Why Growth-Stage SaaS Teams Struggle Without Strategic Product Leadership

By the time a SaaS company reaches mid-market scale - say, 100 to 500 people - things should feel smoother.

There are more people, more revenue, more resources. And yet, for many companies at this stage, things start to slow down instead of speeding up.

Roadmaps drift. Delivery gets erratic. Teams start pointing fingers. The organisation becomes internally noisy and externally unclear.

Often, this isn't a sign that your people aren’t capable, it’s a sign that you’ve outgrown your current operating model, and you're missing one critical layer: strategic product leadership.

The False Signal of Scale

At early stage start-ups, most SaaS teams can power through on founder instinct, hustle, and tight feedback loops.

But at scale, the environment shifts:

• New teams are added, but not integrated

• Multiple product lines emerge

• Sales and customer success push for roadmap influence

• Founders step back from the day-to-day, but strategy remains in their heads

The result? People are working hard but not necessarily working together, because there’s no one truly owning alignment, focus, and long-term product strategy.

That’s what strategic product leadership solves.

What Do We Mean by “Strategic Product Leadership”?

It’s not just managing the roadmap or keeping the PMs productive.

Strategic product leadership is about owning the intersection of business strategy, customer needs, and organisational capability. It’s the layer that connects vision to execution and holds the system together.

This could be a Head of Product, VP Product, CPO, or fractional leader. The title isn’t the point.

The function is what matters:

• Setting clear product strategy

• Defining ownership and accountability across product teams

• Facilitating alignment with GTM, engineering, and leadership

• Operationalising feedback loops

• Ensuring product decisions are tied to business outcomes

When this is missing, product becomes reactive. Teams focus on delivery over value. And the business loses clarity.

How Product Dysfunction Shows Up in Scaling Organisations

Here’s what it often looks like:

• There are PMs in the org, but they’re unclear on their purpose

• Product managers are stuck delivering tasks, not strategic ownership

• Founders are still driving feature decisions directly

• No one owns product discovery, and user research is “nice to have”

• There’s a roadmap, but no one can articulate why it looks the way it does

• Customer-facing teams push priorities based on who shouts the loudest

• Delivery teams burn out from constant context switching

Sound familiar?

It’s not a people problem. It’s an org design and leadership gap.

Lex Sisney: How Org Structure Drives (or Blocks) Scale

Lex Sisney, creator of the Organisational Physics model, makes a powerful point:

“Every organisation is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.”

When a company hits a growth ceiling, it’s often because the structure hasn’t evolved to match the complexity.

Sisney identifies key “design traps” that apply directly here:

• Function overload (too many responsibilities in one role or team)

• Unclear accountabilities

• Lack of integration across functions

Product often becomes the pressure valve in these situations, absorbing conflicting priorities, disconnected expectations, and strategy gaps.

But without someone leading at a strategic level, that pressure turns into friction, not focus.

A Real-World Example

I’m currently coaching a Director of Product in a mid-sized SaaS company.

The company’s just gone through layoffs. The roadmap is unclear. PMs don’t know what they truly own. Sales and Engineering are frustrated. Everyone’s doing their best, but it’s defensive, not strategic.

This is what happens when an org tries to scale without redefining how product leadership works. It creates:

• Uncertainty

• Role confusion

• Slower delivery

• Political tension

• Lack of trust

It’s fixable, but not by adding more PMs or reworking the Jira board.

It requires stepping back and rebuilding clarity from the top.

What Strategic Product Leadership Looks Like at Scale

Here’s what changes when the right leadership is in place:

This isn’t about control, or to block the rest of the organisation of being part of the "product story". It’s about clarity and alignment.

Strategic product leaders drive alignment across the business, helping executives, cross-functional teams, and product contributors make smarter, faster decisions.

How to Start Building (or Rebuilding) Strategic Product Leadership

You don’t need a fully formed product org to start. But you do need to acknowledge the gap.

Here’s how to begin:

1. Audit Product Ownership

Who’s really setting direction? Who owns discovery? What do PMs actually do?

2. Clarify Strategic Goals

If your product team can’t connect their work to a strategic goal, that’s on leadership, not the team.

3. Create Role Clarity

Especially after M&A or layoffs, this is critical. Define who owns what, who makes which decisions, and where people need to collaborate.

4. Elevate Your Product Leadership

If you don’t have a Head of Product (or equivalent), bring in interim or fractional leadership to stabilise and lead.

You Don’t Scale Product - You Scale Product Leadership

At scale, it’s not just about hiring more PMs or adding OKRs. It’s about designing a system where product is aligned, accountable, and empowered.

That system needs leadership.

If your org feels like it’s moving in circles…If product teams are overwhelmed and underpowered…If you know something’s missing but can’t quite name it…

It’s probably strategic product leadership.

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Need Help?

I work with B2B SaaS scale-ups and mid-market companies navigating growth, complexity, and change, including org redesign, product strategy reset, and building product leadership that scales.

Whether you need short-term clarity or long-term structure, let’s talk.

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