One product manager's 5 New Year's Resolutions

I’m a big New Year’s Resolutions guy. I know it’s arbitrary. I know you should set goals more than once a year. I don’t care. I love New Year’s Resolutions.

So, for this article—my first in 2019—I thought I’d outline my work-related New Year’s Resolutions.

If you’re new to my series, The New PM, welcome.

So far, we’ve talked about what a PM actually does, and who a PM works with. I’m writing with new and aspiring product managers in mind, but all are welcome. If you like what you skim, tap the “Subscribe” button above, and you’ll be notified the next time I publish an issue.

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Here goes.

(1) Be kind, not nice

I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to be nice. If you were raised by people, you’ve probably spent a lot of your life trying to be nice, too.

Unfortunately, there are problems with trying to be nice—or worse, trying to be a Nice Person. The main one is that a lot of the time, “trying to be nice” is more about oneself than others.

Acting with oneself in mind isn’t necessarily bad, but it can be, especially when one has convinced oneself one is acting for others.

Let's say a colleague asks you for feedback on a presentation she’s presenting to her boss next week. You review it, and realize it needs a lot of work.

A “nice” response might be to tell her it’s great when it's not. You might reason that to tell her it's great is to save her the discomfort of hearing criticism, or to help her feel more confident going into the meeting. I would say in lying to her you’re really just helping yourself—saving yourself the slight discomfort of telling her it needs work, and avoiding spending the time to help her improve it.

A “kind” response might be to instead tell her, compassionately but directly, what you think: that it needs work. That way, you act with her true best interest in mind.

Caveat: “Be kind, not nice” is not justification to be an asshole. There are almost always more compassionate ways to accomplish things. When someone’s struggling, be gentle. Just don’t be gentle to prove to them that you’re a Nice Person, be gentle because they’re a human being who's struggling. 

Advice to myself for 2019...

Worry less about performing niceness (leave out the extra !’s and smiley faces in emails), worry more about caring for and helping others.

(2) Wrong is better than unsure (usually)

Sometimes, it’s better to be unsure and delay than risk being wrong. If you’re building landing gear for airplanes, or configuring safety checks for nuclear power plants, your work falls in that category.

Most product managers don’t work on problems like that. I certainly don’t.

If you don't, the cost of being unsure is probably higher than the cost of being wrong. Being unsure usually means deferring a decision. Deferring a decision usually means not learning. Not learning usually means increasing the likelihood that your product slips behind your competitors and fails.

Now, even in our relatively low-stakes world, there are times when it’s better to defer a decision to gather more data than make a call.

If you’re betting the company on a "bold" new direction, it’s probably worth delaying a bit to think it through. And if you're an enterprise PM, things may be different.

Nonetheless, it's often more important to just make a call than to keep thinking about it.

Advice to myself for 2019...

When you notice yourself stuck on a small decision, ask if delaying will lead to a decision sufficiently better to justify the cost of inaction. If not, just make a call.

(3) Run great meetings

I expect this will be on my 2020, 2021, and 2022 work resolutions lists. (By 2023 I expect I’ll have reached the platonic form of running meetings.)

As a PM, running good meetings is one of your most important jobs. Running good meetings means you and your team get better work done faster. It also means your team doesn’t hate you.

Here are my Four Tips to Running Great Meetings?:

1/ Start on time, end on time (or early)

→ Don’t waste your team’s time.

2/ Bring an agenda

→ Even 3 bullet points you scribbled on a sticky note is better than no agenda. Bringing an agenda (that’s ideally shared beforehand) lets those in the meeting know what to expect and keeps the meeting on track.

→ For informal meetings like 1-1s, start the meeting by saying something like “I want to cover <Topic_1>, <Topic_2>, and <Topic_3>. What do you want to cover in addition to these?” Then together prioritize so the most important stuff gets covered.

3/ Keep things moving

→ The group matters more than the individual. If someone is rambling or off topic, it’s your responsibility to tactfully keep the conversation going and instill a sense of urgency in your team. 

4/ End with clear next steps

→ Not all meetings end with action items (ie tasks for people to do.) Most do. For those that do, make sure people are aware of and have committed to doing them. Be explicit about ETAs for all next steps to avoid future wrangling/awkwardness.

Advice to myself for 2019...

Start meetings on time, end them on time, bring an agenda, keep things moving, end meetings with clear next steps.

(4) One doc is better than two

I like writing. I wouldn’t write these if I didn’t. Like most people, I like doing things I like doing.

The problem is, writing more docs than is necessary costs you and your team time. Time is money. Money (so long as you’re in Silicon Valley) is “making the world a better place.” Ergo, as a good techie in Silicon Valley, you ought not waste time.

There are several reasons you might want to write docs. Here are some:

1. You enjoy writing docs.
2. You think they scale your ability to do things like communicate strategy or track work.
3. You’re still working out what you think, and writing docs helps you figure that out.
4. To counter the crushing existential self-doubt you feel being a PM who unilaterally produces nothing of tangible value.

Whatever the reason, I find it valuable to remind myself that my work is a means to an end.

I touched on this when I gave unsolicited advice to new PMs a few months ago. There, I wrote: “The specs, decks, and tickets you write are successful only to the extent to which they help your team make progress in helping your users.”

Going forward, I'll strive to keep that in mind each time I open a fresh Google Doc.

Advice to myself for 2019...

Write as many docs as are necessary and no more.

(5) Define and articulate the present and the future

Your day to day as a product manager can feel like a never-ending stream of emails, meetings, and to dos. Doing that stuff well and efficiently is important. It’s all those small tasks that keep things moving.

However, a good PM also articulates the present and the future for her product to her team clearly and repeatedly. This is especially key in the early stages of a product, when there are a lot of potential futures for your product, and some of them are really different than others.

Articulating that present and future helps YOU and YOUR TEAM.

It helps YOU by forcing you to actually have a vision for your product that is coherent enough that you can articulate it to others. That (hopefully coherent) vision will then help you come up with and prioritize your roadmap.

It helps YOUR TEAM by helping them understand what the product is and what it will be. It also helps them see how what you’re building now will enable some awesome future thing. This is especially helpful when what you’re building now isn’t all that exciting in and of itself.

Advice to myself for 2019...

Define and articulate the present and future for your product.

At LinkedIn, I'm the product manager on Series. Here's the present and future for Series...

WHAT IS SERIES?

Newsletters… published and distributed on LinkedIn… leveraging LinkedIn’s data and network of 600 million professionals. (You're looking at one.)

WHAT USER PROBLEMS DOES SERIES SOLVE?

1. Audience building: It’s hard for newsletter writers to build an audience.
2. Siloed consumption: Newsletter subscribers have no way of knowing of or talking to one another.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

Series creators publish articles; those articles get distributed in the Feed (as a normal article would be) and to her subscribers via an in app and push notification (and eventually via email).

WHAT IS SUCCESS?

Series creators can acquire and retain quality subscribers and, over time, start conversations and build community among their subscribers.

WHAT’S OUR ROADMAP?

Tap here to read it in detail.

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What’s one thing you want to focus on in 2019 at work?