As boring and mundane as it sounds, managing your schedule/calendar efficiently is an important skill for PMs to master. I’ve seen PMs double or triple booked, jumping from one meeting to another. But after a whirlwind day, do you feel both exhausted and unproductive? 😢 Perhaps by changing the way you manage your schedule, you can take back control.

What is scheduling?

Scheduling is a planning activity with the goal of deciding how to order tasks and commit resources (aka your time/energy). A calendar is simply a tool used for displaying a schedule.

Why care about scheduling and calendar management?

There are several benefits with this type of planning:

* Higher productivity in the same given time period from singular focus

* More realistic expectations of what can or can’t be accomplished in a set period of time

* Increase balance between professional and personal commitments, which can reduce burnout

In short, the same reasons and benefits for project planning and timelines apply to your own schedule and calendar.

Practice Advice for Good Calendar Management

Note: The tactical instructions are Google calendar specific because that’s what I use.

* Integrate your personal calendar with your professional. Even before the pandemic, our personal and professional worlds are blurring. For parents, managing a 9-5 work schedule is rarely possible without interruptions. Thus, you need to integrate your personal calendar with your professional so you can view, and edit in one place.

* Go to your personal Google calendar

* Next to your personal calendar, click on the 3 dots > Setting and sharing

* Under Share with specific people > Add people

* Enter your work email address and select “Make changes to events”. This allows you to edit your personal calendar from your work calendar so you don’t have to go back and forth.

* Optional: You can do the reverse from your professional to personal as well. However, my advice is to only share one way because it prevents you from being confused (i.e., Am I in my professional calendar or in my personal calendar?)

* Auto Block Time on Your Professional Calendar for Your Personal Events. Once you are able to see your personal and professional calendar in one place, the next problem is keeping them “in sync”. If you add an event to your personal calendar, how do you block out time on your professional one without doing it manually? Well, there’s Google Script you can use that auto imports calendar events from one calendar to another. You don’t have to be an engineer, but you’ll need to read and configure some Javascript. Read more for specific details.

* Use a scheduling tool for external scheduling. Next is about making it easier to schedule time with people. Internally, you can easily see availability, but externally, that’s not possible so you end up with emails like below.

This is made more difficult when you have to coordinate schedules for multiple people. So, I highly recommend using a scheduling tool (e.g., mixmax, calendly). Now only do you control your availability, but it makes picking options and time easier. [As a bonus, most of these tools have a “free” tier so you can try it first before paying.

* Color code events with 3 colors. With two calendars and multiple events, it's important to gather information quickly at a glance. One way to accomplish this is via color coding. Picking 3 colors is a good start if you’ve not used color coding before. It’s easy and your calendar won’t look like a kaleidoscope. I recommend the following three colors (HEX values), which are also color-blind friendly.

* Summer Sky (#3DB7E9) -> The default, for general purpose event label.

* Bamboo (#D55E00) -> For important or urgent events. Rather than picking red, which signals danger or warning, I pick a color that’s slightly more muted while still getting your attention.

* Ocean Green (#359B73) -> For external events, where I’m talking to someone outside the company.

* Block out 2 hours of uninterrupted “work time”. Besides talking with others and collaborating, PMs need dedicated working time. Whether that’s writing user stories or creating presentations, you need time to get s**t done. The best way for me is to block out a dedicated time and I’ve found 2 hours is great. Longer and I need a break / others want to talk to me. Too short and it breaks my concentration because it takes time to adjust and switch between different work topics.[Adding a concrete tip from Ben Newland from the comments: “If you block out time a whole week in advance, this doesn’t leave time for ad hoc, unpredictable things that would inevitably come up during the week. As a result, I would then be forced to book over my blocked time”. He suggest “Blocking Time within 24 hours”. “At the end a day, I block time for the next day so that I can associate those time blocks with specific tasks (or Most Important Things). Then that time was specifically dedicated to those MITs, and I lowered the risk of just booking over that time for another issue or request that came up.”]

