Year: 2020

Attempting to build products remotely during a pandemic

A note for new subscribers: This post is part of a monthly series on my notes on technology product management (this is what I do for a living). You might notice that these posts often link to older posts in the series on LinkedIn even though they are all available on this blog. That is intended for folks who only want to follow future product management related posts. Finally, for all those of you who don’t build tech products for a living, I believe many of these notes have broader applicability. And, I hope you find that to be the case as well…

A quick overview of what we’ve covered on “Notes on Product Management” so far –

If it isn’t evident from the title of this note, I’d like to make sure we start by acknowledging one thing – there is no playbook. Every one of us is figuring this out and this post is all about the process of “becoming” and not the “being.”

With that out of the way, I thought I’d start with the “why.” There are a lot of great articles out on the internet offering opinions on how long the unusual situation we find ourselves in will continue. I am not going to add my opinions to the mix. What is clear, however, is that we all likely have at least a few weeks of this ahead of us.

And, as this has been a sea change for many of us, I thought I’d share the best tips I’ve heard from others while also sharing what I’ve been observing and learning from my experiences over the past 5 weeks. Here are my 3 notes to self –

1) Take care of and be kind to yourself. I frequently think of the in-flight announcement that reminds parents to put their own oxygen masks before doing so for their children. The idea at the heart of it is – it is hard to take of others if you don’t take care of yourself.

This has been easy for me to observe – on days I’ve been frazzled and unsettled, I’ve checked in less with the team and thus been a less empathetic person.

So, how can we take better care of ourselves? Here are the 3 areas I think about –

a) Physical: 3 of the most popular tips I’ve heard from folks on our extended team – 1) Start the day with a workout, 2) Build in time for preparing and eating meals, and 3) Set clear boundaries to the workday to enable yourself to disconnect and rest.

While I think these are great, I’ll also share that these haven’t worked for me. In our case, we have been attempting to work while also filling in as pre-school teachers for our 3.5 year old and 2 year old. So, my variant of these have been – 1) Get out for a long walk/jog outdoor with the kids when you’re with them, 2) Order good home-style food if possible so you don’t have to worry about meals, and 3) Alternate early starts with days where you sleep in.

B) Mental/Emotional: This one is tougher. In my case, sleep has been the biggest needle mover of my mental/emotional health. The second has been finding the time to reflect and synthesize what I’m learning.

This is uniquely personal and I hope you’re carving out the time to take care of your mental health. For some, this means regular video calls with co-workers and friends. For others, it may involve therapy or for certain others – time spent writing. :-)

Regardless of how we’re wired, it helps to be kind to ourselves as we figure out how to be effective and productive. We need to begin by meeting ourselves where we are. Mental/emotional progress often looks something like this.

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c) Environmental: 2 popular tips I’ve heard – 1) Wear your work clothes during the work day, 2) Have a designated working station – invest in a standing desk if necessary.

Again, my version of this is – 1) Do whatever it takes to get work done – after some testing with work clothes, I’ve settled into a comfortable shorts and t-shirt routine as it makes much easier to clean up after the kids, 2) Make sure both you and your partner split time between your more ergonomic set up and your dining table. :-)

2) Demonstrate care to your team both by checking in and by minimizing any churn. My favorite check in learning – Ask everyone on the call to share their 1-5 rating by simply raising their hands. Check in with folks who are a 3 and below.”

I’ve also heard lots of great tips on more frequent check ins, fun activities, and hangouts with the team. I can’t speak to this myself as I’ve maintained our pre-remote once or twice a week (depending on the project) stand up meeting schedule. I have a reduced meeting window at this time and get most of my time outside of normal work hours. So, adding meetings hasn’t been an option. And, that has admittedly been frustrating as I’ve not been able to do anywhere as much for the teams I work with as I’d like.

That said, while check ins and compassion are great and important, I believe the best way we can demonstrate care is by minimizing churn. These are difficult times in most companies – there are legitimate concerns about customers defaulting, meeting payroll, layoffs, and such. In companies where cash isn’t as much a concern, there probably are plenty of discussions about whether existing roadmaps need to be changed or thrown out of the window to better meet the needs of users and customers.

These kinds of situations can be very challenging if the team feels unsure about product direction – it helps to have some certainties. These situations can also be frustrating for us as the emotions involved in the moment can result in some unhelpful and incomplete short term thinking.

