S3 Ep.1: How Do You Accelerate Product Decision Velocity?
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Hope Gurion: One of the anti-patterns of product teams that embrace product discovery is wanting to defer decisions until they have sufficient evidence, which can frustrate leaders and teams eager to get valuable products and improvements to market. There are a variety of root causes of this “analysis paralysis” that could plague your product teams, so in this episode of Fearless Product Leadership we’re going to hear from deeply experienced product leaders as they answer the question “How do you accelerate product decision velocity?”
Welcome to the Fearless Product Leadership podcast. This is the show for new product leaders seeking to increase their confidence and competence. In every episode I ask experienced and thoughtful product leaders to share their strategies and tactics that have helped them tackle a tough responsibility of the product leader role. I love helping emerging product leaders shorten their learning curves to expedite their professional success with great products, teams and stakeholder relationships. I’m your host and CEO of Fearless Product, Hope Gurion.
I work with product leaders and teams in the coaching work that I do and many of them struggle to simply make a decision. Sometimes they’re stuck in knowing which problem to solve. Other teams are stuck knowing whether they’re done iterating on a specific design. Product teams have to make a lot of decisions big and small to ensure their products are valuable, usable, feasible and viable.
When I was a first-time product leader and began working with Teresa Torres, I can remember asking for her help and lamenting “I just want them to be able to make a clear recommendation with evidence to back it up.” Since then I’ve seen this challenge play out at a variety of companies and product teams with some underlying patterns that contribute to this hesitancy within product teams to make a decision. Luckily there are some straightforward techniques that can help product leaders accelerate decision making velocity within their product teams.
In this episode you’ll learn from five seasoned product leaders who share the warning signs and the questions and frameworks they rely on to accelerate decision-making in their teams.
At the end I’ll share the top three blockers I see preventing teams from making high quality decisions at the pace demanded of product teams and how you as a product leader can address each of them.
Fearlessly tackling the question “How do you accelerate product decision velocity?” are:
First, Dave Wascha shares how he works to address the value destruction resulting from lack of decision making by helping his teams understand the cost of delay and getting to the bottom of why they feel they can’t make a decision.
Dave Wascha: This is a particular pet peeve and/or area of passion of mine. I think one of the biggest areas of waste, if you subscribe to lean philosophy, one of the biggest areas of waste that product managers can create is in not making decisions, or in putting off making decisions. One of the things that when we onboard product managers into teams that I run that we really educate people on is the concept called the cost of delay; which is: there's a genuine cost of delay there's a genuine destruction of value. The longer that it takes to make a decision, or act on information; and, and I've found that there are so many anti patterns when it comes to decision making that you fall prey to in the middle and even later in your career as a product person. You don't have the competence to make the decision, and you want to constantly say I don't have all the right information to make the decision, or in organizations that are going through change it might not be clear who's supposed to make the decision. There's lots of reasons to not make decisions; my favorite reason that I've ever heard for not making a decision is I had a product manager come to me and say, “We haven't made the decision yet, because we haven't been able to get a meeting room big enough to hold all the people who needed to make the decision.” I just I've used that example so many times when I talked about decision making.
I think one of the core roles of a product manager is helping frame up, and then help an organization make decisions. Another one is expediting the making of the decision. It's understanding, kind of 80% is good enough, and when do we have enough data? What would have to be different in order for us to make a wholly different decision here and if we're not anywhere near that threshold let's just move forward. Who needs to make the decision who needs to be aligned? What needs to be clarified? Just relentlessly chasing those things down, the goal of getting the decision made is one of the biggest areas that product managers can create value in an organization.
I personally in my role, I'm very clear with the organization; like there are certain decisions that I would like to be participants in. I'm very clear on those and those tend to be frequent. There are some which I say, “Hey, I would love to be involved, if it's convenient so don't wait for me don't stall for me, but if those stars align, I would love to at least hear the hear the discussion and understand what the stakeholders are saying” but for the vast majority of decisions, particularly if they fall into that one way door kinds of decisions [note from Hope, I think Dave meant to say “two-way door” kinds of decisions which are reversible], I encourage people just make the decision. I will never fault you I will never penalize you for making in a one-way decision. It’s just enough information to inform you directionally.