* Reject meetings and provide a reason. Our default is to go with the flow. So when a calendar invite shows up, we accept. But do you really need to attend this meeting? Could someone else attend in your place (i.e., empower others)? Could you gather information from meeting notes (i.e., tldr)? I approach this problem by rejecting a meeting and kindly replying back to the organizer on why I don’t think I need to attend. I make it clear to the organize, he or she doesn’t need to cancel the meeting, but send me some notes (e.g., key decisions or information). Sometimes, the organizer is able to quickly convince me I’m wrong. Sometimes, I reject a meeting I find out afterward that’s important (gosh darnit). But I’m willing to make some trade offs here to free up my time. You can use the same technique for recurring meetings, which can eat up more time unwittingly.

* Limit multiple, back-to-back 15/30 minute meetings on different topics. Yes, it happens, but avoid when possible by rescheduling or group related tasks. The issue isn’t the short duration, but the combination of short durations and different topics. This won’t allow your brain enough time to switch context and you’ll end up exhausted and unproductive. This unproductivity is caused by a combination of “not enough time to complete the task” which can be made worse by task-switching. Your options are:

* a) group repetitive activities (e.g., cold calls with a script, interviews where you’re asking the same questions),

* b) intersperse short with long meetings (15 minutes, followed by 1 hr), or

* c) increase the time (change a 15 minute to 30 minute

* Add a secondary time zone if you work people elsewhere. This is all about having empathy for others. Now that more people are working remotely with remote coworkers, have you thought about what time your meeting is in their time zone? If you work some people in another location, it’s easy to add their time zone to display in your calendar.

* Go to your Google calendar

* Click on the 3 dots > Setting and sharing > General > Time Zone

Closing Remark

While all the above work well for me, managing your own schedule and calendar also needs to match your working style. So, listen to your body by being in tune to how you work.[Feedback is important for any writer and I’d love to hear yours. Five minute survey to give your input.]

Sources:

* Auto Block Time on Your Work Google Calendar for Your Personal Events

* Wikipedia: Schedule

* Share your google calendar

* Designing for Color Blindness

What’s sales and business development?

Sales is the activity directly focused on selling goods or services today. Let’s break it down.

* “directly focused” -> The goal in sales is to convince you to buy. Prerequisite activities such as creating sales/marketing materials or determining pricing, while important in enabling a sale, isn’t the act of selling. Sales is selling.

* “goods or services today” -> The current product, without changes. This isn’t figuring out what to build or how to change a product to make a sale. It’s about right now.

Business development is the activity of identifying and defining who and how you will sell in the future. Let’s break this down.

* “future” -> BD is future oriented compared to sales. What are possible changes to product, marketing, and/or sales so you can sell in the future?

* “who and how” -> Who are these external parties and how will we build a relationship with them for this envisioned future?

* “identifying and defining” -> What projects need to be created with the external and internal parties to realize this future?

Jake Schonberger, former BD at FB said it best, “Sales is selling whereas BD looks at the larger picture [where external companies intersect product, marketing and sales].”

So while sales and business development are related because both focus on generating revenue, they differ in the timeframe and the tools to achieve this goal. Sales is focused on the now, convincing a buyer to exchanging cash for the current product/services. BD is focused on the future, identifying what’s possible, and gathering various people to build this future.

Practical Advice When Working with Sales

* Understand the sales stages and adjust your behavior accordingly. All sales people learn about sales stages. As a PM, if you understand them, you can adjust your behavior depending on the client and stage.

* Prospecting / sales development stage: This stage, sales is focused on identifying potential buyers. Remember the persona you created from those customer interviews? A sales person uses the information for searches on LinkedIn Sales Navigator (e.g., by key words, demographics, job title, etc.) The goal is to identify a pool of potential buyers for the next stage: outreach. As a PM, you can help by translating the personas into quantifiable search criteria (e.g., recall that persona pain point doesn’t equal demographics). For PMs familiar in B2C, sales in this stage is similar to performance marketers who focus on marketing segmentation.

* Outreach stage: Here, sales uses the information gathered in prospecting to write cold emails, make phones calls, or other outreach events (e.g., webinars, workshops, talks, etc.). It’s a balance between quality and quantity of outreach. Most sales folks use tools to track outreach (i.e., Streak, Salesforce, etc.), but PMs can make outreach more effective or efficient. One low cost method is to look through your own network for possible warm introductions to prospects. Another method is to A/B test different outreach methods or copy. Finally, seeking feedback from sales to refine the prospecting search criteria is helpful because translating personas to segments is usually imprecise and require tweaking.

