Product Bugle: it's about time
Using Productivity to unlock your potential as a Strategic PM. Also - Instagram's New Coke moment.
Strategic PM thinking: It’s about time
Last week I talked about the importance of being a Strategic PM as opposed to doing a Product Strategy. The former is a permanent mindset and approach that will help your career progress. The latter is an occasional activity which is important, but not enough to really help you step up.
How many times, however, have I heard (along the lines of): ‘I don’t have time to be strategic’ ? One of the challenges with any product management job is that you’re going to be busy. You have to juggle a set of competing priorities and different types of work and it’s easy to get swamped.
At the same time - it’s exactly when you’re swamped that you fall into the trap of ‘not being strategic enough’ and/ or being to swamped with your day to day work to be able to take on that juicy new initiative that’s just cropped up.
Being ‘too busy to be strategic’ or in fact - just being too busy, is a strong indicator that you really need to think about how to be more productive and how you can best use the time you have. Which brings me to one of my favourite topics: productivity..
Productivity = (Energy x Knowledge) / Time
That great modern philosopher Molly-Mae Hague got into trouble for pointing out that (and I paraphrase) ‘Beyonce has the same 24 hours in the day as the rest of us’, but she had a point.
There are lots of factors that drive any individual’s success. But one of the biggest is how we spend our time: what we get out of every hour.
If there were to be a Waldman’s Law it would be along the lines of The amount of positive impact you have in any situation or period of time is a product of the amount of energy and knowledge that you put into it.
You don’t achieve great work when you are drained. If you are naturally a morning persons, you will not do your best work sending emails at midnight. There’s a ton of great research about how you have to manage your energy - whether that’s the need for decent sleep and eating well; understanding your personal circadian rhythms; or the need to focus and avoid multitasking.
So - you have to manage your energy levels both on a macro (ie your overall state of health, and habits) and a more micro (ie: doing the right kind of work at the time that suits you) level.
The compliment to this is that the knowledge and experience you bring to any situation is also a critical factor.
As a PM one of the things is to keep filling up your tank of knowledge and experience. First, you need to be the expert in your area - which will help you do the core of your job effectively: even sometimes if your energy levels are low.
But you also need to learn new stuff. If you’re not tackling new problems and building up both your levels of knowledge and range of experience you are effectively narrowing your potential impact: because the counter to my little rule is that lack of knowledge and experience makes you instantly less productive.
Three things to do..
Do your toughest work when it works best for your energy levels
Build up knowledge and expertise to help allow you to do routine tasks with relatively low energy
Take every opportunity to build up expertise and knowledge in order to help you take on new work
Think about your outcomes as well as you outputs
‘Outcome vs outputs’ has become a mantra when we’re thinking about roadmapping and product strategy. But the same applies to how you think about your work and your career development. It’s not enough to be busy. Just because your calendar is crammed, doesn’t mean you’re really getting where you want to.
Cyclists who get into training rather than just pedalling around learn about the idea of ‘junk miles’ - these are miles you do with no real training benefit. Now - they can be enjoyable, they can feel like exercise, but unless they’re really helping you achieve your goals (say to be much stronger in the hills, or confident going down hill) then they’re not much use.
At work, the equivalent is what we often talk of as ‘busy work’ - when we’re cranking out tasks. But for both the products - or teams - you manage; and yourself what matters is what you really achieve; the impact you make; the change that happens as a result of your efforts.
What you need to do: Look for all the ‘junk miles’ in your diary - all the hours you spend time doing stuff that isn’t really taking you or your products in the right direction. Either 1) Kill it; 2) Reschedule to a time when you don’t need much energy; or 3) if it’s something you have no control over - contain it - make sure work like this isn’t taking up too much of your week.
Set monthly goals
One simple hack.
We all set ourselves goals and objectives (I’ll lazily use the two as synonyms for now). At work these might well be set for us annually or quarterly. When we’re managing our time we might well set lists of stuff for us to do on a daily or weekly basis.
But, I’ve found that for those who are in a bit of a career rut, or who want to get themselves into a better place at work it’s monthly goals that really help.
Daily and weekly task management is fine - but they’re often subject to change when some crisis hits. Quarterly and annual objectives are great - but they feel so far away. It’s also often difficult to set a quarterly or annual personal objective that isn’t either impossible or too easy.
But a month is enough time for you to actually make a change; and for the goal to be attainable. So - get into the habit of setting and tracking monthly goals. Share them with your manager - or just have a personal review session with yourself on the first of each month.
Useful PM stuff this week
I’m trying not to send out just links to other loads of links, but this collection of PM resources from Andrew Bowker is great. A few choice cuts from the list
How to develop Product Sense - from Lenny’s Newsletter
How to become a Peak PM - which has a framework that it well worth emulating.
Product Virality - How Wordle went viral - because I’m still addicted!
And more of interest than strictly useful (unless you work in the sector) - this Apple Maps vs Google Maps UX comparison
The Business of Product
Instagram’s ‘New Coke’ moment.
So Instagram tried a new approach to it’s feed - surfacing a whole load more recommended videos to deal with the existential threat of TikTok; and it’s announced it had to roll it back. I’ve read the interview that Instagram head Adam Mosseri gave after the event, along with the mandatory ‘move fast and break stuff’ quote
“I’m glad we took a risk — if we’re not failing every once in a while, we’re not thinking big enough or bold enough…But we definitely need to take a big step back and regroup. [When] we’ve learned a lot, then we come back with some sort of new idea or iteration. So we’re going to work through that.”
I can’t help thinking this was totally avoidable - or at least didn’t need to be anywhere near as big a fail - given as he says in the interview the data showed it hadn’t worked.
Was there a test cell/ A/B test? Did they really just chuck it over the fence and wait till Kim Kardashian complained? Or if they were convinced this was the right thing to do (again there’s a bit in the interview that says: ‘we create usage’), why not just muscle through instead of rolling straight back? All smells a bit off to me.
Tough times at Tinder - metaverse takes a back seat
You can read the full shareholders letter if you have time; or the quick summary over at Techcrunch, but the summary from CEO Bernard Kim of “disappointing execution on several optimizations and new product initiatives”. He admits they “need to do more to excite our user base to drive top of funnel growth”.
A lesson that even when you have a category defining product - you can never stand still. Two things that are going: virtual currency and metaverse plans.
Something to watch..
Pam and Tommy . OK I got to this pretty late. But it’s still a great watch - although undermined by the fact that Pamela Anderson didn’t give her consent to it being made.
…and to listen to
The Holywood Con Queen: Some true crime but without murders. I’ve been bingeing the Chameleon podcast this week - this, the first season is about a con that has lots of workers from the film industry (eg Make up artists/ personal trainers) heading off to Jakarta for a film that isn’t being made. There’s a new season about a horrific phone scam - with new episodes being added every Saturday.
That’s it for this week..
lf you’ve enjoyed it - feel free to like and share..