That's a cultural thing right because to think of all the reasons why people don't make decisions, it really a lot of the time comes down to fear. Fear about retribution, fear about the consequences of making a mistake, making the wrong decision. So, my job is to help people understand that we are giving people permission to take an understood level of risk, and as an organization broad, to accept the constant consequences, even if they're negative of those decisions. That really needed to be embedded, starting with the day that we interview people and onboard them, all the way through to really leading by example and and exhibiting the behaviors and demonstrating the behaviors that we want to see in the org on a daily basis. Now, I really insist upon that with any of the leaders in teams that I run, that they that they lead by example here, that they make decisions quickly, that they remove waste from the system. One of the fastest ways to really frustrate me, and there aren't that many, is to put off making decisions. There are very rarely legitimate reasons why you can't make a decision faster than you're going to make it.
Hope: When you see people delaying on this like, do you just ask them, “What are you afraid?” to try to get that surfaced, or what have you found to help, like expedite the decision making if you see fear as often being the root cause?
Dave Wascha: It is contextual, I think. Sometimes, I want to be there, I want to be in a supportive mode and while I say, “What information do you not have that you believe you need in order to make this decision?” or, “What are the blockers that you believe, are standing in between you and being able to make this decision.” It’s like therapy, what are the consequences if you've made a wrong decision here? What is the worst-case scenario? And if I'm having that conversation with somebody and we're going through that together, then we are agreeing in real time that I will accept the negative consequences if the decision was a mistake. That's what I'm in supportive mode, but there are times when the team just isn't getting the message or, the individual has a history of just not really embracing making decisions. Then I'll just be more prescriptive, and I'll say, “Look, I'm happy to step in and make the decision here, if that's what's required. I would prefer not to do that, but I value decisions quickly, right now, and therefore if you want me to make the call I'm happy to do that.” and luckily, certainly in my current situation and decisions I'm in that mode, the other nine are in the kind of supportive let's just articulate, you know it's almost like cognitive behavioral therapy if anyone's familiar with that. To anticipate and articulate, very openly and transparently what our fears are about this being a bad decision, and then when you say it out loud, it's usually not as bad as you think it is and it's also agreed that if that's what happens we're fine with it, and then people just make the decision and go, and it really starts to feed on itself in a very positive feedback loop; it's such a liberating things and it's fun as a leader to watch it happen in an organization. You have a few of those examples where, kind of the organization is just frozen and locked up and decision making. Then you say, “What’s the worst could happen?” we articulate it, we agree that if that happens, we're fine with it, the team makes the decision. Other teams watch that happen, and they start to embrace it and it really just becomes this really positive feedback loop. It's incredibly liberating for the organization. The velocity can change overnight, almost literally when you, when you really push that.
Hope: Next, Polly Howden shares that clear goals and frequent review of progress with diverse perspectives participating are key ingredients to accelerate both quality and velocity of product decisions.
Polly Howden: For me, it comes down to two main things when I'm thinking about how to accelerate a sort of product velocity. One is having really clear goals, that you’ve brought your team in, they’ve been part of shaping or bought into, and those things you don't just set them, but you're reviewing them very regularly, I would say. OKR methodology is one of the frameworks that I prefer, and, weekly, ideally having conversation about those things. If there's a lot to go after, you might need to think carefully about how you can have those conversations, but having that leading, guiding light. Then, underpinning it is how safe your team feels.
So, when you're having those conversations, it's no good if everybody's going, “Oh yes it's going fine” or only a few voices are speaking up. You can go faster when people speak up, they say, “Right, this is cool but we could do it this way it'll be half the cost and half the time” or maybe saying, “Oh hey, maybe that engineer over there has a really great idea.” So, for me it's about getting the whole voice of the team that’s there around the problem and being very clear about the outcome. So, really for me, when you're thinking about velocity as well, it's about the velocity, not what are the items that you're shipping or building, but of how close you're getting towards your goals, because there's no point being sort of a busy fool as it were.
Hope: I love that you brought like if if there's people who aren't speaking up that usually is not only of not feeling safe but also then you're probably not getting enough perspectives on the table to get the best decisions made in your time constraints, and I love that you have sort of a weekly cadence of like are we making progress towards these goals so that keeps the pressure on for fast decision making. That's great.