* Pitching stage: At this stage, sales goal is to persuade the individual(s) who responded to the outreach to choose your product or service. Depending on the complexity of the product or service, this likely involves persuading multiple individuals. PMs can best help in stage this by providing the “expert” voice. Jake, former BD @ FB said, “Even if I know the answer, I bring my cross-functional [product] expert because it’s more persuasive to my clients if the information comes from them.” For PMs, these pitch meetings can feel boring and inefficient (i.e., you’ve got so many other pressing issues on your plate rather than sit through a pitch to answer one basic questions). A tip here is to attend, but for shorter periods of time by coordinating with sales (e.g., 15 minutes at the end for Q&A). You can provide the needed “expert” voice, without sitting through a product demo.

* Closing stage: Success! The buyer agreed to buy your product. But this isn’t the end for sales. Instead, it’s the the start of negotiations, contracting, and payment collection. Furthermore, there’s also work in “closing losers”, those potential buyers who didn’t move beyond the pitch. PMs can help sales in this stage in two ways. First, PMs should review contracts to ensure it adheres to the product value promise. This doesn’t mean you have to read the entire contract word for word. Instead, read the “deliverable” section to ensure the product can deliver the promise to the buyer. We’ll cover new product development contracts in BD, but sales should be focused on selling the current product and service, not making a bunch of changes to the product before delivering value. Secondly, because no sales person likes “losing a potential buyer”, PMs should create an recurring meeting (e.g., quarterly) for sales folks to share and vent about “lost deals”. This is a great way to build relationships with sales and learn from potential customers. Think of this as “retrospective” for sales without the terminology. The meeting isn’t a call to “immediate action/change”, but an opportunity to listen. A experienced sales person knows some clients don’t move forward because of buyer specific situations (e.g., timing not right, change in priority, change in people, lack of budget) and not the product. However, the same experienced sales person can also point out consistent issues in the pitching stage that’s causing buyers to stop (i.e., unconvinced). This should be assessed and addressed.

* Post-Closing / Renewal: For many sales folks, the 1st sale is just the beginning. Contracts have duration so the renewals clock starts immediately. This means delivering on the product and service promise is important (see point above re: PMs need to ensure contract/product can deliver value promise.) PMs can help in the post-closing stage by staying candid and in periodic contact with sales. Candid means informing your sales person about outages, product issues, or enhancements, such as via release notes. Periodic contact means keeping scheduling separate meetings for reviewing existing clients relationships status vs. prospects. By keeping sales informed, you enable the sales person to do her job. No sales person likes to get a call about a problem from their client and be caught off guard.

* Recognize that being “likeable” matters. Technical PMs early in their careers often focus on tactics and execution. I’m guilty of this. If we could only figure out a way to make a product 10x better at solving the pain points, buyers will come flocking. While 10x better is fantastic, many products and features are only 1x - 3x better than existing solutions and that’s a pretty good outcome. Coupled with the pain of switching, even a 3x better product may not be worth the hassle for a buyer to change. That’s why sales folks spend energy trying to be “likeable” because “likeability helps sell”. I’ve personally made buying decisions for products when baseline features are comparable among vendors because one sales person was more friendly and kind. So while some PMs may dislike the small chitchats and “faked” personal interests during client meetings, it’s because you simply haven’t seen the great sales people who do the same, but are genuine at building “likability”.

* Monetary incentives drive sales behaviors. Sales people are paid from a base + commission. This structure drives different behaviors than PMs. Imagine your pay is dependent on getting a customer to buy? This is one reason why it literally is painful when a sales person “loses a sale.” PMs can help by understanding the sales person’s pipeline, sales quota/targets, and compensation timeframes, which helps you understand why a sales person is pushing to close a particular deal. You can then have a more productive conversation (e.g., “I believe you’re trying to close these 5 deals by end of this month, to hit the sales quota. However, I only have time to help with two because of my other responsibilities. Which of these do you think has the highest probability of closing where I can help?”).

* Don’t cut sales out when communicating to clients. PMs sometimes frustrate sales by talking directly to clients without sales’ awareness. Perhaps it seemed more efficient because sales was busy. Perhaps you wanted unfiltered feedback and have experience running customer interviews. Whether intentional or not, this act leaves sales people with a bad taste. The analogy is, sales talking directly to engineering or design without your awareness. It’s not the “direct communication” that’s problematic, but being “cut out” and unaware of the communication. However, this problem is easy to solve. Candidly share why you want to talk directly to a client with sales. Pick a low risk conversation topic and invite sales to join. This way, you build both credibility with the client and sales before you pursue more independence.

