post

Footer About

Footer Get Involved

Footer Links

Mind the Product

General

Product Unplugged Episode 3 with Pierce Healy

Product Unplugged Episode 2 with Lorilyn McCue

Product Strategy

Building Product Teams

Diversity and Inclusion

Digital Transformation

Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML)

Product Leadership

Product Management Career

Product Ethics

Minimum Viable Product

Enterprise Product Management

OKRs

Customer Research

Hypothesis and Testing

Business Strategy

User Research

👩‍🚀🚀 Live now for MTP members: <a href="https://mtp2017stg.wpengine.com/membership/#events" style="color:#FFFFFF;text-decoration:underline;">Driving Innovation AMA with Tendayi Viki</a>

Roadmaps: Break the rules without breaking the principles

Got questions about your product career?

Product roadmaps vs data – Jeremy Levy on The Product Experience

From engineering to product management at Google

Mind the Product joins Pendo

Born in Spain, adopted by Germany. Studied arts, started work as a UX Designer and eventually moved into Product. Currently working in Berlin at Talon.One

Lead of Product Management

Jorge Rodriguez-Ramos

The Roman legion was one of the best-run organisations of the ancient world, and outright the most successful military unit for the better part of eight centuries. This in itself makes it interesting for some (like myself) as a topic for study, but understandably it’s not for everyone. It is possible to learn how to lead a product at a startup by studying the legion’s organisation and history, simply because there are more than a few common challenges when organising a big group of people, regardless of whether the group builds tech products or campaigns in foreign territory.
In this post, we&#8217;ll learn about what we as product leaders can learn from them.
There are three key similarities between the Roman Legion and working in a startup environment&#8230;
<ul>
<li>Stakes and pressure are high: Running your business into the ground or getting your army destroyed are both undesirable outcomes.</li>
<li>Responsibilities and goals are difficult to stake out: Whether commanding a platoon or a team of developers, the mission and goals of the team have to be clear for everyone.</li>
<li>Uncertainty and changes are unavoidable: Any business has only a vague idea of what its competitors are currently working on, the military of any country is likewise not privy to what its “competitors” are planning.</li>
</ul>
Although the Roman legion faced these pressures, it was an active force for more than a millennium. As a consequence of this longevity, they changed drastically throughout the ages to adapt to constant challenges. However, during this constant age of change, there were three characteristics that were consistently maintained:
<h2>1. Clear ownership and reporting lines</h2>
The Roman legion had an extremely streamlined reporting and ownership line: As the lowliest soldier—a legionnaire—you would be responsible for your armour, weapons, and tools, you would share one tent and one pack animal with seven fellow soldiers. This group of eight formed the smallest unit of the legion: the contubernium. From within the contubernium a spokesman would be elected, one of 10 spokesmen who would report and talk with the centurion: a career soldier and the head of (you guessed it) a century, composed of 10 contuberniums, 80 men in total. All communication and reporting were done strictly through each selected spokesman.
In turn, centurions would be grouped with five other peers, the senior of them being in charge of a group of 480 soldiers: a cohort. Each legion would have 10 of these senior centurions, making up the 4,800 total soldiers who formed the legion. These centurions would report to the head centurion or Primus pilus, the highest ranked professional soldier within the legion.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://mtp2017stg.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/baf6e103-fb75-45fc-af6a-753f10f41315_Artboard201.png" alt="" width="1003" height="229" />
Every individual within the legion would have known who he reported to and his exact responsibilities. Compare this to companies where C-levels and “heads of” attempt to get as much of their pet project done while their peers sabotage them, where teams argue about who is responsible for what, and where teams can be made responsible for areas of the business they have little or nothing to do with.
Ask yourself these questions: Do you know who you report to? Who reports to you? What services does your team own? What tools do they have? Are you all accountable ONLY for things you own and have control over?
<h2>2. Being rigid and flexible at the same time</h2>
There is a clear advantage in knowing what you’re expected to do and for whom, but such rigid structure must also stifle initiative, right? Well…not really. The Romans figured out a fact of life that was put into a short aphorism well after they were gone: “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.”
<figure style="width: 921px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://mtp2017stg.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/c0c36826-8314-49fa-acef-45007a8a28d0_Artboard20120copy202.png" alt="" width="921" height="947" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">The Roman Legion and Macedonian Phalanx respective strategies</figcaption></figure>
Centurions were not just allowed to make changes to the battle plans, they were expected to do so. They would have been properly briefed on what the legion commander wanted to achieve and the bigger picture, but within that scope, they were trusted to do what made the most sense at any given moment. The senior centurions were not presented with specific battle orders, but with goals. Their knowledge was also tapped into while drawing the battle plans; The commander might have had a better strategic understanding of a battle, but the tactical awareness of the centurions was essential for him to decide on one strategy or another.
While the Romans had their fair share of bad commanders who would go against this approach, they tended to get killed in battle or relieved of their command pretty quickly. Commanders who trusted their centurions and offered them enough liberty fared much better. Again, compare with organisations where top management writes down the OKRs for their teams, making them feature deliverables, or even worse, puts them into a self-defined Gantt chart and throws a tantrum when things are not delivered “on time”.
Ask yourself these questions: Does your organisation give you clear goals that are not specific deliverables? Can you share your input on those goals and your point of view? Do you get the liberty to change a plan to fulfill those goals if you think a different approach will work better?
<a href="https://mtp2017stg.wpengine.com/okrs-implement-well-ensure-transparency-and-drive-progress/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Discover more insights on OKRs and goals in this blog post. </a>
<h2>3. Learn, adapt, keep what’s good, and let go of the rest</h2>
The longevity of the legions was cause and consequence of how much they changed over time. The Romans were a very pragmatic people. Whenever they encountered an obstacle they didn’t know how to deal with, they were happy to ditch their old system of looking at a problem and trying something new. During their history, they changed the structure and equipment of the legions many times, the catalyst for these changes being, more often than not, a setback in battle.
Likewise, whenever they encountered enemies that did something better than themselves (Gaulish cavalry or Iberian sword design, to name two) they were quick to absorb and adapt their own designs, or outright copy them. Tradition was only respected to the point it remained useful, and if it had to be ditched, so be it.
<figure style="width: 950px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://mtp2017stg.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/5e21b4a5-091e-49d7-98ff-b135111fc5cf_Artboard20120copy.png" alt="" width="950" height="246" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">The advancement of Roman weaponry</figcaption></figure>
All too often I’ve witnessed product managers beating dead features that do not deliver on their promises, simply because a lot of effort was invested in them. Managers and C-levels also fall prey to the “but that is the business model that has made us successful!” trap: What made your product successful for its first three years might not work anymore, and you need to be ready to accept that and adapt.
To delve deeper into this topic, <a href="https://mtp2017stg.wpengine.com/only-losers-average-losers/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">read this blog post: Only losers average losers</a>
Ask yourself these questions: Is your organisation ready to drop an idea or feature when it stops working, no matter the resources put into it? Do you regularly check what your competitors are doing and “borrow” those ideas that you think can work for your business?
Answering affirmatively all of these questions might seem far-fetched, and it is. Even the legions would not always follow their own principles: No organisation is perfect, and even the best-run teams keep some antipatterns. But in the Roman legion, as in tech companies, clear ownership and understanding the chain of command, liberty within a common shared goal, and the capacity to adapt and learn, are characteristics that might save your life. And if you’re a product leader, they’ll make your team more efficient and your job stress-free.
Discover more content on <a href="https://mtp2017stg.wpengine.com/category/product-leadership/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Product Leadership </a>and read more of <a href="https://mtp2017stg.wpengine.com/profile/JorgeRodriguez-Ramos977" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jorge&#8217;s articles </a>
<div class="g g-21"><div class="g-single a-75"><a class="gofollow" data-track="NzUsMjEsMSw2MA==" href="https://mtp2017stg.wpengine.com/product-management-training/public-workshops/"><img decoding="async" src="https://mtp2017stg.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/General-Training-Level-up-FOOTER-scaled.jpg" /></a></div></div>

