Welcome folks! 👋

This edition of The Product-Led Geek will take 8 minutes to read and you’ll learn:

• How to establish a structured growth process to turn creativity into consistent, scalable business impact.

• How growth principles powerfully guide team decisions and align cross-functional squads.

• How to Implement regular experimentation loops and feedback rituals to accelerate learning and compound results.

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Behind Every Great Growth Team Is a Great Growth Process

It’s easy to imagine top-performing teams working their magic through creativity alone, but the truth is something different: consistency, impact, and scale come from a deliberate, structured approach that embraces learning, experimentation, and continuous evolution.

The Scientific Mindset of Growth

Growth has been described as the practice of applying the scientific method to core business KPIs.

For that to be true, great growth teams follow a process that provides structure to how they work in a way that allows them to efficiently learn, and to leverage their learnings to create impact.

They look at every challenge and opportunity through this lens: they form hypotheses, test them with real users, and let data drive decisions and next steps.

But this isn’t happenstance; it’s the outcome of a structured and purposeful process.

One that enables fast learning, cross-team leverage, and deliberate progress

You can get results without a set process - talented teams often do.

But if you want to repeat that success, to scale it, to compound your company’s growth over time, you need a robust engine behind your efforts.

Process is the multiplier, turning moments of inspiration into reliable impact.

What Is a Growth Team?

When I talk about “growth teams,” I mean multi-disciplinary product squads obsessively focused on the top-level levers of growth: acquisition, retention, and monetisation.

They aren’t marketing or product teams in the traditional sense - they’re cross-functional, outcome-obsessed, and accountable for moving high-level growth metrics.

For deeper thinking on org structure, see The PLGeek Guide to a Best-in-Class PLG Org.

Growth Principles: The Foundation of Consistency

Before we get into any of the actual process stuff, let’s spend a minute on a topic that’s often overlooked, but that underpins every effective growth process - growth principles.

Great growth principles guide great growth teams.

I think I just invented a new tongue twister. Try saying that fast ten times.

Growth principles act as cultural guardrails for fast-paced, ambiguous work.

The handful of simple maxims that clarify what “good” looks like, shape team mindsets, and help everyone make better calls in the moment.

The most effective teams I’ve seen have 5-6 clear, memorable principles - enough to be concrete, not so many they’re forgettable.

For larger orgs with several growth teams, keeping the principles unified ensures everyone is aligned and speaking the same language. Each should have a title and a short, punchy description.

Here are six from my time at Snyk that I’ve since seen work well in other PLG environments:

1. Know the User

Be empathetic and curious about our users, their motivations, problems, and behaviour.

2. Focus on Value

Our path to monetisation follows our users’ path to value. Focus on the latter.

3. Optimise for Learning

Prioritise fast learning and knowledge-sharing to de-risk execution and raise the bar for everyone.

4. Test to Invest

Validate through minimum viable experiments before making major commitments.

5. Data Over Opinion

Use data to inform decisions whenever possible.

6. Progress Over Perfection

Deliver compound improvements through quick, iterative learning—not by waiting for perfect.

The Macro Growth Process: Structure for Compounding Results

Let’s zoom out.

What does a high-functioning, experiment-driven growth process actually look like in practice?

Here’s the macro loop - a proven framework for running a world-class growth engine:

1. Growth Strategy

• Start with where not to focus: clarify constraints and boundaries to stop spreading energy too thin.

• Translate company strategy into growth objectives (every quarter or half-year).

• Identify the North Star Metric - a single defining KPI that all growth efforts align behind.

2. Idea Generation

• Make this continuous - not something that only happens during planning.

• Harvest ideas from everywhere: team brainstorms, user research, company-wide crowdsourcing, SME insights, analytics, and learnings from past experiments.

• Use clear templates and workflows (e.g., Slack channels, forms) so no idea falls through the cracks.

• Log ideas in a visible backlog/repository.

3. Quarterly Planning

• Analyse last quarter’s performance and learnings.

• Set/refine the high level focus

• Prioritise new “big bets” and experiments - align with strategy, current focus, ROI, and constraints.

• Ensure alignment across all growth teams.

• Prune the backlog to focus on high-potential, high-ROI experiments and initiatives.

4. Growth Sprint Execution

The core engine, usually on a fortnightly cycle:

• Experiment Planning: Pick 1-2 top-priority ideas. Assign an experiment lead, write an Experiment Plan (hypothesis, metrics, segments, investment, success criteria).

• Peer Review: For formal experiments, validate the statistical and scientific rigour.

• Execution: Run the minimum viable experiment - enough to learn, not more.

• Analysis & Cleanup: Analyse outcomes, document learnings, clean up code/flags, and feed learnings back to the team and backlog.

• Scaling: Successful experiments move to scaling/productisation; failures still generate strategic learnings.

5. Strategy Refresh

• Every quarter, synthesise all learnings and update the growth strategy, OKRs, and process as needed.

The Micro Growth Process: Loops & Rituals

Multiple regular team ceremonies ensure momentum, learning, and alignment.

Daily Loop

• Standup: Blockers, progress, what’s running, what’s next.

• Problem-solving: Immediate alignment across functions.

B. Weekly Loop

• Weekly Sync: Full review of current experiments/data, fast course-correct as needed.

• Learning Highlights: Socialise key outcomes across the org.

• Growth Leads’ Sync: Clear obstacles and align across squads.

C. Fortnightly Loop (Sprint)

• Sprint Planning: Choose next experiments (‘invest or kill’ decisions).

• Sprint Demo/Review: Showcase completed work and learnings.

• Cross-Functional Coordination: Ensure marketing, eng, product, design are all looped in.

D. Monthly Loop

• Growth Update: Leadership/stakeholder summary - what worked, what didn’t, learnings, and new questions.

• Strategic Mini-Retros: Snap course corrections if needed.

E. Quarterly Loop

• Full strategy/OKR refresh based on all learnings.

• Deep-dive on the biggest wins/losses and update macro objectives.

Working Guidelines: Keeping the Engine Tuned

No process is set-and-forget.

The best growth orgs make process improvement part of the daily tempo.

Every team should:

• Maintain clean, shared documentation and repositories for all ideas, experiments, and results.

• Run peer reviews (including data specialists) on experiment plans to uphold scientific rigour.

• Routinely question whether you’re using the right tool (e.g. experiment vs. simple product release).

• Meet regularly not just to do the work, but to reflect on how you’re working: retros, learning reviews, impact debriefs.

• Share and socialise learnings - don’t let wins or losses sit in isolation.

• Engage in company-wide demos and cross-team events to foster alignment (and healthy competition).

• Adapt workflows as needed, but never abandon growth principles.

Adapt, Don’t Copy

Your process will - and should - look a little different than mine, or any other company’s.

Despite what Sauron would have you believe, there is no one growth process to rule them all.

But if you’re just getting started, the above offers a tried-and-tested foundation.

And if you already have a growth process in place, it’s always worth asking:

Could we benefit from clearer principles, more systematic experimentation, or a tighter feedback loop?

Want to level up your growth team’s impact?

Start by building, or sharpening, your growth process.

THAT’S A WRAP

Before you go, here are 3 ways I can help:

Take the FREE Learning Velocity Index assessment - Discover how your team's ability to learn and leverage learnings stacks up in the product-led world. Takes 2 minutes and you get free advice.

Book a free 1:1 consultation call with me - I keep a handful of slots open each week for founders and product growth leaders to explore working together and get some free advice along the way. Book a call.

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That’s all for today,

If there are any product, growth or leadership topics that you’d like me to write about, just hit reply to this email or leave a comment and let me know!

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Until next time!

— Ben