A very common pattern... Companies claim to be "product companies" now. The slide decks look gorgeous—squads, OKRs, platform teams, product roadmaps. The org chart shows cross-functional teams. The Jira board says "Agile."

Then you try to ship something and discover the actual power structure hasn't moved at all.

This is what incomplete modernization looks like. Companies adopt the aesthetic of tech without changing who gets to decide what. They want the benefits of product thinking—speed, innovation, better outcomes—without the costs: giving up centralized control, changing how money flows, trusting teams to make decisions.

Let me show you what this looks like from the inside.

Product Language, Project Behavior

Here's the tell: people stop saying "projects" and start saying "products." But watch what actually happens.

Funding is still annual, project-based. Big initiatives with start dates, end dates, fixed scope. Success is measured by on-time, on-budget delivery, not adoption or outcomes. Teams get staffed for a project, then dissolved or reshuffled when the "project" is "done."

You see things like: "We're a product company now, and Q3's product is 'Platform Migration – Phase 2'."

That's still project thinking. Just with new vocabulary.

The organization never accepted the core product truth: a product is never done. You fund problems and capabilities over time, not one-off deliverables. But that requires changing budgeting, planning cycles, and how executives think about ROI.

Most companies don't want to change that deeply. So they keep the project model and call it product.

Cross-Functional Teams in a Non-Cross-Functional Power Structure

On paper, there are cross-functional teams. Product, engineering, design, maybe data—all sitting together. Looks modern.

But decision rights don't live in the team:

• Sales can overrule the roadmap with "this big customer needs X now"
• Operations can veto changes that inconvenience existing manual processes
• Finance can freeze hiring mid-stream without touching other levers
• Compliance can say "no" without helping find a compliant "yes"

The team is accountable for outcomes without being empowered for decisions. Classic failure mode: responsibility pushed down the org chart, real power stays up and sideways.

To me is interesting that "cross-functional" becomes just a seating arrangement. Not a power shift.

I watched a team spend six months building a new onboarding flow. Great work—clean code, nice design, solid user research. Then compliance killed it three days before launch because nobody consulted them early. Why? Because the team didn't have authority to loop in compliance. That lived with a VP two levels up who was "too busy."

The team was accountable for the outcome. But they didn't control the decisions.

Architecture Theater

The company introduces enterprise architecture team, reference diagrams, domain maps, API contracts. It looks sophisticated.

But when it matters:

• Large customers still get custom flows that bypass the architecture
• Acquisitions bring systems that stay "temporary" for 7-10 years
• The "core platform" becomes yet another system everyone must integrate with while maintaining their old stack

Architects become decorators of decisions already made. They're asked to "align the diagrams" after the fact. They write documents that don't change outcomes.

This means the transformation is performative, not structural.

The engineering teams and architecture had no authority. It was decoration.

The Two Companies

There's usually a transformation office, some tiger teams, innovation labs. They demo prototypes, build POCs, maybe ship a greenfield system.

Meanwhile, the mainline business continues exactly as before. Legacy processes dictate what's "allowed." New tech gets pushed to the edges—a portal here, an integration layer there, a "modern" microservice talking to ancient core systems.

The new product thinking never redefines how money flows, how risk is managed, or how frontline decisions happen.

You end up with two companies:

1. The "Lab Company" showcased at conferences
2. The "Real Company" where revenue and pain live

Guess which one wins internal power struggles.

Why It Happens: Power Didn't Move

Here's the root cause: profit & loss, headcount control, and customer commitments still live in old functional silos.

Technology and Product are expected to "modernize the house" without being allowed to move the structural walls.

Leaders want the benefits of product thinking. They don't want the costs: giving up control, changing incentives, trusting empowered teams to make decisions without escalation.

It's not a technology gap. It's a governance and courage gap.

Show me who can say "no" in your organization and I'll tell you what you really are. If Sales, Ops, Finance, and Compliance can veto product decisions without being part of the team, you're not a product company. You're a project shop with new vocabulary.

What Real Change Would Look Like

A genuine shift to product-driven tech would require:

Business capabilities mapped to product lines, each with a named owner, stable cross-functional team, and budget that funds outcomes over time—not projects.

Decision rights pushed down. Teams own roadmaps, architecture within their domains, local process changes. Execs set direction ("win in segment X," "reduce latency 50%"), not detailed requirements ("build this specific screen").

Incentives realigned. KPIs shift from "projects delivered" to "outcomes improved"—adoption, throughput, error rates, customer satisfaction. Leaders get evaluated on enabling autonomy and removing dependencies, not gatekeeping.

Legacy power centers redefined. Finance, Compliance, Ops become partners to product teams, not veto points. They help find compliant solutions instead of just saying "no." Architecture becomes a shaping force—setting guardrails, defining boundaries—not a diagram factory.

Without these structural changes, transformation is just vocabulary updates around the same old game.

Real Talk: Why It Feels Worse

The halfway transformation is often more frustrating than the old model.

Old world: You knew it was command-and-control, IT-as-order-taker, slow but predictable.

New world (on slides): Empowerment, autonomy, APIs, products.

Actual reality: You have the language of modernity without structures that make it real.

Product people are responsible for "outcomes" with no ownership of pricing, packaging, or go-to-market. Engineers work in "squads" but wait for three approvals to ship anything meaningful. Design teams craft journeys that get broken by upstream policies they can't influence.

It's cognitive dissonance as an operating model.

The Uncomfortable Truth

If the top business structure and power dynamics remain unchanged:

• "Product" is just a rebrand of "requirements"
• "Platform" is just a new name for internal tools
• "Agile" is just meetings on top of waterfall funding
• "Digital transformation" is corporate theater

You don't become a modern tech company by adopting the aesthetic. You become one by changing who decides what, how money flows, and what success looks like for people in charge.

Until that happens, the organization remains what it structurally always was: a traditional business with product vocabulary painted on top.

Most companies never make this shift. They stay stuck halfway—not traditional enough to be predictable, not modern enough to be fast. The transformation stops at the slides because the people with power decided they wanted the branding without the reorganization.

And honestly? Sometimes that's a rational choice. Real transformation is expensive, risky, and uncomfortable. It requires executives to give up control and trust teams they don't fully understand.

Not every company needs to be a tech company. Some businesses work fine with traditional structures. The problem is claiming to be product-led while keeping project-shop power dynamics.

Pick one or the other. The middle just creates frustration for everyone involved.