core/freeform

Guest Post

Building Consumer-Grade Experiences for the Enterprise By Ciara Peter

What Makes a Great Product Manager by Graham Siener

The GIST Framework by Itamar Gilad

Scaling the Product and the Team by Rachael Shah

Decisions, Debt, and Other Dilemmas by Janna Bastow

Hacking Your Product Career by Gibson Biddle

How Medicine and Research Translates to Patients by Shree Patel

The Future of Product Management by Richard Harrison

Data Science and Digital Businesses by Ali Gulez

You Need A Product Strategy by Sam Odio

When in product, do as the Romans do

ProductTank Columbus

ProductTank Tauranga

ProductTank Edinburgh

Prioritised Member AMA - Perfecting product roadmaps

ProductTank San Diego

Navigating difficult relationships panel

ProductTank Philadelphia

ProductTank Bucharest

ProductTank NoVa

Remote Training Workshops

ProductTank London

ProductTank Birmingham

ProductTank Oslo

ProductTank Astana

ProductTank NoVA

ProductTank Singapore

ProductTank Portland

ProductTank Yerevan

ProductTank Budapest

ProductTank Valencia

ProductTank Porto

ProductTank Richmond

ProductTank Los Angeles

ProductTank Austin

ProductTank Norwich

ProductTank Des Moines

ProductTank San Francisco

ProductTank Helsinki

ProductTank Riga

ProductTank Reading

ProductTank Brighton

ProductTank Montevideo

ProductTank Reston

ProductTank Vienna

ProductTank Buenos Aires

ProductTank Curitiba

ProductTank Bielefeld

ProductTank Charleston

ProductTank Bogotá

ProductTank Newcastle Upon Tyne

ProductTank Raleigh

ProductTank Tokyo

ProductTank Cardiff

ProductTank Braunschweig

ProductTank Dallas

ProductTank Montréal

ProductTank Seattle

ProductTank Köln

ProductTank Malmö

ProductTank Canberra

ProductTank Perth

ProductTank Charlotte

ProductTank Washington

ProductTank Paris

ProductTank Manchester

ProductTank Madrid

#mtpcon SF+Americas 2022 Conference

ProductTank Zürich

#mtpEngage Hamburg 2022 Leadership Forum

#mtpEngage Hamburg 2022 Workshops

#mtpEngage Hamburg 2022 Conference

#mtpcon London+EMEA 2022 Conference

When in product, do as the Romans do

Jorge Rodriguez-Ramos

Read more

Comments