As a product manager, I work with a team of software engineers, data engineers, data scientists, designers, user researchers, and content strategists.
Product managers play the co-ordination role; leading the team and product direction via influence, rather than authority.
If I believe Option A is better than Option B, I need to convince my team to buy into that option by using logic, data, and story, rather than making a unilateral decision on behalf of the team.
I recently received some feedback from a team member that in my attempt to get everyone to agree, our team would defer decisions to subsequent meetings. This was slowing us down.
They asked me to push to a decision faster, as it would give them clarity and unblock upcoming work.
So I started trialling a new habit. In each meeting, I run each decision past 2 filters:
- Do we have enough information? Note: enough is different to perfect. You’ll never have perfect information; 70-80% is often enough.
- Can we, or how quickly can we, reverse the decision if we’re wrong? (e.g., we can roll back an experiment if it fails)
If we have enough information, and the decision is reversible , then “Let’s decide now.”
I was little worried my team would feel uncomfortable with this new approach, but to my surprise, the benefits of clarity and forward momentum have far outweighed the cost of uncomfortable decision conversations.