Polly: Definitely, and I think it's something that you form a confidence around over time, because there's a lot of discussion about meetings and how long they take and too frequent or not; and some things you really just have to do, and as long as it's fun and it's not too long. You just got to do it frequently.
Hope: Next, Zabrina Hossain of Shopify shares that asking questions in a framework to surface risks is a key part of the decision methods her teams use to accelerate decision making velocity.
Zabrina Hossain: So, how do I accelerate velocity in our product teams’ decisions? In my mind, the only bad decision is indecision, so I make sure to work with my team to set up a framework early on, to help them to make decisions rapidly. It's a very tough balance to strike between giving a team enough time to dive into a problem in order to understand it, and also ensuring that they're not going in circles when we could simply be iterating and learning from the work. So, we use a framework that helps you to understand the impact and hierarchy of decisions. If a decision could negatively affect your users or your rep or their revenue, then you should give the product team more time to understand that problem and create a defensible strategy as they make their decision; and if a decision has minimal risks, then you should make those decisions as quickly as you can, so that you can learn from the outcomes and move on. As a pm has gradually become second nature, but you do have to remember to use these frameworks and reinforce these principles with your team to support them and their decision making, as well, so that they don't feel stuck and that they can move faster and make their decisions.
Hope: So, can you tell us a little bit more about that framework is it something homegrown Is it a technique that you've seen used effectively elsewhere? Is it part of your onboarding process? Tell me more about how you instill this practice.
Zabrina: It's been a little bit different at every company I work with, but essentially, the user should be at the base of the framework like the most important thing that you're thinking about. So, on my team we've created it as a pyramid chart, kind of like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. So, the merchant again, is the most important and so, is this the right thing for them? Are we helping them grow and be more successful target the goals that we have? The next is for Shopify, the next is for our product group, and then our team group and then eventually to the individual teams, and how it impacts a person and their growth. All of these things are important, and we we've refined this together. So, I have a leadership group called a trifecta so that's my engineering lead and my UX lead and myself, and we kind of reflected on our team and we've created this as the unique decision making framework for our group.
Hope: So, when you're reviewing decisions, is this something that you're reflecting on per sprint, per decision, overall and how often are you revisiting your, your pyramid of decisions? How is that reflected? Is it literally people are creating a pyramid and walking up the pyramid in terms of the decision or the recommendation?
Zabrina: It's not quite that formal. So, it's probably used more often at the beginning of a product ideation phase to ensure like are we making the right decisions are we on the right path. Then we would revisit it, if we start to feel like we're veering it kind of would help us to recenter, as a group, but it doesn't have to be something that slows you down it's just something that helps the team, when they need it to come back to like, “Wait, what's going on?” It's become pretty second nature here that the merchant is first, so everybody is always asking, “Wait, how does that help our merchant? Is that the right thing for our merchant? What's the long-term value there?” and so that does again gradually become more natural for teams. But when required, it's really nice to just have that graphic available you can also paste it on the team's wall, so that everybody can just see it and reflect on it and have that gentle reminder.
Hope: Anthony Marter shares how he uses the framing question of: what is the latest responsible time to make a decision to help his teams accelerate both the question to set up the decision and what assumptions underlie the timing/urgency of the decision the product team must make?
Anthony Marter: My approach to accelerating velocity in product decisions is a concept that an agile coach mentioned to me many years ago in my career and he talks about the notion of the latest responsible time to make a decision or to do whatever he was talking about, to do a thing but I interpreted that as as to make a decision. It doesn't mean I'll leave everything to the last minute. What I've sort of evolved that into is actually understanding the context of framing around what it is that we're trying to do in terms of the market. If we don't make a decision by X, are we going to miss a market opportunity? If we don't make a decision by X, is that going to push out the rest of our schedules? This is for planning kind of things. What is the time sensitivity of the decision?
In terms of teams that are very discovery driven, you want to do all that discovery but, at what point do we actually just need to knuckle down and start building and get something in market? Otherwise, all of these assumptions we would never even get a chance to validate. See, it's that concept of time and also the in the list of tasks from the person who's doing that as a product manager or product leader. Do you actually understand the time sensitivity of what you're doing? Do you really have an idea from your executives, whether or not there's a market opportunity here? Do you know? Have you missed the fact that there's a customer beating down the door, that if you don't get this thing in by a certain time, you know they're going to go away or they're going to give you less revenue, things like that. It looks at the assumptions that you've made about these decisions, about the discovery or the delivery that you're working on. So, yes, again, is that realizing the time sensitivity of decisions.