* When things do wrong, let sales communicate the good news. Invariably, things go wrong and clients are pissed. During the investigation stage, you might need to communicate directly with clients. (Remember, keep sales in the loop.) once you’ve resolved the immediate issue (e.g., no more outage) and have a plan for remediation (i.e., writing a patch to fix some data errors), you should communicate this good news to sales so they can communicate to the client. Be direct and tell your sales person you’re asking them to communicate the good news to help further a relationship with a client.

Practical Advice When Working with BD

* Understand BD’s focus area. It’s easy to get lost when working with BD because BD is focused on the future and BD intersects product, marketing, and sales. Thus, start a conversation with BD to define it’s focus area. For example:

* BD focused on product: new products/services, major changes to existing product/services, “platforming”. BD’s focus on product is a method to drive future growth and revenue. Typically, the vision is a major change to the product to unblock a partnership opportunity. Some examples:

* A SaaS software provider for recruiters ->

* Idea: Creating a managed service to provide full recruiting services instead of just SaaS software

* Partner: Recruiting firms who don’t have the SaaS software

* A B2C products company selling toys ->

* Idea: Changing the product to to align with educational needs of institutions (e.g., schools, camps, universities)

* Partner: Sellers to schools who can bundle products (e.g., books + toys)

* A CRM software for sales ->

* Idea: Creating a platform to allow others to develop and sell their add-on software on top of the CRM software

* Partners: Independent software developers, adjacent software firms also targeting sales professionals

* BD enabling marketing: co-marketing, referrals. BD is focused on expanding upon the marketing role. Examples:

* A account firm for startups ->

* Idea: Hosting a co-marketing webinar

* Partner: Attorneys or law firms that also target startups

* A B2C seller of toothbrushes ->

* Idea: Financial referral incentive program

* Partner: Dentist, dental hygienist who serve similar target buyers

* BD enabling sales: new markets, new customer segments, new channels (B2B2C). BD is focused on kick starting and developing a repeatable process for new sales. Examples

* A B2B SaaS order entry software ->

* Idea: Expanding into Canada, new geographical market

* Action: From prospecting to closing, it’s learning how to enter a new geographic market to teach the rest of the sales organization

A B2C hardware manufacture ->

* Idea: Expanding into Europe, a new geographical market

* Partner: Identifying resellers for that geography

* When BD is focused on product, align on the vision. Sometimes, PM will feel BD is doing a PM’s job when BD is focused on product. Specifically, it’ll feel like BD is performing some parts of product discovery. This is because they are. By talking to external parties (e.g., partners, customers, suppliers, etc.), BD is broadly interviewing and identifying opportunities to solve pain points. Thus, when BD focuses on product, it’s critical to talk with the BD person to determine where there is and isn’t alignment on product vision. Recall, that BD is future focused. During the conversation, discuss what are the risks/fears and how to validate/overcome them. Perhaps you have the same vision, but different expectations on execution timing, a common problem if BD isn’t experienced in delivery. Perhaps the concern is around the partners and their commitment (i.e., you don’t believe in the pain points because you didn’t get to talk to the partners: “what if we build it and they don’t come”). Lastly, you may disagree on the product vision. If you don’t have some of the tough conversations early, those problems will be only harder to discuss under delivery pressure.

* Did sales rebrand as BD? There is a trend to retitle sales as business, partnership or relationship development. At small startups (< 50 people), it’s also common to have the same person perform the sales and BD role. This can be extra confusing for PMs, so here are some signs if your BD person is actually doing sales.

* Relationships and trust matter even more in BD. Whereas “likeability” matters in sales, trust matters more in BD. This is another reaction to the fact that BD focuses on the future. This isn’t an argument that sales isn’t trust/relationship driven. However, in the sales, you have a defined product/service, previous clients, and clear pain points messaging. This will make selling easier whereas in BD, the combination of unknowns among product, marketing, sales, and 3rd parties makes creating the future more difficult. Even at established startups and companies, BD is more akin to new product development and all the difficulties associated with it than sales. PMs can best help here by looking for ways to validate value risks by co-developing. This means join in on all the potential partnership calls, validating through customer interviews, and defining the pain points that best enable the envisioned future.

