PITA 050
Topic 1: How do you help teams see areas they need to improve without undermining / demoralising them? (bonus points - when they keep retrenching to old habits)
Test with the intended audience and show results. Now it’s not opinion, but fact.
‘Catch them doing something right’ (from The One-Minute Manager) to also reinforce good things, and compare to goo behaviours observed in the past - creates psychological safety
Show vulnerability about the things you needed to learn along the way
Using OKRs, clear targets (etc) to make expectations explicit
If not a team you have direct interaction with - Manage their managers (in private). People (largely) do what *their* bosses tell them, after all.
Create a culture of raising the bar. Heard a stat today that if sat with a high performer - your performance increases by c30% on average.
Help them to recognise the problem - in a good way.
Topic 2: how do you get a team to believe in move fast and fix and learn and fix and learn etc -- and not overthinking everything
What’s the value of the problem being solved? Is it worth all this faff? (You can also compare this to team burn rate)
Cynefin approach - figure out how to scale the insight
Risk vs Opportunity matrix - what’s the harm? Build a habit by getting them to consider the risk and just do some stuff - especially if it’s low risk and the opportunity is well understood, even more so if it’s a 2-way door.
Frame things as experiments - even delivery. Build the habit of building slice-by-slice.
There can be a fear you won’t be able to go back if it’s “delivered”.
Even if they feel they have ‘only one chance to get it right’, start to deliver ‘hidden’ slice-by-slice and build trust upstream that this is a more sustainable way to approach things. → 20% are better than nothing (because we canceled midway)
Are they chasing something perfect - perhaps talk about the opportunity cost of doing other things.
Deliberately test small things against each other, so that disposable learning is the norm. (Spikes work like this)
“Think in years - deliver in weeks”
Topic 3: How to sneak in Product methods without people (devs) realising?
Connect to what they are complaining about — bugs, “re-work,” nobody using it, etc.
Find something that actively helps them in their role and apply a technique - get some trust
Do some discovery: why are they so resistant?
How do you establish trust?
Look into the principles of transformation & change management
Stop using the language of product. Use their language and terms. (Due diligence instead of Discovery, for instance. Or Daily Check-ins instead of Stand-Ups.)
Topic 4: How long does it take to develop good 'product instincts'? How can you encourage that development in junior PMs?
Petre Wille’s Product Manager wheel - show the difference between the score they give themselves and others’ perspective on their competency
Setting expectations explicitly - make sure they know what’s being expected of them, and what good looks like
Do you do 360 feedback from a few people? a round of ‘keep doing / ( + do more of) / stop doing’. This approach has its flaws but wider canvassing has some pluses
Focus on the fact that they are showing progress (if they are) as well as how quickly they’re progressing.
Reference them against a development framework
If there are multiple people at that level, create peer relationships or communities.