How to Be a Great Product Manager by Salesforce Director of PM
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In this presentation, Alexander Lovell, advises the following: -Improve your awareness of hidden tradeoffs -Identify the consequences of your unconscious decisions -Prioritize more effectively to deliver faster -Communicate hard choices without hard feelings
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How to Be a Great Product Manager by Salesforce Director of PM
- 1. www.productschool.com How to Be a Great Product Manager by Salesforce Director of PM
- 2. FREE INVITE Join 23,000+ Product Managers on
- 3. COURSES Product Management Learn the skills you need to land a product manager job
- 4. COURSES Coding for Managers Build a website and gain the technical knowledge to lead software engineers
- 5. COURSES Data Analytics for Managers Learn the skills to understand web analytics, SQL and machine learning concepts
- 6. COURSES Digital Marketing for Managers Learn how to acquire more users and convert them into clients
- 7. COURSES Blockchain for Managers Learn how to trade cryptocurrencies and build products using the blockchain
- 9. I 9 HOW TO PRIORITIZE FOR PRODUCT LEADERS Be a true product leader Separate the urgent from the important Balance today's demands against tomorrow's goals Nothing is indispensable - Everything has consequences
- 10. Proud to be part of the Salesforce product team. I oversee the #1 and #6 most-used components on our incredible platform, serving 3+ million DAU @Alexander_SF linkedin.com/in/lovellalexander/ Director of Product, Salesforce I 10 ALEXANDER LOVELL
- 11. Go from making unconscious tradeoffs to consciously engaging with every product decision Be more aware Use our increased consciousness of tradeoffs to make better product decisions Make better tradeoffs Use frameworks and data to communicate your choices in ways that build strong relationships Communicate more clearly Put it all together to build better products, make your users more successful, and improve your career Win more 11 TOPICS FOR TODAY
- 12. 12 “HAVE TO”
- 13. Prioritize consciously Roadmap ruthlessly Think & communicate effectively Measure, refine, and revise PRIORITIZE CREATE ROADMAP MEASURE & REVISE 13 PRIORITIZING AS A PRODUCT LEADER
- 15. Bugs Cases Design Security Accessibility Perf 15 COMPETING PRIORITIES
- 16. 16 URGENT vs IMPORTANT “I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.” - Eisenhower
- 17. 17 DITCH “HAVE TO” Change from unconscious “have tos” to conscious decisions Learn the implications of every issue Prioritize consciously Make the right tradeoff
- 18. 2 Leaders stay focused on what matters most, not what squeaks today Focus on the important 18 3 There is no “have to” - be conscious of every competing priority Make conscious decisions 1 There will always be urgent distractions. Protect your team Resist distractions
- 20. Make smarter, better-informed decisions when you recognize nothing is out of the question Be a better communicator by learning to vocalize all the pressures facing you and how you balance them Make your product, your customers, and yourself more successful Decide smarter Communicate better Win more 20 BENEFITS OF MAKING CONSCIOUS DECISIONS
- 21. 21 DECIDE SMARTER BIG DECISIONS Heavy frameworks for big decisions ● Blue Ocean ● Kano Model ● Balanced Scorecard Internalize and move on
- 22. 22 DECIDE SMARTER EVERY DAY Tools for success every day are: ➔ Less common ➔ More important Toolbox of simpler concepts Frame tradeoffs
- 23. 23 Output = Resources × Time
- 24. 24
- 25. Strategic context Tie your projects to broader strategic initiatives Stakeholder success Think through the effects on each type of stakeholder Cost v. Benefit Focus on the project with the highest return on investment 2 x 2 Visualize your thoughts with a simple 2 x 2, agreeing first on the dimensions 25 TOOLS FOR EVERYDAY
- 26. 26 COMMUNICATE BETTER Frame the trade off Explain how you make decisions Arrive together Be firm Say ‘no’ and stay friends
- 27. Prepare There’s no substitute for anticipating asks / objections and preparing a convincing argument Empathize No faking - work to genuinely understand competing perspectives Bring data Relying on data protects your relationships and your integrity Build relationships Working with friends is easier, more productive, and more satisfying 27 PRACTICES FOR EVERYDAY
- 28. Measure outcomes Refine your approach Revise the roadmap Repeat, repeat, repeat 28 MEASURE, REFINE, & REVISE PRIORITIZE CREATE ROADMAP MEASURE & REVISE
- 29. 1 There will always be urgent distractions. Protect your team Resist distractions 29 2 Leaders stay focused on what matters most, not what squeaks today Focus on the important 3 Ditch “have to” - be conscious of every competing priority Make conscious decisions 4Use tools every day to challenge yourself and make better decisions Balance tradeoffs 5Use the same tools to get alignment & take the heat out of difficult discussions Communicate clearly 6Embrace new information to measure, refine, and revise to improve Keep getting better
- 30. 1 There will always be urgent distractions. Protect your team Resist distractions 4Use tools every day to challenge yourself and make better decisions Balance tradeoffs 30 2 Leaders stay focused on what matters most, not what squeaks today Focus on the important 3 Ditch “have to” - be conscious of every competing priority Make conscious decisions 5Use the same tools to get alignment & take the heat out of difficult discussions Communicate clearly 6Embrace new information to measure, refine, and revise to improve Keep getting better
- 31. 31 WIN MORE Prioritize consciously Roadmap ruthlessly Think & communicate effectively Measure, refine, and revise Win together
- 32. 32 ALEXANDER LOVELL Director of Product, Salesforce @Alexander_SF ⧫ linkedin.com/in/lovellalexander/
- 33. www.productschool.com Part-time Product Management, Coding, Data, Digital Marketing and Blockchain courses in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, New York, Santa Monica, Los Angeles, Austin, Boston, Boulder, Chicago, Denver, Orange County, Seattle, Bellevue, Toronto, London and Online