Thanks to Jake Schonberger, former BD at FB for giving input that helped make this article possible.

Sources:

* FOUNDING SALES “The Early Stage Go-to-Market Handbook”

* The guide to business development and partnerships

* The Product Manager — Sales Team Disconnect: Areas of Friction and How to Mend These

Product managers who have never worked with early stage founders often find their first experience a bit jarring. “f**ked” and “crazy” have definitely been thrown around. But “crazy” is a dismissive label we use when we don’t understand. What makes working with founders challenging? 

What do Founders do?

Founders at early stage startups (< 50 employees) have three important roles: individual executor, people manager, and visionary. How much time a founder spends in each role will vary depending on the founder’s preference, the founder’s skills, and the company needs. 

* Founder as ExecutorIn this role, the founder is using her or his specialized knowledge or skill.  Perhaps the founder previously worked as an industrial designer of medical devices or sales representatives cold calling potential customers. By using skills and gained experiences, the founder acts as an individual contributor, a “doer”, responsible for completing tactical tasks (e.g., creating designs, draft business terms, raising funds, talking to board members). 

* Founder as ManagerIn this role, the founder is a people manager, responsible for managing others.   Recruiting and hiring are top of mind as are coaching, retaining, and firing. The role’s focus is on assembling a group of people working together to “build” the business.  

* Founder as VisionaryIn this role, the founder is responsible for setting the company’s vision, mission (i.e., purpose) and goals (i.e., shorter term objectives to reach the vision). As the visionary, the founder is constantly evangelising, painting a picture of the future to convince people why reaching this vision is worthwhile. 

A founder will jump among these roles throughout the day, even from moment to moment. That’s why many founders describe their day as a whirlwind of activities because it will literally feel different playing each role. Being aware of this dynamic is the starting point to improving your working relationship with your founder.

Tactical Advice for Product Managers Working With Founders

First and foremost, start by helping your founder become consciously aware of the multiple roles they’re playing. You can do this proactively by setting the context before kicking off a discussion (e.g., “In this meeting, I’m seeking your help in setting the goal for our work. There are conflicting visions. Would you help us resolve?”) You can also reactively point out after an event (e.g., “I didn’t have the skill or experience to accomplish XYZ. Seeing and learning from your experience was great. Thanks for helping us execute.)

Next, identify your founder’s default role. All founders gravitate towards one of the three. It’s what they excel at and their fall back when stressed. Knowing the founder’s default role will help you determine how you can complement the founder. Again, Lilla said, “Ideally the founder communicates proactively about their style, but if not I’d encourage PMs to initiate. Prepare some questions to spark conversation: What type of problems do you enjoy solving? Can you give me a recent example? What are the things you don’t find helpful talking about? What are the things you want me to handle independently?”

* Executor founders have practical skills or knowledge and like to get into the tactics. They usually have worked for several years as an individual contributor (e.g., software engineer, industrial design, product manager, customer service representative, baker, etc.). On their good day, they are masters of their craft. When overdone, they get stuck in the weeds or become perfectionists. 

* People manager founders have a strong EQ. They understand what drives and motivates people. Organizing communities and connecting people come naturally. People energize them. On their good days, they are teachers, connectors, guidance counselors. When overdone, they become micromanagers and dictators.  

* Visionary founders like ideas and thinking. They generally dislike some aspect of the status quo. Doing and people are not the focus. It’s about the future, the idea, the possibilities. On their good days, they are dreamers, evangelists, motivators. When overdone, they become disconnected from realities, any limitations or practical constraints. 

In single founder startups, a founder will jump among these roles throughout the day, even from moment to moment. That’s why many founders describe their day as a whirlwind of activities because it will literally feel different playing each role.

In startups with two or three cofounders, it’s common for roles to be split. “There is a stereotype that there is only one type of founder, who is always the visionary,” says Lilla Cosgrove, Cofounder @ Candid. “Every founder is a dreamer, but for the business to succeed founders also need to flex to support each other. [At Candid], I’m really organized, so I spend more of my time translating vision into this execution. [Therefore Nick, my cofounder and CEO] can spend more time thinking longer term, the 3–5 year vision, external market factors.”

