As a leader, how can you
- Make a major, singular impact
- Truly empower team members
- Grow them with “stretch tasks”
- Create flow for self & others
- Avoid burnout

Answer: Radical Delegation

(note: not for everyone, but game-changing for leaders & teams who are ready for it)
If you look around, especially in fast-paced fast-growth companies, product leaders & their teams are underwater at best & often just burning out.

Too often, leaders think that’s just the way things *have* to be.

Radical Delegation shows that there is a different, better way.
This framework starts with the work that must be done i.e. it assumes you’ve already discarded work that you should not be paying attention to. In fast-paced, fast-growing companies, the work that remains is still *a lot*. Most leaders tend to take on all of that work themselves.
That is, many leaders tend to take on work in each of these 4 quadrants, esp quadrants 1, 2, 3

Note: They aren’t incompetent. They know about delegation

But, here we are talking about work that (rightly) landed on their plate & is “usually” done by the leader, rarely delegated.
Why is it rarely delegated?

Either because leaders don’t think it’s possible to delegate or because of external expectations on the work they are “supposed to do”.

For example:
“If it’s a meeting with my peer, I must go to it” (even if someone on the team can handle it well)
This mindset leads to these major problems:

1) Leaders are overwhelmed
2) They’re unavailable to their team
3) Team doesn’t get good coaching
4) Really good folks aren’t stretched
5) Work feels very whack-a-mole
6) Important work doesn’t get done
7) Eventually people burn out
The Radical Delegation approach helps you to

a) be intentional about making your singular impact (i.e. to do your highest leverage work with deep focus & to coach your team)

b) create clarity for yourself & your team members on the Delegation Contract (i.e. quadrants 2, 3 & 4)
While I highly recommend Radical Delegation, note some caveats:

1) If you are a new manager, you might not yet be ready for it. Don’t force it, try again when ready

2) You might not have the right team for it (but be rigorous – many leaders tell themselves this false story)
3) For Radical Delegation to work best, *your* manager needs to be a highly competent people leader. Otherwise s/he won’t really understand what you are doing & why you are doing it (and you will get dinged in your performance reviews)
I’ve used Radical Delegation consistently over the past 5 years to make the greatest business impact I can.

It has truly been life-changing for me & has even played a part in enabling faster transitions of some high potential people to PM roles or PM leadership roles on my team.
I hope Radical Delegation can be as useful for you as it has been for me.

All the very best to you!
I love the "delegate until it hurts" guideline. Great way to think about Radical Delegation and whether you ought to delegate even more.

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More from @shreyas

4 Jun
Context Matters Most, a short story:

Meet Bob, a Product Manager at Acme Inc.

After 2½ years of being a PM on his current team, he is excited to take on a new challenge as PM in a different org at Acme.

Here’s what his manager had to say about Bob's work thus far as a PM:
Fast-forward 6 months. Things are not going so well for Bob on his new team.

Here’s what his new manager has to say about Bob's work over these 6 months:
Same person, same behaviors, different contexts, very different outcomes.
Read 16 tweets
1 Jun
🗓️Recap of May 2021 content:

Black Turtleneck Fallacy
Valuing time
Product clarity exercise
Instinct matters in product
Success + Tranquility
Recognizing happiness
Simple stuff
Transactional managers
% confidence
Writer's block for PMs
A tragedy of many orgs
and more..

Thread👇🏾
When allocating their time, most people just seek a positive ROI. To achieve much greater outcomes in lesser time, you should instead seek to minimize Opportunity Cost. Probably the most valuable thing I will ever say, especially for senior product folks.
Read 26 tweets
30 May
A thread of product management frameworks:

(this might be useful if you are a product manager, product leader, or founder)
Before we jump in:

Frameworks will not fix all your problems.

Used right, they should help you
1) better understand your context
2) create structure for problems
3) communicate ideas & solutions

I often use these frameworks in my product work, sometimes without realizing it.
1/
3X framework (Kent Beck)

A product can be in one of 3 stages
1. Explore
2. Expand
3. Extract

For product leaders this is the most vital framework to understand because almost every important decision should account for the stage your product is in.

medium.com/@kentbeck_7670…
Read 46 tweets
16 May
An approach to run working sessions

-Pre-read

-Set clear goals & agenda upfront

-Alternate betwn Quiet Time & Discussion Time twice/thrice in 1 hr

-People work on their own in Quiet Time (talking forbidden)

-Share the work in Discussion Time

-Repeat

If you use this for the right things, you'll accomplish a lot more than constant talking for 1 hr

Another thing:
Much of the business world's processes are highly optimized for extroverts. This approach creates a more balanced structure for introverts & extroverts to contribute.
Below is a concrete example of this working session approach, for pre-mortems. The @coda_hq template linked in this tweet provides the end-to-end structure for you to run such a working session.
Read 4 tweets
10 May
Why do many modern teams & companies fail to achieve the clarity, progress, and results they so badly seek?

5 cognitive biases of modern organizations, a thread:
1/ Band-aids for Bullet Holes

Organizations tend to prefer sticking band-aids on serious bullet holes.

They do this due to 3 reasons:

- irrational optimism that the band-aid will work

- inability to diagnose the actual problem

- avoidance of the pain from fixing said problem
e.g.

Most Execution problems are really
1) Strategy problems, or
2) Interpersonal problems, or
3) Culture problems

Good leaders execute well because they understand this. They fix the root problem.

Bad leaders & their teams struggle because they are always applying band-aids.
Read 21 tweets
1 May
🗓️Recap of April 2021 content

Includes:
- A template for pre-mortems
- How product creativity dies
- False Positive Products
- Being more strategic
- B2B strategy primer
- Personal growth inhibitors
- Work stress
- Curated lists
- Internal roles
- Using logic
& much more....

👇🏾
A template that you can copy to run an effective (and fun) pre-mortem with your team for your upcoming launch (created via a collab with @coda_hq)
The hardest part of product creativity is not the ideation. It is the negotiation necessary to get the folks who are fixated on logic & math to appreciate the value of product creativity.
Read 23 tweets

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