In such situations, there are 3 things we can do to ensure we’re responding vs. reacting –

a) Make sure we’re requesting our leaders to communicate their priorities. Understanding their current thought process can help us better understand how we should adapt.

b) Communicate what we’re hearing and learning with the cross-functional team leads (and the team) so they are in the know. In challenging times where most things feel outside our control, we tend to operate with lower levels of trust. And, since the amount of communication required is inversely proportional to trust, we need to communicate a lot more.

b) Make sure we are applying problem finding fundamentals more than ever on any new “urgent” project we’re being asked to explore. When times get busy, the fundamentals of putting together a rock solid problem statement (who is it for?, is there a real need?, what is the business value?), laying out the assumptions for the question – “what would it take for this to work?,” validating them with data where possible, and outlining the success metrics matter more than ever. As a friend once said, it is okay to build incrementally – it is just not okay to think incrementally.

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There is no dearth of meaningless projects that sound good but do nothing. As custodians of customer and user problems, it is on us to make sure we’re being rigorous in our thinking. And, the best time to catch ourselves from working on a meaningless project is before any work begins.

It is also a good time to remind ourselves of the cost curve of a typical project. If a meaningless project was costly before the lockdown, it is significantly more costly now.

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3) Obsess about the 2 things that matter. Start and end every day and week with a clear list of the two things that matter. As you make your way through the day, ensure this list stays updated.

Given the extraordinary circumstances in which we’re operating, on some days, this list might involve duties outside of work. All we can do is focus on what we control and do our best with what we have.

This is one of those ideas that is frustratingly simple to understand while being incredibly hard to do. Consistent execution on this idea always ends up being game changing – for us, the team, and the users of our products.

 

My biggest struggles: As I shared above, writing is my form of therapy and I’m writing this on the back of a week where many things felt like they were going sideways.

In this case, I didn’t do a good job defining the 2 things that matter consistently enough. When I did do it, I found myself unwilling to make clear trade-offs and/or communicate my priorities clearly – leading to at least one unsavory situation. And, to top it all, I did a really poor job setting boundaries over the previous weekend and week.

Ergo these 3 notes to self. I’m hoping to do better next week. And, I hope they help you in your journey too.

(Added note: Making it through the work week – especially the last day or two that seemed to stretch forever – was thanks to some amazing cross functional partners. Thank you for your patience and understanding.)

A life sidebar: As I’ve been processing the events of the last few weeks, I’ve found it helpful to remind myself that we’re facing multiple crises all at once – a pandemic, a financial crisis, and various others depending on where you live and what you are going through.

In my attempts to make sense of what is going on, I think there are 2 seemingly contradictory truths to internalize –

1. Everyone around us is hurting from this epidemic. They may be hurting in different ways and to different degrees – but, they’re hurting nevertheless. While it is tempting to compare our pain versus theirs – cut by age of kids, marital status, introversion/extraversion, etc., – the truth is that these are all just marginal differences in the big scheme of things.

2. The real chasm this epidemic exacerbates is that between the haves and the have nots. If we have a) savings in the bank to see us through the next 6 months and/or b) a steady paycheck (likely from a job that can be done remotely), we are firmly in the have category.

This isn’t to trivialize any pain we’re going through. Our problems – even if they are first world problems – are still problems and it is impossible to serve others if we don’t take care of ourselves. And, the only way to make progress is meet ourselves where are, create the space to patiently respond, learn to be kind to ourselves and others… while also continuing to maintain that combination of physical distance and social connection.

Once we do that, however, it is on us to ask the question – what can we do to help those whose needs are far greater than ours?

It is perfectly okay if we aren’t there yet. But, in the spirit of reminders, this is one for when we are ready.

For a leader by John O Donohue

May you have the grace and wisdom to act kindly, learning to distinguish between what is personal and what is not.

May you be hospitable to criticism.

May you never put yourself at the center of things.

May you act not from arrogance but out of service.

May you work on yourself, building up and refining the ways of your mind.

May those who work for you know you see and respect them.

May you learn to cultivate the art of presence in order to engage with those who meet you.

When someone fails or disappoints you, may the graciousness with which you engage be their stairway to renewal and refinement.

May you treasure the gifts of the mind through reading and creative thinking so that you continue as a servant of the frontier

Where the new will draw its enrichment from the old, and you never become a functionary.

For a leader

May you know the wisdom of deep listening, the healing of wholesome words, the encouragement of the appreciative gaze, the decorum of held dignity, the springtime edge of the bleak question.

May you have a mind that loves frontiers so that you can evoke the bright fields that lie beyond the view of the regular eye.

May you have good friends to mirror your blind spots.

May leadership be for you a true adventure of growth.

This poem touched many a chord.

Range, comparisons, and falling behind

I read David Epstein’s Range a few weeks before the lock down (so, a lifetime ago) and was mulling the biggest lessons I took away from the book. They were –

a) Breadth of experiences are both key and undervalued. So, take the time to choose where you’d like to focus.

b) Lean into what your experiences have given you. And, also remember to lean into the experiences you are presented with. The dots only connect backward.

c) There is no such thing as “falling behind.” Comparisons are useless too. You are on your own unique path – one that will be defined by the range of skills you develop.

