Comfortingly regular notifications on LinkedIn tell me there is a constant trickle of users searching for ‘product culture’ and accidentally finding my little LLC on the platform. ‘Product culture’ must mean something to them, and it certainly means something to me since I named my company after it, but what?

Here I will take a look at some top results from DuckDuckGo on ‘product culture’ as a proxy for what the internet thinks, then I’ll close out with my own thoughts.

The internet first thinks Product Culture is someone else’s consultancy (incidentally confirming that I’m yet to have an original thought), and I commend that company for their effective SEO. Quickly we get into some more nourishing answers though; I see an article from ProductPlan (whose content I frequently use as a sort of SparkNotes for Product Management) with our first helpful definition:

Much like company culture, product culture is a shared mindset. Except in this context, the mindset applies specifically to the product. Often product culture leans on ideas and insights from agile, design thinking, customer centricity, and other product management and development principles. But, culture is not limited by any one thing. Rather it is the result of multiple influences, experiences, and beliefs.

Useful though this is to the journeyman, we’ve ended up with at least 3 more things to go into defining, which hardly feels like progress. The internet can do better. Sure enough, a very familiar name soon pops up, as the SVPG weigh in on the subject. Marty Cagan doesn’t take the credit here, instead pointing to themes associated with product culture in How Google Works by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg (the former CEO and former head of product of Google):

I really like this. It’s a lot more actionable than I would have managed and a very helpful checklist of things for Product leaders to go about concerning themselves with in any environment. It’s not perfect though (this particular use of ‘relentless’ has crossed over into cliché territory by my reckoning) and of course we can’t let the internet have all the limelight, so here’s what product culture means to me:

Product culture is strong opinions, loosely held. It is truly understanding and accepting failure. It’s transparency, pragmatism, and kindness. Product culture isn’t for everyone or every company, but where you find these principles alive, you’ll find value. That’s why I named my business Product Culture.

John

_{All images copyright John Ely, 2022}