5 PM questions that are good for life!
Here are 5 questions product managers habitually ask that could double-up & as survival skills & are good to carry over for life…
Given the interfaces product managers have with XfN teams, users, the leadership & the EXECs over their regular day’s workflow the job could so easily take the shape of gauging & being able to ace each of those expectations. And given those expectations it may not be altogether wrong for some young PMs to read (/misread) that as a psychic / clairvoyant the way one ought to be able to read between the lines, understand their inherent motivations (so as to place where one is coming from) & to factor that into directing teams towards those outcomes.
Owing to that need, PMs ought to navigate their workflow by employing a brand of assertiveness rather than blindly say “aye, aye! copy that sir” & carry on doing exactly as told / demanded. To be able to conduct themselves effectively, PMs often resort to a brand of questioning so as to understand (/ establish) all of these:
Mission
Vision
Market trends
User requests
Goals
Strategy
Initiatives (as pertaining to the EPICs over a Roadmap)
Features (& how they’d add value to the user groups)
And not just that. It is also very possible that PMs find many GAPs in their understanding over each of those stages right from Point 3 onwards over that above-mentioned list, which would quite naturally run into a few odd rounds of follow-up questions until such time that they nail the problem unambiguously.
Usually Engineering teams happen to take a brand of questioning as well so as to help establish the requirements clearly. When that does carry a substantial significance as well, that pertains to the tactical side of things, the build phase of the product. And it could be true of some places that a PM could be asked to get into the nitty gritty of the build, getting their hands dirty with the technical side of things (usually a TPM – Technical Product Manager in a much bigger org. that adheres to a pretty well-defined hierarchical structure). When a PM may start off their career dabbling with the tactical side of things they usually get more engrossed & take total control of the strategic side as they grow over their roles & gain a level of seniority.
When most of these questions PMs ask fit into the Strategic / Tactical brackets, some of them could carry mammoth significance & could be good to carry over for life as they could transform into survival skills for most people & be more prepared for the situations life throws at them.
Let’s take a look at 5 of those questions here:
1. The Objective
What’s the first thing one does even before getting into their car? They obviously have a plan as to where they want to go & why. The “where” is the “goal” & the “why” defines the purpose.
“It all starts & ought to start with a goal, always…”
For ex: As a PM we have EPICs on the roadmap spelling out what needs to be done. It is very possible that we are met with a few obstacles / nasty surprises along the way, but that clarity over the goal & the purpose ought to help adhere to a given path, stay totally focused & generate enough inspiration to overhaul any hurdles encountered along the way.
Every org. that ever existed / exists today had / has a purpose attached to their very being. Right at the top they do have that mission / vision alright, but that also ought to convert to a few specific objectives or strategic initiatives spelling out the paths they ought to take towards getting to those goals.
For PM Workflow:
Supposing the leadership calls for a meeting & drops a few feature requests onto you owing to how the sales teams have been facing chin music over the adoption of the product in the market. As a PM it becomes imperative for you to peek through that clout of requests & get down to question the objective of it all.
Given our vision, would building this augur well in terms of alignment?
Accepting & setting aside the plight of our sales teams right now, what other motivation(s) could we tie this feature build to?
What percentage of our lost / CHURNed users would come back? And what percentage of our existing users would upgrade their subscriptions post these feature releases?
For Life:
And just consider a scenario totally away from work where someone demands some (x) out of you, you could use the same method to glean all the info required. Let’s say you are helping out your kid with some homework & a reference video has been shared with you so as to set an expectation, one obvious question that you could pop is:
What’s the objective here?
Do I blatantly copy what’s shown here in the video or do I get the kid exposed to various dimensions / concepts pertain to the intricacies of the craft / science?
2. The Expectation
Ever been in a situation where you put in your heart & soul into some task, only to realize that it hasn’t been received the way you perceived it to? That could happen because of the gap in reading the expectations one may carry towards a given outcome.
“There are a number of ways to be happy, either lower your expectations or improve your reality”
For ex: A sales rep could go about their own merry way pitching a low-cost makeshift housing product to builders who are perceived to be prospective channels to help target & reach a niche segment of the market but may not really fit in with the overall cause of the org.
When one is talking of an org. one shouldn’t forget one may still be dealing with people. And people at the end of the day could be ruled by a hundred-odd emotions that may lead to a thousand-odd expectations.
For PM Workflow:
As & when the immediate managers hand down a few responsibilities, please remember this. One of the worst things one could do is to jump right towards the execution sans asking any follow-up questions towards clearly establishing the expectations. And what one would be left with is just a ton of embarrassment & resentment. All of that could be avoided by these questions:
Any initiatives / specific paths already earmarked towards reaching this goal?
Given our goal I believe that (x) may be the place to start. Your thoughts on this?
Any specific reservations over optimizing for (x1 & x2) & thereof as we go along?
For Life:
People in the adolescent age are prone to get easily influenced by hear-say or random career paths that they may be shown. When that decision could largely be stemming from an infatuation / fixation of some sort, they may lose the clarity over the alignment & go terribly wrong in judgement, when the time wasted there at that stage could prove be super-costly carrying irreversible damages. Yes, one ought to be given the freedom to choose their path but that shouldn’t happen without letting them hit a level of realization & straightening out those expectations by simply asking them:
Hmm… great choice! But just for my knowledge, could you please fill me in over why you think that is THE career option for you?
Also, what do you think are your future prospects? Where do think you’d be 5 years after you take this up?