Being aware the number and type of founder you are working with is the starting point to improving your working relationship with your founder.

Become the executor when working with visionary founders

This type of founder is often not aware or concerned with the challenges of execution. They may not know how to tactically execute to achieve their vision. PMs can help by:

* Install some processes (e.g., checklist, document procedure), but give some slack when some of those same processes get broken or bended. Use an 80/20 rule. Pick the processes that you really want to implement and fight hard. Simultaneously, allow process slippage in other areas. You don’t want to be a process czar because that isn’t your sole job.

* Give them dedicated time to dream, but help with organization (e.g., set project timeline, list dependencies, organize meeting discussions into well written takeaways). It’s about creating an organized space, which isn’t the same as going along with every idea. Rachel Mayers, Co-Founder & CEO @ Trigger Finance (acquired by Circle), VP of Growth & Product Marketing @ Circle says “[Visionary founders] often pushes to get s**t done and [the ideas] could be outside the core focus area. You should feel free to push back and not be a yes man or woman.”

* Bring up facts to ground them to reality and seek guidance for tactics from other execution experts. Junior PMs often want to treat visionary founders as expert PMs. That’s a recipe for disaster because a visionary founder is not a tactical execution expert. You’re confusing a Execution Founder with a Visionary Founder. Instead, use them for their vision to help with storytelling and community building. You’re going to have to build the expert network for tactical advice by consulting with others.

Create co-creator situations with executor founders

A “doer” likes to do, so create a way to co-create without being micromanaged. Discuss with the founder how, when, and where they want to get involved and with what project/initiative. This conversation is especially important as product(s) grow in complexity because a “doer” won’t have the time or mental capacity to be involved in everything. Some specific examples of how to co-create:

* Schedule more frequent check-ins throughout the creation process, not just at the end. In these check-ins, actually assign work/tasks that the founder has to utilize his expertise to complete. Don’t just present and take feedback. Instead, tell the founder you’re incorporating her or him into the project team. (e.g., Invite the founder to lead a customer interview and summarize the opportunities. ) Follow up if the work is late (I know, that sounds scary, but do it.).

* Define an acceptable quality of work ahead of time. As experts in their own field, many Executor Founders have high standards for the quality of work (i.e., if I can do XYZ, so can others). However, this expectation is rarely communicated nor defined. Even when it’s defined, perhaps you can’t meet this standard in the same time frame. Having these difficult conversations early is always better than delaying the issue.

* Build in small steps to earn PM autonomy. This is related to the prior bullet. Executor founders can sometimes have trouble giving up final control by delegating decision-making to a PM. They are afraid that the decision made will be harmful (e.g., hurt the company, product, metrics). To fight this, start out working on a project with low risk (i.e., where failure isn’t going to cause any major headaches). The goal here is to simply demonstrate autonomy, ownership, and learning, even if everything goes wrong. It doesn’t necessarily even have to be a project that touches the product (e.g., operations, people onboarding, better calendar organization).

* Set guardrails for decisions that have impacts. As you expand your autonomy, you’ll eventually come across decisions where the wrong choice you make will result in a harmful outcome. That’s unavoidable. This is the stage where rather than escalating that decision up to the founder, help define the guardrails. For example, maybe it’s okay if it’s a 1% decline in XYZ metric if the decision resulted in a bad outcome. By defining what’s the level of harm that’s acceptable, you’re demonstrating ownership and deeper thinking while also expanding your PM autonomy.

Bring conflict resolution techniques to people manager founders

Making everyone happy is impossible. People manager founders will struggle keeping everyone at the company content (any group of people large enough will have disagreements). Thus, they may delay resolving open conflicts or taking actions that minimize creating conflict. However, a great group of people doesn’t necessarily result in a great product. Here are some techniques you can introduce:

* Introduce healthy conflicts resolutions techniques. Examples include defining a time/space to discuss opening, giving everyone the opportunity to take turns listening then talking, and reminding people that everyone is working at the same company. The goal isn’t to resolve the conflict, but introduce ways for people to face conflicts with tools to help with resolution.

