Designing High-Performing Product Teams for Real-World Transformation

Over the years, I’ve often found myself leading the charge when it comes to building product teams and new ways of working - especially within established organisations undergoing major transformation. The initial goal is often framed around delivering revenue or conversion uplift, but the real challenge usually lies deeper: without the right people, skills, and structure, making meaningful impact at pace becomes incredibly difficult. In my experience, the way you design your team is often the biggest enabler or blocker of success.

In my current organisation, as we navigate a digital transformation, I’ve been tackling the same question again: how do you design and lead a high-performing product team that can evolve with business needs, deliver real outcomes, and avoid burning out along the way?

Here are a few recommendations based on what’s worked well for me so far:

1. Lay the right foundations

Approach: Give yourself permission to pause and discover—even under pressure

When I stepped into my current role, I inherited a team that was struggling: just 1 out of 5 product managers remained, there were few established processes, and a backlog that had grown to over 500 items. With stakeholders expecting fast results, the instinct might have been to rush straight into delivery mode. But that approach would have left me fixing surface-level symptoms without understanding the root causes.

Instead, I took a deliberate approach. I gave myself a three-month window to properly diagnose the situation while starting recruitment in parallel. During this time, I held in-depth conversations with stakeholders, surfacing insights around blockers, expectations, and ways of working. Yes, this can feel like a risky move when there’s external pressure to show immediate action—but this discovery period gave me the clarity and buy-in I needed to set the team up for real success.

To keep momentum, I shared the findings with the wider business, highlighting quick wins while surfacing bigger strategic challenges that needed attention. This became the foundation for redesigning the team.

"No team structure should be static - your organisational context is evolving, and your team should too."

Sophia Dempsey - Director, Digital Platforms and Experience @ GMAC

2. Build a team that fits your reality

Approach: Design based on what your organisation actually needs, not just what looks good on paper

The goal wasn’t just to rebuild a team—it was to build the right team for our specific context. I needed adaptable, hands-on product managers who could navigate ambiguity, win trust, and create structure from scratch.

In a lean environment, I prioritised candidates with complementary skills across product operations, technology, planning, and strategy, while also ensuring a shared mindset: pragmatism over rigid best practice, and an appetite for collaborative problem-solving.

This approach gave us the capability to tackle immediate challenges while also laying the groundwork for later specialist hires—justifying future investment through demonstrated ROI.

3. Keep the team agile and fit for purpose

Approach: Treat team design as an evolving process

In the past two years, the team has adapted three times—and will continue to do so as business priorities shift. An essential part of this has been creating space for open dialogue and ensuring the team shares ownership of its strategic direction.

Our initial structure introduced a key account model, with each product manager owning relationships with specific stakeholders, building trust and deepening understanding of business needs. As we matured, we shifted towards outcome-based roles aligned to strategic pillars—such as experience design, growth, or technology integration.

Now, deep into our digital transformation, the team has adapted again. We work in cross-functional streams, collaborating closely with an external transformation partner. We’ve deepened agile ways of working, adopted OKRs, and focused on improving delivery velocity.

The takeaway: no team structure should be static. Your organisational context is evolving—and your team should too.

4. Get stakeholders involved and invested

Approach: Make your team and ways of working visible and collaborative

When working with a globally distributed organisation, embedding a new team and processes isn’t just about what happens inside your squad—it’s about bringing the wider business on the journey.

To address this, we rolled out collaborative tools like Miro, Confluence, and Smartsheets, but the tools were only the enabler. The real shift came through stakeholder engagement. We ran internal training, regular awareness sessions, and set up "Open Hours" to give everyone access to the new team and ways of working. These simple steps accelerated adoption and helped the organisation feel like part of the transformation, rather than simply on the receiving end of it.

In summary:

Designing high-performing product teams isn’t just about hiring great people or introducing agile ceremonies. It’s about creating the right conditions, culture, and structure to unlock real business value—and being brave enough to evolve as you go.

My advice? Don’t rush into delivery mode just to appease short-term pressures. Take the time to understand the organisation you’re working in, design for its realities (not just for theory), and involve your stakeholders early. That’s where meaningful change starts.