- Always callout non-goals, in addition to the goals for a leadership review you are leading
Earlier on in my PM career, while I would call out the explicit goals and feedback I needed from leadership reviews, I never took the time to communicate what we would not discuss. This sounds simple, but in my experience, if you don’t communicate what topics you won’t cover, your review can often be hijacked by tangential topics or discussion which will result in an efficient use of everybody’s time. In all of my reviews, I include a slide on what the goal of the review is, what we’re looking to get feedback on, and what we will not discuss. This way it sets boundaries for discussion topics!
2. While articulating trade-off decisions, always use a visual approach
As Product Managers, we have to make trade-off decisions almost daily. A lot of these times, we have to present our recommendation to some stakeholders (partner teams, leadership, your own team etc.) to get alignment. Everyone is familiar with outlining criteria to compare against the options, but I think there is something about visually presenting trade-offs that can help make these decisions really quickly and highlight your recommendation.
3. Have a communication policy outlined for your team
There are so many enterprise tools available today ranging from email to instant messaging. This can quickly get extremely complex and noisy for PMs to have to navigate conversations with different stakeholders. Establishing a communication policy for your team can go a long way — set simple rules (e.g. leverage email for non-urgent communications, instant messaging for urgent messages, & meetings for decision-making) and get alignment from your team to follow them.
4. Escalate early, and escalate often
In my previous companies, escalation was often seen as a last resort to help align on a path if there was a disagreement between two teams. This meant you could spend a lot of valuable time and energy trying to resolve the disagreement and end up no-where. At my current company, we are encouraged to escalate early, and escalate often to help make decisions efficiently. This has significantly helped with the speed of our execution.
5. Always document decisions, next steps and circulate them
When you have reviews with different stakeholders and agree on decisions, it’s always important to document what you agreed on, and note next steps or follow up items. Every function and team has a lot going on every day and as time passes, sometimes people can forget the decision or rationale behind the decision. This written communication that is circulated will help with a few things — a) ensure everyone is aligned on the outcomes b) serves as an easy source for new team members to catch up on context & c) if there is debate on the chosen direction in the future, this document will help serve as the ‘ground truth’
6. Always use numbered lists in documents or slides
Sounds simple? It is, but it goes a long way to provide extreme clarity. Imagine being in a meeting where you’ve expressed your pros or cons as follows
- This is great
- This is great, again
- This sucks
- This sucks, again
Now, you’re in a review and want to give feedback — how do you do so? “2nd” bullet, “4th item” — people can use different phrases which will most certainly create confusion and take up valuable time that could’ve gone in making the decision. Always, always, use numbered lists in documents to denote options, points and/or in slides.
- This is great
- This is great, again
- This sucks
- This sucks, again
7. Repeat your goal. Then, do it again
I’ve done roadmap planning right from quarterly, to 6 months, to even once a year across the range of companies I’ve worked at. During roadmapping, we’d do a look-back on progress, establish our strategy, priorities and subsequent roadmap for the time period. Done, right? You’d expect everyone to have access and/or remember your team’s vision or goal, but it’s not that simple. Not having clarity on the goal can have long-term effects. Someone on the team may not understand why you prioritized feature X over feature Y, but if you had started that document and/or meeting by reiterating what your team’s mission and goal is, the question may not have been necessary. Repeat your goal, then do it again, particularly in leadership reviews.
8. Use the “so-what?” question to assess each slide
I took career coaching from Davina Stanley earlier this year, who is the author of the “So-What Strategy”, and I have to say, it was one of the most helpful quick reads that I continue to leverage in my day-to-day as a PM. When you’re trying to communicate anything — whether it be a decision, an update, or ask for something specific, you have to ensure your main point and rationale for it comes across quickly. Ask yourself “so-what?” when you’re reviewing your slides for a presentation and if you can’t answer it, work on articulating that point upfront — perhaps in the slide title!
I would highly recommend reading the book to understand how using storylines can be an effective way to shape your communication. It also has helpful templates for common business scenarios such as explaining which option is best, pitches/proposals, action plans etc.
9. Use the steel-man approach when there is a debate or disagreement
One of my colleagues provided this helpful tip which has actually helped resolve disagreements quickly, because a lot of them can often be due to misinterpretation. When you are not agreeing with someone on their point of view, pause, reiterate how you are understanding the conversation and try to reinforce/argue the other side. This will highlight if there is a misinterpretation issue causing the disagreement, and allow you to think through the opposing argument more objectively.
10. Always send pre-reads, ahead of the discussion
This was a practice that became standard to me during the pandemic-WFH environment. Pre-COVID, for roadmap readouts, we would present (as in walk-through/read-out) the entire roadmap which included a look-back section, as well as outlining priorities for the upcoming quarter or half. Similarly, for leadership reviews, if we had prepared a pitch or proposal document, we would spend 50% time going through our recommendation and save 50% of time for discussion/questions.
Looking back, I realize this was highly in-efficient. To facilitate better collaboration during WFH and having large participation in video calls, we started enforcing a 24 hour pre-read to be sent, and read by everyone. We would document where we needed feedback, and outlined we would use the time only to walk through our discussion questions and address those raised by others. This made reviews a lot more useful, and required less time in meetings for everyone = win, win! This will only work if you outline a rule that is followed by everyone, i.e. you must make time to review and digest pre-reads that are sent beforehand!
Try these out and if you have any feedback, comment below!
