Why Product Teams Fail

If youre committed to becoming a great product leader, chances are youve already felt the tension between your aspirations and the reality of how teams operate. You’ve seen the chaos of shifting priorities, the fatigue of endless meetings, the confusion that creeps in when no one can quite say what problem is actually being solved.nbsp;

In this article, Waqar Hashim and I dive deep into what makes a great product team. I deeply appreciate Waqar’s perspective, because he is an engineer with a keen appreciation for the human side of why teams fail.

The Problem: A Fog of Uncertainty

At the heart of most failing product teams is not incompetence, but confusion. Direction shifts constantly, product decisions are remade repeatedly, and meetings are filled with speculative dialogue rather than decisive action. These are symptoms, not of complexity, but of a deeper malaise, the team does not know what problem it is solving.

The Process: Misalignment and Ego

In large organizations, the absence of a coherent process is often masked by structure. Multiple stakeholders, each defending their domain, create a latticework of competing interests. You end up with passive aggressive "alignment" people agree in the meeting and then undermine decisions later. 

In such environments, decision-making often drifts toward what might be called vibe-based governance, the practice of making choices based on opinions, moods, or the instincts of a dominant personality, rather than on grounded data or shared insight. When leaders are trapped in the performance of being "right," rather than in the vulnerability of learning, the process becomes defensive. Not developmental.

The Culture: The Invisible Architecture

Culture is not what is written on the walls, it is how we do things around here. And it is shaped not by slogans, but by the smallest daily interactions, especially those led by the people in power.  When I first met with Waqar, he ticked through each of the following areas as vital to high performing product teams, not based on theory, but in his own lived experience. 

The Culture of High Performing Product Teams

Safety: The Precondition for Excellence

Psychological safety is not a declaration; it is a discipline. It is not a license to avoid accountability, but ways of being that enable truth-telling and responsibility. A psychologically safe team does not silence dissent; it welcomes challenge. It does not confuse politeness with respect, or harmony with progress.

I once encountered a team where every hour of the day was filled with meetings. From the outside, it looked productive. In reality, it was a theater of paralysis. Senior leaders—trained in multinational bureaucracies—were fluent in status slide reviews, yet absent from the real work of problem-solving. Their prescription for every challenge? More meetings. Different rooms. New decks. But no engagement with the core of the problem.

This is what happens in the absence of safety. People talk around the truth, not into it. They study the problem until it becomes immovable. They perform competence rather than pursue clarity.

Clarity: The Compass of Collective Action

Clarity is not the opposite of complexity; it is what allows us to navigate it. A product team must know: What are we building? For whom? And why?

Because product teams are inherently interdisciplinary, they must invest in creating shared language. Words are not neutral. A single misalignment in meaning can cascade into months of misdirected effort.

One of the practices Waqar relies on is building mentor–mentee relationships within teams. This is not about hierarchy, it is about weaving understanding. Before key decisions are finalized, leaders should test their logic with experienced team members, not to seek approval, but to spark better thinking. This inclusion not only improves decisions; it grows capability.

Another key practice is simple but powerful: regular one-on-one conversations. Not performance reviews. Conversations. Where leaders ask, “What’s working for you?” and listen. Because clarity is subjective. What seems obvious to one may be opaque to another. This humility is the soil in which clarity grows.

Agreements: The Hidden Infrastructure

In healthy teams, agreements serve as both compass and contract. There are two types of agreements:

• Relational Agreements: How do we agree to be with each other? What are our principles of interaction?

• Specific Agreements: Who does what, by when, and with what information or resources?

Without agreements, there can be no accountability: only assumptions and accusations. Accountability begins not with enforcement, but with self-inquiry. Leaders must ask themselves:

• Have I made the expectations clear?

• Have I invited objections and integrated insight?

• Have I defined what “done” and “great” actually mean?

Feedback: The Art of Acknowledgment

Much is said about feedback. Too little is said about acknowledgment.

Acknowledgment is not a thank-you. It is not about what someone did for you. It is about who they were being. It is a declaration that says, “I see you.” Your courage. Your diligence. Your care.

When teams practice acknowledgment, they build a culture of belonging. Not one based on compliance, but on being witnessed and valued.

Care: The Currency of Leadership

At its core, leadership is not about managing work. It is about developing people. When things go wrong, and they will, what does the team witness in their leader? A search for the guilty? Or a genuine desire to engage, understand, and support?

Care is not softness. It is not the absence of standards. It is the presence of protection, especially in the face of risk. Bold decisions carry uncertainty. Innovation, by definition, breaks precedent. And when teams know their leader has their back, they are more willing to step forward.

Care is the force multiplier of capability.

Purpose: The North Star

Product teams often become enamored with solutions. But the best teams know: We are not married to our solution. We are committed to the problem.

This shift—from attachment to devotion—frees the team to adapt, experiment, and evolve. Purpose is not a fixed point; it is a shared pursuit. When a team is united by purpose, disagreement becomes dialogue. Setbacks become signals. And solutions become emergent, not imposed.

Are you ready to uplevel your skills as a product leader? 

Join us for our next LinkedIn Live to explore how to build, lead, and evolve a high-performing product team—grounded in clarity, care, and purpose.

About LUMAN

LUMAN empowers people, teams, and organizations to thrive in a world of constant change—by building the operations, culture and behaviors needed for continuous evolution

About Waqar

Waqar Hashim is a former automotive product development executive who has worked in established multi-national organizations as well as startups. He is the founder and CEO of Smartware Advisors, a product development consulting company that assists startups as well as corporate intrapreneurs with hands-on guidance in developing world class products efficiently.