How product culture shapes performance

Across the industry, teams have matured beyond feature checklists. Many now define success through outcomes, experimentation, and user impact. Around four in ten respondents describe their organizations as customer- or data-driven, a sign of how far product culture has evolved.

Yet decision-making remains a key differentiator. Teams that make decisions collaboratively, bringing together product, engineering, and design, are far more likely to describe themselves as customer-centric. In contrast, those where decisions are executive-led tend to identify as feature-driven or reactive. The correlation between these two questions is striking: how a company decides directly influences how its teams behave.

In executive-led organizations, product decisions often prioritize speed or sales impact over learning and experimentation. These environments can deliver short-term gains, but often at the cost of agility. Cross-functional teams, on the other hand, exhibit stronger alignment between what they build and what users need. Culture, process, and decision-making are inseparable  and together they determine how well a product organization can perform.

Despite progress, a significant share of organizations still operate with delivery-centric mindsets: focused on output rather than outcome. These teams face a shared set of obstacles. They are less likely to meet time-to-market goals, struggle with prioritization, and rarely make time for innovation.

When asked which KPIs are most difficult to achieve, nearly half pointed to time-to-market as their biggest challenge, followed by development efficiency, adoption of new technologies, and overall quality. The data paints a clear picture: teams that define their work by delivery metrics find themselves constrained by process rather than propelled by purpose.

The same pattern appears when examining the top constraints limiting outcomes. Lack of vision, unclear ownership, poor collaboration, and technical debt top the list. Delivery-centric organizations report these issues far more frequently than their outcome-driven peers. The how of work is as critical as the what.

For product leaders, this becomes an early warning system — the canary in the coal mine. When culture turns reactive or feature-driven, the signs appear early: slipping timelines, unclear goals, and teams that deliver fast but rarely deliver the right thing. Culture compounds over time, for better or worse.