaders and teams. It shows what “good” looks like when product strategy truly lives in execution.
SxD is not theoretical. It’s a practical tool, grounded in applying methods in real-life projects. Many of the methods are well known in product strategy circles, but over time I have refined them to make them more effective in practice. The result is a framework that can adapt to many different organizational realities.
But here’s the important point: SxD represents a final state. It’s what organizations should be aiming for, not where most can start. The challenge isn’t learning the framework — the challenge is getting people to actually adopt new ways of working.
The Real Barrier: Change Itself
When I worked inside large organizations like Nordea and Dräger, I saw this firsthand. Everyone agreed that change was needed. But agreeing on the need didn’t mean people were willing to change how projects were set up, how teams collaborated, or how decisions were made.
The real barriers weren’t technical. They were cultural and political. And they were powerful. Without a change process, even the best framework will fail to take root.
The Five Phases of Change, Applied to Product Management
Change doesn’t happen all at once. It moves through phases. The five classic phases of change management map closely onto the journey organizations must take when adopting SxD:
Create urgency and relevance – Why modernizing product management matters now. Show the cost of standing still and the opportunities that only new ways of working can unlock.
Build alignment – Leaders and teams agree on what problem they are solving, and how. In SxD, this often means using Opportunity Framing or similar tools to ground change in real business needs.
Quick wins first – Start small. Pilot methods like Product Narrative or Framestorming with a few teams. Demonstrate tangible benefits quickly.
Embed into practice – Once quick wins are proven, methods need to become part of the daily rhythm. Design Briefs, OKR Stories, and Prioritization must move from “new tools” to “how we work here.”
Scale and sustain – The tip of the pyramid, and the hardest part. At this stage, SxD spreads across teams and departments. The methods are reinforced by leadership messaging, governance structures, and culture.
The real meat is in stage 5. That’s where organizations stop experimenting and start transforming.
Every Organization Is Different
The roadmap is clear, but every organization’s path will be unique. Change management means identifying where the greatest impact can be made with the lowest barriers. For one organization, that might mean starting with Framestorming. For another, the right entry point may be Prioritization or OKR Stories.
Often, the biggest barriers are cultural and political, and they must be factored in. That’s why a diagnostic step is essential. Before prescribing methods, we need to understand how projects are currently set up, where the pains are, and where early interventions can succeed.
Closing Thought
SxD represents a final state: a modern product management practice where strategy and execution are seamlessly connected. But frameworks alone don’t create change — and neither do smart people or isolated teams. Real transformation happens only when new ways of working become cultural, cross-functional, and reinforced by leadership.
Change management provides the roadmap. It helps organizations build urgency, align on problems, demonstrate value, embed new practices, and ultimately sustain a cultural shift. If we want modernization to succeed, we must treat it not as the adoption of a framework but as the management of change.
