Driving results is one of the core responsibilities in a product management function which must align with company's strategy.
To drive results product managers work with several cross-functional teams who have their own responsibilities in serving the business.
Engineering is responsible for solving complex problem that is reliable, performant and scalable. Design is responsible for usability and delightful user experience. Operation is responsible for customer service by turning an unhappy customer into a happy one. Strategy is responsible driving initiatives that are durable for business. Analytics is responsible for enabling tools and expose data to measure the performance of the business. Sales and marketing is responsible for the growth of the business. Legal and compliance is responsible for counseling the organization to not enter a trouble territory which can put business to risk.
These teams are brought in for their specialization but product management is a grey area because it doesn't have a universal definition on what their functional skills are. Every product manager is treated differently based on organization, type, size or taste. And they all come with various experiences and skills.
And if this isn't complex already, product managers are responsible for when a north star metric is down, solving a bug that is reported by the CEO or a board member, shifting focus on backlog items that are no longer a priority, when an operation team is getting a flood of calls on a feature that is not functioning right, design file and production environment do not match, people making decisions without them or an initiative being spun up by another team that they are working on or worked on.
Product managers are forever haunted by these dynamics. You don't have to play this game by simply leaving this chaotic world. But if this isn't a choice, then how do you drive results in a complex product management environment?
Principled decision making can help!
When there is a complexity of this nature, product management is faced with trade-offs. For example, we want to reduce the number of steps in a form but legal might want to add more to ensure all areas are covered. Or operation team might want a specific input on the form because they are getting a lot of calls but analytics finds out it is asked by 1 in every 500 customers. We have to make a decision when facing these trade-offs. But how do you make a decision?
Principles will help you fall back on a default option when there are multiple choices to pick from. For example, a principle can be—move fast and drive impact.
We deliver fast so we can learn quickly on an optimal solution by shipping and iterating fast. So anytime there are endless debates and conversations, the default behavior should be to ship fast, learn from it, and build the next iteration on the previous foundation.
These principles should be tied to the vision statement and strategic pillars. They are drawn from company values. There is a reason why they exist. Using them to your own advantage can help with faster decision making while facing trade-offs so you can drive the results that your organization wants.
Leverage your conversation with your leadership next time and ask them to share the product pillars. Once everyone is aligned, document them, and share them broadly. Next time when you are in an endless debate on getting the feature delivered, call people out that are refusing to follow a principle.
The less time you can spend debating and the more time building and engaging with users the larger your impact and results will be.
Let your principles set the direction!