* Introduce the concept of unresolvable conflicts by identifying if something’s out of balance. Some problems are meant to be solved with a single solution. These type of problems are inherent in the system and there needs to be a balance rather than be solved. This can be especially challenging for task-oriented and logical PMs. For example, there’s a natural conflict between sales and operations where sales is more focused on new but operations have to support the existing. As a result, that tension between new things vs. improving existing is natural and won’t ever be “resolved.” Instead, the goal should be to identify when things are too far out of balance (e.g., sales gets to dictate everything and operations must do it).

* Instrument automated forcing mechanisms (i.e., policies). Making decisions to resolve conflicts between people is tiring, emotionally and physically. To conserve energy, it’s helpful to institute automated decisions by creating defined policies that apply to everyone. By developing a policy (I know this will feel interpersonal) to handle common situations with an automated rule, it puts everyone in the same standard. But you don’t need to sit down and make up imaginary situations. Instead, the next time an unique request occurs, thinking about how you can generalize the situation and create a rule to handle the situation in the future. Then, document it.

Some “last helpful words”

* If your strengths don’t complement your founder’s default role, it isn’t a good outcome. Perform an honest gut-check. Does your strengths complement your founder’s default role? Sometimes, your skills and interests directly oppose a founder’s. For example, I’ve seen product managers try to push for a competing vision contrary to the founder’s vision. You’re going to lose and lose your job. Very few founders are going to cede control to their default role at early stage startups (<50 people).

* Change your style as the founder grows and changes. All successful companies that grow, changes are inevitable. Those changes will also force your founder to change, where their default role may no longer be the same as before. You can only observe this over the long-run, typically 1 - 2 years. If you identify the change, re-evaluate yourself. Do your skills still complement your founder? Are you also growing and changing to adapt the needs of your founder? 

* Don’t assume your founder is your product mentor. There are many things you’ll learn working at a startup, but junior product managers sometimes mistakenly treat their founder as their product mentor. This is frequently the case if there aren’t any other senior product leaders at the company. But a founder, even if she is your manager, isn’t always also an expert in product management. Even if the person is an expert, the founder may not have the time dedicated to be your product mentor. That’s why I encourage all product managers to develop product mentorship outside of their company via meetups, conferences, twitter. 

Through some understanding of the founder’s role and adjustment of how you work, you’re more likely to succeed in building a good relationship with your founder and help build a great product. 

Special thanks to the following people who gave their generous time:

* Dan Khan, Chief Digital Officer @ Young Enterprise

* Rachel Mayer, VP of Growth & Product Marketing @ Circle, Co-Founder & CEO @ Trigger Finance (acquired by Circle)

* Lilla Cosgrove, Cofounder @ Candid, ex-PM @ Alfred

[A version of this article was originally published on mindtheproduct.com on 12/22/2020. It was updated on 2/8/2021]

Sources

* pm autonomy by Nikhil Jhunjhnuwala

* The Founder’s Dilemma by Noam Wasserman

* Startup Genome Report Extra on Premature Scaling

As a product manager, you’re constantly making decisions. Decision fatigue can become a real problem after a busy day. To combat this, you need to use a standard decision-making process. Let me show you how with simple steps.

What is a decision-making process?

Decision-making process is the steps taken to reach a conclusion. The general stages are: identify the problem, gather information, consider options, and decide.

Why adopt a decision-making process?

A good process improves your chance of consistently, making better decisions.

How to use a decision-making process?

* Categorize your decisions/problems using the “The Eisenhower Method” based on urgency (speed to decision) vs. importance (value of decision).

* Let the fates decide for “Not Urgent and Not Important” tasks. Use a coin toss. This may sound crazy, but remember, these are unimportant and non-urgent decisions. The harm from the wrong choice is very low. By using a randomizer, you reduce decision fatigue. It’s also a bit fun. As someone wired to optimize, the hardest step in adopting this technique is trying it out. So, I recommend trying this on your next small, unimportant decision (e.g., choosing between two equally good headlines, deciding whether to invite someone to a meeting). Rather than delay or over analyze the decision, assign it to a coin flip.

* Allocate a set time for “Urgent and Not Important” tasks. Setting a finite time prevents you from becoming bogged down when there are more important decisions. If you can’t decide by the end of the time, re-evaluate the problem’s urgency and importance. Rarely do issues or decisions stay in this category for long because of the “urgency” factor.

* Use the SPADE decision-making process for “Not Urgent and Important”. This is a model created by Gokul Rajaram, PM @ Google. It’s best for creating, documenting, and communicating decisions collaboratively, but also avoiding decision-by-committee. I’ll cover in detail below with a template.