Editor's Notes
- Audience participation
- #1 and #13 most-used components 10 million user queries a week and over 500,000 daily active users Career before Salesforce
- Be more aware Make better tradeoffs Communicate more clearly Win more
- “Have to” This is the phrase I hate most in the world I have to do this, you have to do that Let’s be crystal clear: you don’t have to do anything in this world Oh, there are tradeoffs. There can be consequences, but you don’t have to do anything You don’t have to go to the grocery store, but you won’t have fresh produce at home You don’t have to go to the gym, but you won’t be in shape You don’t have to BREATHE, but you won’t live very long Intro to priorities In fact, you are constantly making decisions about your priorities Balancing returns, consequences, feelings and sensations Whether or not it is conscious, you are prioritizing That’s why I hate “have to”: it short circuits your priorities and implicitly puts whatever you “have to” do as the #1 priority When you have too many top priorities, it creates stress, even panic Then you make bad decisions After a lifetime of “have to”, most people never get what they say they truly want It’s sad to think of giving up your dream of the best possible life for you in exchange for a lifetime of errands you have to run, jobs you have to do, and social obligations you have to fulfill Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
- Relate to product management A framework of consciously prioritizing is directly applicable to life as a product manager Product management means different things at different companies and for different products The one thing for which the product manager is indisputably responsible is the product roadmap Roadmaps are in a constant state of revision If you lose sight of the product priorities, you will lose control of your product roadmap
- AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION Name some issues that compete with feature development I’m not going to belittle them but let’s talk about all the things that come at you as a product leader I’ll start: bugs. Bugs, bugs, and more bugs
- Examples of “have to” priorities that are not There are a lot of serious issues that will be presented as things you have to do Examples: Urgent customer support cases Accessibility Security Design Performance Bugs Strategy changes All of these things are urgent If you addressed all the urgent things all the time, you would never ship a new product or feature As product managers, we earn our money balancing competing priorities All of them will be urgent Some of them will be important It’s on you to find the right balance
- What is important? Whatever makes your customers more successful over time Sometimes the things we just talked about are important, sometimes not The first step to differentiating is recognizing ALL your options Photo by Zhen Hu on Unsplash
- Being conscious The way to lead your team, product, and company forward is to change your priorities from unconscious to conscious Remember, I said I hate the phrase “have to” because it implicitly or unconsciously makes something a top priority but in truth everything has knowable implications When you uncover an issue related to your life or your product, make it your job to learn the implications and consciously prioritize Let’s take an example Customer support team tells you about a bug The customer is mad about it, so the support team says, “you have to fix this right away” They might be right but you won’t know until you unpack all the implications Does this issue affect one customer or many? Is it business stopping or mostly annoying with a known workaround? Does it require a full solution or does a partial solution remove the pain point? Quickly, you’ll learn whether this bug is a higher or lower priority than other bugs or features
- Resist distractions Focus on the important Make conscious decisions
- So what? How does this help ME be more successful as a product leader? Does it help me get a job, do better in my job, get a promotion, build a company? Absolutely, it does. The moments when you are conscious of all the options before you, you are free to choose the best path. The best path leads to the best outcomes for you. The ability to pick the right path from a variety of options while under pressure is the defining qualification of a leader. Applying these lessons to product management will make you more employable, more promotable, and more likely to make your product successful When you become conscious of how you calculate priorities, you become capable of communicating in a powerful new way Remember, your job is not to TELL everyone what to work on PMs lead without authority Your job as PM is to convince everyone to work on what you’ve done your best to prove is right for the product and customer You even have to convince people to whom you’re saying ‘no’ You win by: understanding all the variables, balancing the equation to find what will make your customers most successful, and keeping everyone pulling in the same direction long enough to get to the promised land That’s winning as a product leader by making the best, most successful product You get there by being conscious and leading your team to what matters, not by chasing the urgent or dictating terms
- When you are fully conscious of all the options, You can make smarter decisions You can communicate more effectively You will win more
- Decision-making tools for product decisions are geared towards making BIG decisions Should we launch this product at all? Which market should we enter? Which company should we buy for a more competitive product? If you’re making those decisions every day, here are some great tools for you But if you want to be a successful product leader, you need to navigate the 99% of decisions that are tactical, not strategic Ex: YES, we want to launch this product. Now, what’s the MVP? How do we balance this innovation against urgent maintenance issues? How can I get everyone to agree so we can actually move forward?!
