A significant maturity gap in large organizations is that internal platform PMs don't treat their users (e.g., developers, finance) as customers. Applying customer-centric practices like problem framing and journey mapping to these stakeholders can dramatically improve outcomes.

Amazon's "Working Backwards" method requires teams to write a future press release and FAQ before building. This frames complex AI products from the customer's viewpoint, simplifying the value proposition and ensuring the end goal is always clear.

Rippling structures teams into business units led by GMs who oversee product, sales, and implementation. This is driven by the belief that a unified team focused on a specific customer problem (e.g., IT) delivers a superior end-to-end experience compared to a traditional matrixed organization.

Veeva structures its product teams using a "two in a box" model that pairs a customer-facing strategy leader with an internal product leader. This formalizes the integration of market feedback directly into the development lifecycle, with the strategy role acting as the "glue" across all customer-facing functions.

In a complex legacy environment, internal motivations like improving developer experience or modernizing technology often fail to gain traction. The initiatives that successfully navigate the process are those that can clearly articulate and deliver tangible value to the end customer.

The Litmus framework encourages sourcing solutions from teams like customer success, operations, or data science, not just engineering, product, and design. This expands the pool of problem-solvers, increases cross-functional buy-in, and allows the organization to test more ideas faster.

To prove financial impact and ensure rigor, CIBC's CX team funds a dedicated data scientist who sits within the central enterprise analytics team. This structure gives them access to enterprise data while building credibility for their ROI models with other departments.

The debate between being product-led vs. sales-led is a false dichotomy that creates friction. Instead, frame all functions as fundamentally 'customer-driven.' This reframing encourages product teams to view sales requests not as distractions, but as valuable, direct insights into customer needs.

The corporate incubation program prioritizes innovating directly with clients from the beginning. This philosophy ensures that an innovation solves a problem clients actually value and is conducive to their operating environment, de-risking the development and guaranteeing market relevance for the final product.