In our day-to-day, it is easy to get caught up in random rat races.

But, as David Epstein reminds us, there is no such race.

And, we probably don’t need a book to remind us – but, we are also not rats.

Habits and new routines

Habits and new routines don’t work well together. An analogy for this relationship is driving through a new route.

When we’re driving through a route we know well, we go on autopilot. We don’t need the map and are more than comfortable listening to a book or taking a phone call.

But, if we’re figuring out directions, that tends to be a bad time to attempt to focus on a call or some new content.

Habits work much the same way.

So many of us have experienced various levels of disruption in our routines over the past weeks. This is a note to remind ourselves that it is totally expected if our habits went for a toss in the process.

Being tough on ourselves isn’t the solution (it rarely is). Some kindness and self-compassion will help us find those old habits and routines or, maybe, find new routines and new habits.

The post vacuum slippery slope

We vacuum our home every weekend and see a predictable trend unfold post vacuum day.

Day 1: Every speck of dust or dirt spotted is immediately vacuumed away with a hand vacuum.

Day 2: Same as above.

Day 3: Most of what is spotted is vacuumed away.

Day 4: Some of what is spotted is pushed to the corner.

Day 5: More of what is spotted is pushed to the corner.

Day 6: Never mind, just let it be. We’ll vacuum it tomorrow anyway.

Day 7: It is a mess. We need to vacuum our home immediately.

It is fascinating to see our attitudes change so predictably toward the end of the week.

Seeing it unfold this week made me think about the power of an idea I first encountered in Clay Christensen’s book – you either commit to a value 100% of the time or don’t commit to it at all.

He made the point that making excuses for extenuating circumstances leads us to a slippery slope – one marginal decision after another.

In this case, the culprit is the first marginal decision we make on day 3 when we decide it is okay to push a bit of dirt to the corner. Once that happens, the slope becomes very slippery indeed.

Closing rings

I bought an Apple watch a week or so before the lock down started. My approach to new gadgets tend to be to wait for a consistent need/use cases before I commit to a test

In this case, there were a few use cases I was interested in. The first and most important was physical health. The amount of time I spend playing sport has been significantly lower in the last year versus the last decade with two young kids. And, while I think of myself as someone who does a lot of the baseline things to encourage movement (walks, standing desk, etc.), I was sure I wasn’t doing anywhere as much as I could.

Second, I love getting out of the home without a phone. However, this resulted in some frustration for my wife as it was hard to know where I was if I went for a walk with the kids for example. Or, for example, if we were coordinating errands.

And, finally, also in the spirit of freedom from the phone, I wanted to be able to do some things – tell the time, see the weather forecast – without reaching out for my phone. The irony of one device replacing the other isn’t lost on me. :-) But, I’m a techno-optimist and I was interested to see how this small device replacement would change my behavior.

And, from my experience from the past month, the Watch has been a big winner. It has definitely enabled a lot more freedom from the phone (this would have been significantly more if it wasn’t for the lock down) and it has also brought a few other nifty use cases – e.g. seamless Apple Pay.

But, the biggest winner has been the rings. The first is a calorie goal that you hit by moving, the second is hitting 30′ of exercise (it is a loose term – a brisk walk will do), and the final is standing at least a minute every hour for twelve hours.

While the stand goal is easy, the other two take a bit of work. And, your calorie goal can be adjusted every week depending on how well you’re doing.

In my case, the biggest change has been a daily brisk walk routine with a stroller, a soccer ball, and a couple of stops around our local park. On days when the weather hasn’t been friendly, this has meant a lot of jumping and running around the house.

In times like this when a lot is out of our control, it is nice to have activities that are good for our health and are completely in our control. Closing the rings has been one of those activities for me.

I’m grateful for that.

An ode to Source Sans Pro and typefaces

I realized recently that I have grown irrationally attached to the “Source Sans Pro” font/typeface over the past 2 years – so much so that I have a minor reaction in my head when I see a document that is written in some other font. :-)

It somehow has a mix of the warmth/approachability of Calibri while adding a formal touch from the likes of the Gothic family/Verdana.

Typefaces add so much to the user experience of writing and reading documents. And since I spend a lot of time doing both, I’m grateful to Paul Hunt (creator) and the Adobe team for creating and open sourcing such a beautiful typeface.

I’m not sure if anyone has ever measured the impact typefaces have on our moods and experiences. I suspect their impact on our daily psyche is non-trivial.