Hope: Finally, Audrey Cheng shares the magical question she asks her teams to accelerate their product decision making.
Audrey Cheng: Velocity and product team decisions is something that comes up quite a lot, how do you accelerate getting to the right decision as quick as possible, is like the magic, right? How does that actually happen? I think some of the things that when we think about it, we've actually probably done some pendulum swings over time as we were trying to figure out what our processes should be on what what feels right for us in terms of speed to market and I think that's ultimately where we want to market. I think in the early days we might have not done as much user research or interviewing our customers as much as we do now. I think when we started to introduce research we kind of probably swung the other way, where we were like researching and trying to get as confident as possible, that doesn't always make sense either like there is always that tipping point where you kind of like any more information isn't going to change your decision.
I think that is like one of the key things, is thinking about the impact that what you're working on is going to me. Yes, you may have like 10 more questions, but when you think about those 10 more questions, if you had answers to them, would that fundamentally change the decision that you made? If the answer is no, then I don't think that that's actually pivotal to you uncovering those in order to make your decision. You can move forward, you can gain a little bit more confidence in some of the detail areas, as you've made that decision; but I think the key is really thinking about what impact are you making and the investment cost and actually defining, researching and understanding all of those things in order to make the decision. So I think you have to, there is a balancing act there, and as you know product management is probably more art than it is science in that respect, where you actually have to have a feel for like, “Well, I've got 10 more questions, will they be impactful to my decision or change the course of how we might solve it?” If the answer is yes, then I probably say you probably need to figure out what questions within that list, you're going to need to understand in order to make a decision, but if the answer is no, then you're probably good with the information that you have. And then I would be looking then to tease out, a couple things that are going to help you make better decisions in the small.
Hope: Product teams are faced with many decisions, big and small. Big consequential decisions such as:
What is the right product to build?
How can we ensure our product continues to be loved by our customers in ways that drives value for the business?”
How will we evaluate our success?
Which customer segments should we focus on?
What value proposition should we pursue?
Which markets shall we serve?
And they also face everyday decisions. Such as:
Is this the best way to present the UI?
Should we trust the feedback from this customer or that customer?
Is this the right problem to focus on in the next sprint?
Is this the fastest way to learn to derisk our assumptions?
The 3 most common blockers I see for teams that struggle to make decisions stem from a few root causes:
They haven’t assessed the risk associated with the decision. Can it easily be reversed if it turns out to be incorrect or not yield the desired results?
They haven’t clarified who will make the decision.
They haven’t explicitly clarified what would make a decision the “right” one.
Because teams are often having to make a number of decisions, they often lose sight of which are the ones that are most critical to get right. This is the opportunity for the product leader to be a resource and guiding light for his or her teams to help them resolve these common blockers.
As our guests touched on, taking a step back to first assess the risk associated with a wrong decision can take the pressure off. If it’s a two-way door decision like a design or UI choice, it often can be easily iterated on. If it’s a one-way door decision such as a target market or value proposition that is a harder ship to turn around, more effort should go into considering the next often-encountered blockers:
Who should make the decision and who should weigh in on the decision? Clarifying with a RACI or simply asking the question, who has the most to lose if the decision turns out to be wrong can help teams expedite their decision making by involving the most critical experts.
What would constitute the “right” decision? Sometimes this is difficult for people to wrap their heads around. I encourage teams to think about best case scenarios and worst case scenarios. Setting targets and success criteria often surfaces what evidence would show the team made the right decision. But it’s useful to imagine and consider that things didn’t go well to reduce overconfidence and confirmation biases. I recommend exercises to surface these often unstated risks like a pre-Mortem where the cross-functional team and SMEs/Stakeholders imagine they’ve made the decision and it went horribly wrong.
I want to say thank you to our senior product leaders, Dave, Polly, Zabrina, Anthony, and Audrey for sharing their expertise on this episode.
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If you’re a product leader seeking to accelerate decision making within your product teams, I’d love to be of help. Contact me on Linkedin or Twitter or schedule an initial consultation with me using the Contact Me page at www.fearless-product.com/contact.