New book: Digital transformation and product culture

9 min readNov 15, 2023

My new book is written (in Portuguese) and Casa do Código, the editor, confirmed that it will be available for order on Nov 24th! 🙌

The book’s title is “Digital transformation and product culture: how to put technology at the center of your company’s strategy”.

Here’s the cover, I liked it!

And here is, first hand, the introductory chapter “about the book” to give a little more information about the subjects I covered in my newest work.

About the book

Only 7% of companies have digitally savvy leadership teams. This is one of the findings of a study by researchers at the CISR (Center for Information Systems Research) at MIT Sloan and published in the March 2021 issue of the MIT Sloan Management Review (WEILL et al., 2021). The study was conducted with almost 17,000 executives from 1,984 large global companies. Among the companies studied, the average leadership team size is 9 members. Overall, only 17% of these team members are digitally savvy.

Being digitally savvy means having an understanding, developed through experience and education, of the impact that emerging technologies have on business success.

Other interesting findings from this study:

CIOs and CTOs are the most digitally savvy executives, but only 45% are digitally savvy;
In terms of CEOs, COOs, and heads of marketing, 23% of them are digitally savvy;
Among sales executives and CFOs, only 12% are digitally savvy;
In terms of industries, at the top, with 30% of executives with digital experience, we have the media, software, and telecommunications industries;
At the bottom (1% of executives with digital experience): construction; arts, entertainment, and recreation; agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting;
In the middle (12% digitally savvy): finance and insurance.

Why does it matter?

According to the study, having a digitally experienced C-level directly impacts the outcome. For example, a digitally savvy CEO paired with a digitally savvy CFO who, rather than acting as a gatekeeper, can help identify which digital investments have the potential to drive breakthrough performance, are associated with a 6.7 point increase percentages (p.p.) in revenue growth.

In this study, the authors compared the performance of the top 25% of digitally savvy leadership teams to the bottom 25%, and the differences are striking:

It is clear the impact that using this digital experience can have on a company’s bottom line.

Digital transformation and product management

The product management function, well known in the world of startups and technology companies, has the main objective of making the connection between the company strategy and the problems and needs of customers through digital technologies. Product people are digitally savvy people with a deep understanding, developed through experience and training, of the impact digital technologies have on business success.

The idea of writing a book on digital transformation came from my experience leading the digital transformation of Lopes Consultoria de Imóveis, a leading real estate consulting company in the Brazilian market for buying, selling, and renting properties.

The company was founded in 1935, carried out its IPO in December 2006 on B3, the Brazilian stock exchange headquartered in the city of São Paulo, and, in October 2019, carried out a follow-on, which is the issue of more shares for trading on the capital market, in the amount of R$ 147 million, whose funds raised would be focused on the company’s digital transformation.

In mid-2020, I received an invitation to lead Lopes Labs, Lopes’ technology and innovation hub whose mission is “Provide the ideal match between client, property, and broker through the digital empowerment of all parties: end client, broker, franchises, owners and developers”.

I accepted the invitation motivated by the opportunity to understand whether my lessons and experience accumulated in almost 30 years working in technology companies could be useful in a traditional company that was seeking digital transformation.

I led Lopes Labs for 2 years and not only confirmed the usefulness of my experience and learnings in a digital transformation, but I was able to learn a lot about the subject. I even understood that this was not my first experience in a digital transformation. Throughout my career, I went through several moments that can be seen as digital transformation.

Gympass, despite its tech company aura it always had, hasn’t always used digital in the best way. When I joined Gympass in mid-2018, the company already had 800 employees, of which 150 were in Europe, 150 in the United States, and the rest in Latin America, mostly in Brazil. However, only 35 people made up the product development team, including engineers, product designers, product managers, and data analysts. As a result, most processes were manual, and there was a sizable operations team to perform these manual processes.

Locaweb is a company that has technology as the core of its products. Its first product was web hosting. When I joined them in 2005, the company was already 7 years old, but we were developing products the old-fashioned way, using the waterfall model. It was only in 2007 that we began to transform the way we made products, being one of the first companies in Brazil to adopt agile methodologies and digital product management principles.

What is digital transformation? Transformations are often difficult; So what motivates a company’s desire to want to go through with it? What is needed to increase the chances of success of a digital transformation? How does digital transformation apply to different types of companies?

These are the themes I will address in this book, sharing my learnings in the hope that they will be helpful so that more people can lead successful digital transformation processes.

Who is this book for

All companies are already or will eventually make use of technology and digital products to improve their daily lives, get closer to their customers and improve their efficiency.

