ISSUE #25 - JUNE 20, 2024
What to do when you don’t know what to do next
As product managers, we are the people who our teams turn to in order to guide them on what to work on. But what happens when you have no clue (or low confidence) about what to do next?
As product managers, we are the people who our teams turn to in order to guide them on what to work on next. We are expected to have a convincing plan, a compelling strategy and vision for our product or our domain. But what happens when you have no clue (or low confidence) about what to do next?
Wether you’re at an early stage startup or a more mature company, uncertainty is a constant. You might be in a pre-PMF environment where uncertainty is second nature, or you could be launching a new domain or product in a mature company and face the same challenge.
When this happened to me (and it has happened a few times) I turned to the main mantra of product management:
"Turn to your users to find the answer.”
I started researching the market, interviewing users, and consulting with seasoned industry professionals. Sometimes it worked, but other times it didn’t provide a clear direction.
The last time I faced this challenge was recently, when I was asked to launch a new domain at my current company. Despite having a high-level idea of what we wanted to do, we were uncertain about the approach and strategy. We were definitely not sure if the whole initiative would bring in the results we were hoping for.
At first, I started researching and researching - market, data, users. While I occasionally felt I was onto something, I still lacked confidence in where to begin, let alone a more long term strategy. I realised that deeper I dug, the more lost I felt. So, I decided to take another approach.
I stopped researching, accepted uncertainty and put together a document outlining the opportunities I wanted to pursue. I set my objectives and key results to evaluate success. You might wonder “but if you were so uncertain, how did you manage to create something that made sense?” The answer is simple. I didn’t. I just knew that I had to start somewhere and hoped that action would bring knowledge.
It did, but the road was not paved with roses. A few weeks after we started actually working on the opportunities laid down, we struggled to see how they would fit into the bigger picture and the objectives we had in place. At that point, it was apparent that we had to significantly change our approach and discard our OKRs. The cost was about 3 weeks of work, which, however, were not completely in vain. We still managed to release features that provided some value to our users, even if we didn’t get to fully reap the fruits of our efforts.
On the bright side, we learned that our initial approach was wrong and understood why, which is a valuable insight. Then, we were in a position where we could decide on a new approach and this time we didn’t set any clear OKRs. We had a small hint on what would probably be the right metrics to track (and we did monitor them), however we didn’t want to waste our time once again, trying to figure out the right objectives, and keep overthinking about it. We just wanted to test out our new approach based on the learnings that we had from our previous failure and validate if it’s right.
Fortunately, we hit the jackpot this time. From the first few days, we felt confident that our new approach - informed by the learnings of our previous attempt - made sense. We still focused on learning quickly and we still didn’t bother setting up any fancy KPIs and targets just yet.
The key takeaway is:
"When you don’t know what to do next, just start doing."
It doesn’t really matter if your initial thoughts about the problem are right or wrong on. Put your best effort into creating a plan with some reasoning, even if it’s based only on beliefs and convictions. By trying things out and being open to learn, taking action will show you where you are wrong and then you can adjust if necessary by utilising the knowledge gained from your previous failure. In our case, we were lucky to find what appears to be the right approach in the second try. However, in the past it took me way more effort to get things right. All you need is the appetite to learn and having the openness to being wrong. It might cost you a few weeks, but it’s way cheaper to fail by doing, than getting burned out into never-ending research.
Past Newsletters
ISSUE #24 - MAY 24, 2024
When good docs go bad: Learning from a PM's misstep
A product manager's tale that demonstrates that crafting a good doc is as important as knowing the audience you're sharing it with.
ISSUE #23 - MARCH 29, 2024
Thoughts on product experiments to drive better and more insightful outcomes
In this post, I'm sharing my thoughts on how to improve the success rate of our experiments and learn more about our users..
ISSUE #22 - FEBRUARY 20, 2024
Will product managers ever stop spending their time managing delivery?
The time and energy spent on managing delivery is one of the most common sources of frustration for product managers. In this issue, I'm sharing a few..
The Product Notebook by Manos Kyr.
Once every month, I’m sharing my thoughts on product, growth & entrepreneurship.
Latest Newsletters
ISSUE #25
What to do when you don't know what to do next
ISSUE #24
When good docs go bad: Learning from a PM's misstep
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