- Tools for success every day More important Talked about less You need a toolbox of simpler frameworks To frame tradeoffs in a way that’s lightweight, comfortable for you, and easy to explain
- Before we get into the blocking and tackling, let’s call out the single most common request in the history of product development: “More work in less time” Say it with me, “More work in less time” As a PM, this is NOT your job. You do not optimize performance of engineering teams. If you try to do so, you will burn bridges and alienate colleagues. Never touch the third rail that is engineering velocity. So how do you respond when people ask for more, more, more? Remind them of this formula MENTOR STORY Output = Resources * Time There are three primary variables in product management The work output your teams achieve The resources available, most simply the number of engineers The amount of time available to do the work That’s the equation you have to balance I like to spell it out for collaborators to set a common framework for understanding and communicating I’ve even had success talking to customers in this way People are not trying to be jerks. They have different goals and incentives than you. Help them step into your shoes Caveats This is not a perfectly elastic equation Doubling the size of the engineering team will not double the output in the next six months It takes time to hire and ramp up new contributors The oldest cliche in product management may be the truest: just because one woman can make a baby in nine months doesn’t mean nine women can make a baby in one month
- Every change to your product roadmap is a trade off. Unless you have more resources coming or an extended deadline, adding new output means subtracting another piece of output Do not leave open disagreements. If you need to escalate the issue to find a common resolution, that’s better than letting it fester Either you convince the other person of your prioritization or they convince you of theirs. START CLIP This is not zero sum: you win as long as the most important piece of work is at the top of your list. If someone convinces you it’s better to prioritize differently, that’s also a win because you’re doing your job better than before This gets back to the last step of prioritizing as a product leader: measure, refine, and revise. Your colleagues will push you to measure, refine, and revise your roadmap just as your customers push you to measure, refine, and revise your product
- Strategic context Stakeholder success Type of stakeholder - which is most valuable? Number of stakeholders - net utility Cost vs Benefit 2 x 2 Looks like four square
- Communicating priorities Many conversations, even in business, are driven by competing emotional points of view Another team is getting yelled at for something that requires your collaboration, so they want it to be your top priority Disagreement can quickly become conflict when the discussion is about you helping or not helping a colleague Break out of that loop by focusing on the implications of competing priorities, not the personal or emotional This is where leaning on data can be a valuable asset Taking the heat out of these inevitable disagreements is vital to preserving productive working relationships over the long term By becoming conscious of how you prioritize and communicating effectively, you: Become more effective as a product manager Preserve relationships from conflict Create the best possible version of your product, balancing short- and long-term priorities When you apply the same principles to daily life, you also pave the way to being the best possible version of yourself Remember, it’s not about the decision itself. Success here is about how you come to that decision If you can clearly explain your approach to decision making, you ensure a productive conversation on your terms
- Prepare Empathize Bring data Build relationships A word on preparation and data: don’t try to be Steve Jobs PMs love to imagine they are visionaries who see what customers cannot That’s why they don’t have to do research, listen to data, or prepare for tough questions Other people can’t understand Once in a long while, you will be pushing a concept people will love but don’t yet understand, like the iPad 99% of the time, your users are right Remember that ratio and ask yoursely: in this moment, am I being visionary or stubborn? Most importantly: don’t try to beat anyone. Product management isn’t a war won by fighting battles It’s a long-term relationship where you succeed or fail together
- Measure outcomes Refine your approach Revise the roadmap Repeat Your roadmap is in a constant state of improvement
- Balance tradeoffs Communicate clearly Keep getting better
- Resist distractions Focus on the important Make conscious decisions Balance tradeoffs Communicate clearly Keep getting better
- When you are conscious of every competing factor, balance them fairly to make defensible decisions, and frame product conversations constructively, you will win more in every sense. Your product will be more successful, your customers will be more successful, and colleagues will view you as a successful product leader
- If you buy into the concepts I’ve laid out and keep your ego from getting in your way, I know everyone here can do something great Thank you I’ll stick around for questions