This book will be useful for leaders of these companies who are looking to extract more results from their investments in digital transformation and, in particular, for the people who are tasked with planning and executing this transformation.

Any transformation usually requires a high effort, especially when it involves changes in behavior. In this book, I will talk about the behavioral changes needed to increase a company’s digital maturity, not only for the people tasked with planning and executing this transformation but for everyone in the company that plans or is undergoing a digital transformation. Therefore, this book may also be helpful for these people, since digital transformation does not happen only in one area, but in the entire company.

Digital transformation may even have a beginning, but it has no end since digital technologies are constantly evolving. For this reason, even people who work in digitally mature companies can benefit from reading this book, reviewing concepts with a new eye to assess whether the company can take even more advantage of these technologies.

Structure of the book

The book is divided into 4 main parts:

Concepts: People who know me know that I’m a big fan of starting any new venture with a ubiquitous language, a term Eric Evans uses in his book Domain-Driven Design for the practice of creating a language common and rigorous between developers and users — in my case, between author and readers. For that reason, I’ll start the book by defining some key concepts for successful digital transformations. I begin by defining the term digital transformation in conjunction with digital product management. As we will see, these two concepts are closely related. Then I talk about uncertainty and digital transformation, types of companies, digital maturity, business models, platform, marketplace, and digital product culture.
Principles: In this part, I’m going to talk about digital product culture and I’m going to present the 4 principles that are the foundations of behavior necessary to increase the chances of success of a digital transformation. I’m not going to keep it a secret and I’m going to present these 4 principles right here, but I recommend reading the chapters in this part, because, in addition to explaining in detail what these principles are, they are full of practical examples of their application in everyday life. So, without further ado, the principles are: (1) fast and frequent deliveries; (2) focus on the problem; (3) result delivery, and (4) ecosystem mentality.
Tools: Here I will present several tools that I have used throughout my career and continue to use to help the companies I interact with to connect business and technology and to get more results from their investments in digital technologies. Digital maturity, product vision, strategic objectives, team structure, and OKRs are some of the tools that I will cover in this part. I’ll also share some hacks that I’ve been using to help spread the digital product culture in companies. Also, I will also talk about two tools that, if well used, can be powerful advantages for incubators over startups.
People: after knowing the concepts, principles, and tools, we need to talk about the people, who will use all of this to make the journey of digital transformation happen.

Each chapter has a “Summary” section at the end, which is intended to be a quick guide to the content of each chapter to help you quickly review it before moving on.

The Recommendation sections at the end of each chapter are new to this book over my previous books. They are intended to highlight some important aspects of the chapter to be considered by people who have little experience using digital technologies in their day-to-day business.

That’s it, I hope the book is useful on your journey. 11/24, at Casa do Código’s site in Portuguese. I’m planning to publish an English version of the book during 1st half of 2024.

In-company Product Management Continuing Education Program

My newest product is the In-company Product Management Continuing Education Program, to help you and your team increase your knowledge about product management concepts, principles, and tools and, consequently, increase the success rate of your digital product endeavors.

This product is made up of 3 elements:

Kick-off talk for the entire company, entitled Lessons Learned from a Digital Transformation, where I present practical examples of how product culture can enhance a company’s digitalization journey.
Monthly training sessions on product management and digital transformation topics, to help company people learn about concepts, principles, and tools that help create successful digital products. There is a standard sequence, which can be revised to suit the company’s needs. All product and design people, technology leaders, and leaders from other company areas must participate in this training. For more details about the content, access this document.
Mentoring, individual or group sessions, where we work on topics seen in training or other relevant topics.

Sessions can be in-person or remote! Check out what people are saying about my services.

Does it make sense for your company? Let’s talk! Feel free to contact me through email or WhatsApp, or schedule an appointment on my calendar.

Workshops, coaching, and advisory services

I’ve been helping companies and their leaders (CPOs, heads of product, CTOs, CEOs, tech founders, and heads of digital transformation) bridge the gap between business and technology through workshops, coaching, and advisory services on product management and digital transformation.

I write regularly about product management, product development, digital product leadership, and digital transformation. You can receive a notification whenever I publish a new article without depending on any social network algorithms to notify you! Just subscribe to my newsletter.

Digital Product Management Books

Do you work with digital products? Do you want to know more about managing a digital product to increase its chances of success, solve its user’s problems, and achieve the company objectives? Check out my Digital Product Management bundle with my 3 books, where I share what I learned during my 30+ years of experience in creating and managing digital products:

Startup Guide: How startups and established companies can create profitable digital products
Product Management: How to increase the chances of success of your digital product
Leading Product Development: The art and science of managing product teams

You can also acquire the books individually by clicking on their titles above.