Jan 5, 2024
One of the many mistakes I made when I started my product management career was thinking that if I shared a customer problem with the team, I must also present a ready-made solution.
This notion stems from managing up. You don't go to the leadership team with a problem without providing options to solve it and a recommendation. However, this doesn't hold true for your product team.
Of course, it's fine to have ideas on how to solve a customer problem, but keep them to yourself for a bit. Let the product designer take a crack at the problem without your solution whispering in their ear.
If you share your solution prematurely, you introduce unconscious bias. Once your product designer or team has seen what you've put down, they can't unsee it. Even if they try to ignore it, your solution's presence will affect their thinking.
When solutions come in, analyse them, share your solution if you want, weigh the pros and cons, and determine the best solution for your business context.
If you're interested in how to improve your team's decision-making read Ambiguity and Decision Making.
Keep reading
Levels is running four products and ~$3M in revenue, solo. This used to be the exception. It's becoming the norm. Marc Lou ships a new product every few weeks b...
There are two lists. One of them gets all the attention. The wishlist is the obvious one. Every team has one and it tends to grow on its own without any editin...
Cross-functional planning used to take us 2 weeks before AI. Now AI got it to 2 hours. However, the delays seem to be exactly the same length they've always bee...
I'm a father of 3 from Sydney, a Product Director and a Product Coach. I write about leadership, product management and the messy reality of making work work.
I'm currently building and experimenting with a mildly alarming number of things.
Subscribe to the best posts on product, strategy, and AI. Just one email a month.
