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John Cutler

14 Feb, 14 tweets, 3 min read

Time/energy management is one of the biggest challenges in product management.

How do you work more sustainably/effectively?

1/ Be hyper aware of soft commitments...

"I'll look into that!"
"Maybe we can..."

These are PIPs, promises-in-progress, and they can overwhelm you➡️

2/ You *must* bake slack into your days and wks.

Unstructured time. Time to tackle emergent needs. Time you can repurpose with 24hrs notice (or less). Time to be an actual team member.

If your calendar is "stacked" like a Tetris board, you'll be forever spinning your wheels➡️

3/ That said, block things that are truly important.

Like customer calls.

Even if you don't have anyone scheduled.

I once found myself going weeks w/o customer contact due to a hastily thrown together calendar. The impacts lasted months/quarters.

...and team retrospectives➡️

4/ Most product managers/teams don't visualize upstream "planning" and refinement work.

It is all work.

The net effect is that the PdM is incredibly busy, but somehow never available for what matters.

Planning inventory should be kept at a reasonable level AND visualized➡️

5/ Related is a tendency to spin off parallel work while the rest of the team toils away.

Often because of impatience, and a barrage of requests.

The problem?

Eventually you'll need to re-integrate these and have the conversations all over again➡️

6/ Can you turn your 1:1s into larger meetings?

I've met product managers who spend 30-50% of their week in 1:1s. Why? Lots of reasons - hey *everyone* is busy, "let's make this efficient" - but to me this is an anti-pattern.

Can you involve more voices in the conversation?➡️

7/ There's a very fine line between being pragmatic and a "can do" person, and burning out and/or introducing a level of co-dependence w/your team.

Always be thinking...how can I not be the blocker here?

Beware of being the heroic hole patcher ➡️

8/ If you find your calendar is a Tetris board ...

...always be thinking "how can I give enough context so others can make much better decisions without me around?"

Watch out for hoarding decisions.

Consider how much noise your stacked calendar throws off ➡️

9/ Designers & developers are perfectly capable of making important product decisions (and are often better equipped to do so).

If you don't believe that, ask why?

Should you advocate for developing those skills? Hiring?

Everyone "too busy"?

Or is it about you letting go? ➡️

10/ PdMs often get caught in big swings.

They wait until the end of the quarter for quarterly planning. By keeping a continuous roadmap, and "always right" snapshot, you can limit these swings and hits on your time.

Imagine you'll have to present yr roadmap tomorrow. Always.➡️

11/ Preparation.

A well facilitated meeting can eliminate countless clarification meetings. Be laser focused on lack of coherence but don't rush convergence.

Forced convergence probably causes more problems in the long run, so block out the time for things to be messy.➡️

12/ Different efforts will require different cadences / meeting design / time investments. Beware of mono-process.

Encourage mission-specific working agreements vs. a "Standard Schedule".

Aside: This is a *huge* problem with >60% of teams i meet➡️

13/ Be very aware of the (small # of) decisions that will really, really matter. Often as PdMs we obsess over relatively inconsequential -- or best left to others -- decisions.

Invest time in these decisions. Invest in involving others in those decisions. ➡️

14/ Finally. Take a real vacation.

If you can't take 2 weeks off that is a HUGE problem and the symptom of so many things (many self inflicted). That should be your test of managing energy well. 🛑

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More from @johncutlefish

John Cutler

@johncutlefish

15 Feb

product principles are underutilized, and often phoned in.

key symptoms. they:
* aren't opinionated enough
* don't get the cognitive gears turning
* don't help guide decision making
* reveal nothing about the strategy
* are generic and yawn inducing

how do you fix them? (1/n)

Start with a simple prompt:

When faced with a decision between ____ and ____, we tend to favor ____ because ____

Ideally this is coherent with your actions and past decisions. If not...now would be a good time to start 🙂

The best principles...(2/n)

@Amplitude_HQ

...cause a bit of friction/tension.

You pay attention. They are forcing functions.

e.g. at @Amplitude_HQ we aren't focused on analysts working in isolation, so we might say "we are biased to scaling data literacy over enabling lone hero analysts"

that gets you thinking (3/n)

Read 4 tweets

John Cutler

@johncutlefish

1 Feb

just occurred to me that part of the product managers job is to frame decisions in a way that actually INVITES disagreement, dissent, challenge.

let me explain

it is easy to frame things that ppl will agree with (1/n)

..lots of successful product managers are good at this. The problem is that they aren't inviting other perspectives. They frame it up -- nice consultant like -- in order to sell the direction.

Nods all around. YES. But months later...

(2/n)

That approach gets things in motion quickly, but it doesn't lead to the best decision quality.

Now other people are so vague that neither support or dissent are possible. There's nothing to go on. No rationale whatsoever.

UM. I guess so?

This is helpful either...(3/n)

Read 4 tweets

John Cutler

@johncutlefish

24 Jan

the idea that remote is universally good for introverts (notwithstanding the many variations of introversion) is problematic...

1/n First, to create *any* environment that is safe and inclusive takes intention and care. It is not magic...introvert * remote=good.

2/n Case in point, there are many in-person work environments that are intentional with respect to the needs of introverts. And many remote environments that aren't...

3/n In many newly remote settings, you simply see decision making shift to smaller, select groups.

What feels comfortable and easier, is merely a reduction in collaboration, healthy tension, and transparency.

Possibly "easier" for the introvert. But not in the long term

Read 6 tweets

John Cutler

@johncutlefish

14 Jan

Since writing about feature factories in 2016, I've since started to referring to some orgs as "functional feature factories". What do I mean?

they deliver reasonably usable work, things don't feel dysfunctional, the reflect/adapt on how they work, but...(1/n)

12 Signs Post 👇

...they still haven't really cracked the nut .... where product development becomes the key driver for sustainable, differentiated, ethical growth and impact.

And in many ways this is a tougher situation to grapple with because stuff isn't obviously "broken".

Arguably...(2/n)

...for many companies this is a step up from what was happening before.

So you have an issue with complacency. Why shake things up? The company is doing fine?

In many industries you can survive and even thrive...to a point. Until cant (3/end)

Read 4 tweets

John Cutler

@johncutlefish

11 Jan

@Amplitude_HQ

here's a bit of advice I give to a lot of companies at my day job (@Amplitude_HQ ) re: analytics

Start By Counting Things

Skip magic metrics.
...goal setting and success metrics.
...trying to "justify" a strategy.
..."benchmarks" and what your competitors do.

Instead...(1/n)

...focus on counting things that happened that you care about. Stay firmly grounded in the customer domain. Name things sensibly. Add extra context with human understandable properties. Decouple counting from the interface-de-jour.

Start By Counting Things

Why? ... (2/n)

@Amplitude_HQ

...this is the muscle you need to build.

When you can count things, the rest falls into place ... especially with a product like @Amplitude_HQ which handles the nitty/gritty of making that data useful for you.

too many teams jump straight to a silver bullet (3/n)

Read 7 tweets

John Cutler

@johncutlefish

5 Jan

"The engineers on my team just want to code. They don't want to have anything to do with product. They just want specs. What do I do?"

1/n Are you asking them do to X *and* do their "day job" as defined by their managers (and frankly your roadmap) ?

If so, start there...

2/n Do they have a reason to believe that doing X will in any way improve the quality of the product and make their lives easier? Have they ever seen X "work" ?

Show don't tell.

3/n Is there average day/week a quagmire of unnecessary meetings, wading through tech debt, struggling to get *anything* to work ... and jumping through process hoops to prove their worth?

If so...no they will not have bandwidth.

Read 9 tweets

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