Main Takeaways: - Turning ambiguity into the structure - Which decisions should be fast vs slow - When to use intuition vs statistical thinking

1. www.productschool.com
Webinar: Being OK with Ambiguity by
fmr Yahoo Sr PM

2. Join 60,000+
Product Managers on
Free Resources
Discover great job
opportunities
Job Portal
prdct.school/PSJobPortalprdct.school/events-slack

3. CERTIFICATES
Your Product Management Certificate Path
Product Leadership
Certificate™
Full Stack Product
Management Certificate™
Product Management
Certificate™
20 HOURS40 HOURS40 HOURS

5. Corporate
Training
Level up your team’s Product
Management skills

6. Being OK with Ambiguity
Derek Kwan, COO @ ReSci + Ex-Yahoo! PM

7. What we’ll cover today
● Encountering ambiguity
● Turning ambiguity into structure
● Which decisions should be fast vs slow
● When to use intuition vs statistical thinking

8. Between calculated risk and reckless decision-making lies
the dividing line between profit and loss.
-Charles Duhigg

9. A decision needs to be made
with imperfect information
and an uncertain outcome

10. Acceptable:
● Innovations
● Startups
Not acceptable:
● Poor processes
● Poor decisions

11. Don’t sweat
● Everything is just a problem and a solution
● Ambiguity isn’t always bad
● It’s expected, and it’s the job

12. Turning ambiguity
into structure

13. PM’s + Leaders are ambiguity filters
● Ambiguity is part of your job
○ Your inputs will sometimes / often be ambiguous
● Your outputs
○ Need to be structured
○ Need to be thought through
○ Need to factor secondary and tertiary effects

14. Competitors
User
feedback
Fire drills
Big bets
Complexity
cost
Business
priorities
Requirements
Priorities
Trade-offs
Business and users (inputs) Engineering (outputs)

15. Trade-offs
Technical
concepts
Complexity
Issue
reports
Features
Delays
ELI5
Roadmap and
timelines
Documentation
Engineering (inputs) Business and users (outputs)

16. Speed vs accuracy

17. Less info /
more speed
More info /
more accuracy
Decision making

18. Thinking through it
● Is a decision reversible?
● Will it impact a lot of resources?
● What is the potential upside / downside?

19. Speed
Accuracy
What’s the
correct
tradeoff?

20. Speed
Accuracy
What’s the
correct
tradeoff?- Reversible
decisions
- Low downside
- Less resources
- Hard to reverse
- High downside
- Resource
intensive

21. Intuition vs
statistical thinking

22. Are risks well known?
● If risks are well known, you need intuition less
○ Data is more readily available, statistical analysis makes
more sense
● If risks are not well known, you need more intuition
○ Data is not readily available, so more qualitative analysis
makes sense

23. Intuition is not
magic

24. Intuition + imperfect information

25. Hand reading - also not magic
● Observation
● Pattern recognition
● Structured hand analysis
● Math
● Critical thinking / probabilistic thinking

26. Good intuition comes from hard work
● PM’s and leaders who “guess right” often…
○ Deeply understand their market and users
○ Have good “product sense”
○ Are constantly learning and keeping up to date on trends
○ Critically think + consider secondary and tertiary effects
○ Measure what matters
○ Can think probabilistically and use heuristics

27. Probabilistic thinking

28. Probabilistic thinking

29. Heuristics
● Make fast + accurate (but not perfect) decisions without a lot
of data
○ Rules of thumb
○ Availability heuristic
○ Educated guesses
○ Trial and error

30. Rule of thumb

31. Availability heuristic

32. Availability heuristic

33. Wrapping up
● Embrace ambiguity for yourself
● Remove ambiguity for others
● Speed vs accuracy based on downside and reversibility
● Use intuition when risks are not well known
● Intuition is based on knowledge, thinking, preparation
● Probabilistic thinking and heuristics are good frameworks

37. Connect with me!
Book (Bet, Build, Go: Build Startups Like a Poker Player):
https://www.amazon.com/Bet-Build-Go-Startups-Player-ebook/
dp/B085ZN2S2L
Eventbrite for Live Chat on July 16th:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/product-management-live-chat-b
y-fmr-yahoo-senior-pm-tickets-104427988926
LinkedIn (Derek Kwan, ReSci):
https://www.linkedin.com/in/derek-kwan-00bbb21/
Twitter (Kwansfull): https://twitter.com/kwansfull
Blog (Bet, Build, Go): https://betbuildgo.com/

38. Thank you!

39. www.productschool.com
Part-time Product Management Training Courses
and
Corporate Training