The Bottleneck Product Manager
Mahmoud El Magdoub
Group Manager - Product at Instabug ? I love building software ????
“There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.” ― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
“The 1.5 yrs I worked with an indecisive PM was the worst time in my career. His opinion fluctuated on a daily basis. We had 5-7 options for every design + vote/survey for every option. We wasted months considering alternatives with no real value shipped. It was hell for the team and me.” ― a Software Engineering friend
Have you seen this story before?
A product manager that leaves their team in a state of limbo without a sense of direction.
The problem? There's no school for this.
Here are 4 principles I use to make decisions on the spot.
#1 Avoid “one-size-fits-all” decision-making ???
There are two classes of decisions ↓
The trap that most companies fall in:
#2 Spend < 10 minutes discussing Type 2 Decisions ?
I have seen discussions that went on for weeks on whether we should have 16px icon vs an 18px icon ??
You can do this by setting the stage for the team ???
Explain:
领英推荐
#3 Get Comfortable Taking Wrong Decisions ??
For Type 2 decisions, being wrong is better than failure to make a decision.
Be wrong as fast as you can.
Ed Catmull the Author of?Creativity Inc?explains how they move fast when creating Pixar movies.
It’s about making quick reversible decisions. He says that it’s better to take a random decision and move forward.
#4 Teach your Team the Different Types of Decisions ??
When your team understands that in many cases it's ok to make a suboptimal Type 2 decision.
You will move so much faster as it's now a part of the team culture.
Bonus Reads ??
Thank you for reading, hope it’s helpful ??
If you like this post you can check more related posts here:
People Operations ? Raisa Energy
2 年Love it, thank you for sharing Magdoub. Love the illustrations as well. Follow up article/post please - how to identify type 1 & 2. Sometimes the line is really fine.
Product Manager at Spacetoon | Driving growth
2 年I loved it.
Product Manager | Product Owner | Business Analysis | Loyalty for Growth | Healthtech
2 年Really insightful
Data Science Manager at Visa
2 年Same concepts can be taken to all decisions in general it impacts PMs the most though. Mostly the driver of the limbo is related to fear of failing, confidence and lack of experience. I believe if management style is that "it is okay to make mistakes" and your manager pushed you to make decisions on the spots this will help a lot. The issue arises when managers themselves are the one causing that limbo.