Funding, Focus, and Flow
Designing a Product Operating Model That Actually Works
The product operating model is often treated as an afterthought, something assumed to “just happen” once teams are in place and work begins. In reality, it is the invisible architecture that determines whether product thinking can take hold. When designed well, it becomes a powerful enabler of adaptability, value creation, and organisational alignment. When neglected, even the most talented teams find themselves slowed, frustrated, and unable to deliver on their potential.
The product operating model is far more than governance frameworks, strategic principles or team rituals. It is the deliberate design of how funding flows, how teams are structured, how decisions are made, and how value is measured. Without this level of intention, organisations slide back into project-based habits that might feel familiar but ultimately prevent true product thinking and innovation from thriving.
Conversations I have with leaders like Eileen Soh reinforce this point further. Having worked in a SaaS scale-up, a 0-1 B2B environment, and a B2C organisation, she consistently found that the operating model was the decisive factor in whether teams succeeded. Her experience shows that it isn’t technology stacks or even raw talent that make the biggest difference, it’s the design of the system that surrounds the work.
Traditional project-based models, she explained, bake in solutions before problems are fully understood, locking teams into a path that quickly loses relevance. By contrast, when she was part of the team that introduced cyclical product funding this became their strongest lever. Her teams were able to adapt; shifting skills, rebalancing priorities, and following opportunities as discovery unfolded. Within just a few months, executives stopped questioning the approach as the evidence of value was already clear.
But as she also noted, funding models only work if value is consistently defined. Too often, executives sign off projects that need millions of dollars without a shared understanding of what success looks like, while teams smooth over difficulties to keep dashboards always ‘green’. This disconnect undermines trust, therefore a well-designed operating model must create a common language of value, one that executives recognise, teams can influence, and everyone can use to make trade-offs with confidence.
Talent alone is never enough, as Eileen’s stories underline this. One of her technically strongest teams underperformed because ways of working were chaotic, roles unclear, and operations neglected. Later, she led a team under heavy technical constraints that delivered better outcomes because the operating model gave clarity, rhythm, and focus.
The lesson here is clear; the right people in the wrong conditions will struggle, while the right model can elevate a struggling team into an exceptional one.
This is where Product Ops often proves to be the unsung hero and while the discipline is sometimes dismissed as administrative overhead, in practice it provides the backbone that allows teams to move with clarity and consistency.
Product Ops establishes the rhythms, data practices, and evidence decision-making frameworks that free product managers, designers, and engineers to focus on solving customer problems rather than getting into the detail of process. Eileen’s experience is a great example; when Product Ops was strong all teams, even when considering their constraints, outperformed expectations.
Culture plays an equally important role and as she described; there is a highly corrosive effect of high-IQ, low-EQ individuals that can rapidly derail collaboration and sap motivation. Product work is inherently multidisciplinary, a jigsaw puzzle where the picture only emerges when every piece connects. Effective operating models anticipate this and design for interdependence, creating the space for collaboration rather than leaving it to chance.
The deepest insight in all of this is that a product operating model is never finished. It must evolve continuously, adjusting to changes in funding, strategy, team composition, and technology. AI, for instance, will inevitably reshape the “jigsaw puzzle” of roles and skills. Models that cannot flex with such shifts will become brittle, and these models will nearly always break.
What Eileen’s experiences illustrate, and what I strongly believe, is that the operating model is far too undervalued in most organisations. Because when it works, it looks effortless, many assume it simply emerged. But it never does, it has to be designed with intent, implemented with care, and refined relentlessly.
Organisations that understand this don’t just move faster; they sustain momentum, navigate uncertainty with confidence, and build trust at every level. That is the quiet power of a well-designed product operating model. And it’s why those who master the craft of shaping them will always outperform those who leave it to chance.
What’s your experience implementing a product operating model? If you were to redesign your organisation’s operating model tomorrow, where would you start?