* Act! Then define a standard process for “Urgent and Important”. Unfortunately, there is no playbook for the truly urgent and important because there’s too much variance. My advice is to stop the “bleeding” to buy yourself time to think and move the task to “Not Urgent and Important”. After the crisis is averted, you should define a standard process for handling future occurrences. This is why people recommend emergency preparedness drills. You want the urgent and important decisions to run on autopilot using pre-defined decision points.

Using SPADE Decision Making Process

* Define the decision you have to make and timeframe for the decision.

* Decision: What is the decision/problem you have to solve? 

* Time: When must the decision be made?

* Identify the people involved.

* Consult: Individuals to solicit input on options. You should consider both individuals in positions of authority (e.g., leads, managers, head of XYZ) and people that will have to implement any decision. These individuals will also help evaluate options (positive, negatives). It’s important to make people feel heard when talking to consults.

* Decider: This is the person who is responsible for making the decision. Usually, it’s one person and the person running the decision-making process. However, it can also be more than one individual only if there's an agreed upon process for how to settle disagreements between deciders. You don’t want to have this be unsettled. Finally, the decider is responsible for explaining and communicating the decision.

* Overseer: This is a single person who is the Decider’s “check-&-balance”. The Overseer has the a special power: the void. The Overseer can void a decision if he or she believes the decision-making process was poor (e.g., didn’t consult enough individuals, didn’t consider an option). . This void doesn’t allow the Overseer to become the Decider and pick a different option. That’s why it’s the Overseer’s responsibility to help the Decider identify consults and review the “why” to the Decider’s decision.

* Explore options.

* Talk to your consults. Solicit options and “pro/con” for each option. You can do this during 1:1 meetings or as a group.

* Document the options. Write it all down. It’ll help with thinking but also broader communication.

* Decide. As odd as it is to write this, you have to decide. Often, I’ve seen some people procrastinate over a decision or get too busy doing something else. Even if your decision is to delay the decision, decide that and explain why. Explain how much more time you need or what additional information you will seek to make the decision.

* Explain to everyone and get “disagree and commit”.

* Explain how you arrived at your decision. You have to have convection so explain what you believe.

* Acknowledge everyone’s help, especially the consults who helped you identify alternative options. Then, ask for everyone’s commitment to the decision because the discussion and evaluation phase is over. It’s important to get everyone, even the folks who still disagree by committing to work together to execute the decision. Ask people to verbally acknowledge commitment by going around. It will feel awkward if you or other people have never said “I disagree with your decision, but commit to supporting you.” That’s okay.

* Review and send our your SPADE template. You need to communicate the decision to people across the company. A completed SPADE template should be clear enough that someone else can read it and understand with you speaking. So, use it to communicate your decision.

SPADE decision-making template | SPADE decision-making example

Principles to good decision-making

* Be in touch with your emotions. We like to think we’re logical, but psychology demonstrates we’re lazy mentally and our emotional mind drives a lot of our actions. Thus, consider your emotional state when making a decision. Are you angry, sad, distraught, etc.? Your emotions will influence how you are interpreting information and your decisions. So, consider your emotional state and if it’s the right time to make a decision.

* Don’t overwhelm yourself with a ton of decisions. I argue that the average person has about 2 - 4 hours of good energy when optimal for making decisions. After a busy day, making those same decisions at 8 pm at night isn’t ideal. Like “being in touch with your emotions”, be aware of how many decisions you’ve had to make in one day.

* If you have to make a decision when emotional or tired, eat something sweet. Research shows glucose is used when we have to think and make decisions. So, if you are tired but you have to still make decisions (i.e., do work), don’t just drink coffee. Eat something light and sweet. The energy will help give you a short boost in your decision-making abilities. Eating will also be a short break before you get back to work.

* Develop a good habit to avoid using the decision-making process. Good habits do two things. It reduces the need for you to think, saving your mental energy for when it’s needed. It also ensures good reproducible and positive outcomes. This is why airlines use checklists or businesses have standard operating procedures. When you don’t have to think and the outcome is guaranteed to be good, that’s a good thing.

Source:

* Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?

* Time management Wiki

* Square Defangs Difficult Decisions with this System — Here’s How

* Disagree and commit Wiki