3. The Constraint
If the world was as free as we perceive it to be, everything would be so simple. But alas, there are constraints that force us to bend, mold & adapt all the time. Our work is obviously governed by so many constraints & an eclectic variety of them too over every major / minor thing we set out on. The application of even a minor constraint could change the whole game, flipping it all on its head which is why it becomes important to get a hang of the turf one ought to be operating on.
“Constraints could prove to be severely harmful, but only if you happen to ignore them”
For ex: A product manager who’s tasked with improving revenues for a product thinks of a major overhaul by focusing & targeting newer market segments which obviously comes at a fairly significant cost, but is forced to rethink it all given how the leadership announces severe budget cuts leaving them with nothing to spend for now.
Constraints could make or break really top-notch initiatives. And over cases where it doesn’t prove to be enough to break, they would prove to be just enough to qualify as dampeners forcing one to reprioritize / park great ideas strangling their growth.
For PM Workflow:
Post establishing an understanding of the objective & the expectations it is imperative that one demands & gains a thorough knowledge of all the constraints so as to align entirely with what’s required & steer clear of any nasty surprises at a later point in time. These questions could help one get there:
Do I have to factor in any specific rules / target any of these (x, y, z) edge cases?
Any budgetary constraints I ought to be aware of here?
Any limitations over the targeted markets / users that I have to bear in mind?
For Life:
Over a competitive exam (like say the CCATs) where one’s is already under severe pressure not because of the nature of questions but because of the time limit that appears totally surreal, it is a common mistake many commit to dive right into the visual & look at the options so as to reach an answer quick. Sequence of questions could really trick one into committing unforced errors. Amongst a sequence of similar set / type of questions if one happens to change it to: “how many dissimilar items here?” instead of “how many similar items?” that’d eat into your final score so bad, not to mention the adversity of it all if it carried negative marking.
Always make sure you read the instructions carefully & recheck it once again if needed before proceeding with it
4. The Timeline
Is there a point in achieving something way beyond its prime? Obviously not, isn’t it? The significance of a workable & relevant solution to a problem always tends to be greater when the time is right. Timing in fact is everything when it comes to problems & those solutions.
“Winning is a close correlative to doing the right things at the right time”
For ex: An org. sets out to identify a problem as pertinent to a market. They go over their research regressively validating & establishing an enumerative list of those pain points as relative to the users. But then, when they get down to the actual build phase, for some unfathomable reason their pace drops off & they almost hit dead rubber. Nothing seems to move & they don’t seem to make any progress at all over weeks, delaying the first release to the market significantly. The users get more frustrated & effortlessly lose sight of the org. & doesn’t take any notice of the solution / the product either post release.
The reasons why a team like project management / PMO was established was the size of teams & the endless list of deliverables that ought to be tracked on an ongoing basis. There was a need to plant someone who could talk the language of deliverables / timelines & motivate teams relentlessly / continuously towards achieving them all.
For PM Workflow:
Once there’s enough clarity on the objective / requirements & its scope the focus ought to shift temporarily towards establishing the timelines whose clarity ought to also dictate a reshuffle of some sort over those priorities (if needed). Ultimately one ought to be able to convert those cycles of work into great value at the receiver’s end, which also stands as a measure of the health of the product & the org. That could largely be down to one simple question:
I think targeting a minor initiative (x1) right now & jumping over to (x2) & (x3) to cover a major step (x) in our strategy by the month-end should work well. Your thoughts?
For Life:
Asking for deadlines / establishing timelines are pretty mandatory & could have a universal application across all walks of life, which is done with a common question like:
Ideally, by when would you want this done?
5. Feedback - How did this work out for you?
I’ve witnessed how most look to tap into the markets asking for feedback as a follow-up to something of an initiative / a feature release that they were sorted over & absolutely sure of its working well. When that could again be driven largely by optics, it ceases to serve the purpose defeating the whole exercise of asking for feedback. Also, given how some orgs. have been functioning in the recent past feedback is NOT synonymous to improvement. Its just a first step, a foot in the door so to speak. What one chooses to do with the feedback, how it is employed is what makes a real difference.
“The best feedback is what you don’t wish to hear that often”
For ex: An org. that provides full-fledged servicing for cars begins to realize how the number of vehicles turned in across cohorts seem to be losing steam, showing a steady drop MoM, QoQ. They understand how important it is to clean up their act & decide to tap into & analyze the voice of “their market”. They start floating questionnaires asking people to rate their most recent service experience & realize how it points to multiple problems across their workflow. But is there a point in reaching that realization when the damage is done?
For PM Workflow:
When PM who don’t know the importance of feedback could be a rarity given today’s timeline, pinning on the right parameters / sections, popping the right questions & tapping into the right channels establishing rich relevance could be a rarity, at least for the young lot, which could easily be combated by asking:
Based on your recent usage, are you altogether happy with the time it has taken you to reach that all-important (x) outcome?
What’s it that you don’t seem to like too much about your last session? [Use options as relevant with “OTHER” so as to enable users to also suitably fill an option they don’t find in the choices]
For Life:
Whether it is something important that you did for someone or some task that you were called in to contribute towards asking for feedback as a default option & making a habit out of it could be one of the healthiest options. Not only that. Supposing someone isn’t really open to feedback & they overhear the others asking for it, they would surely be more than tempted to adopt the habit into their lives. Just asking these simple questions ought to work well in real life:
What according to you could have led to improving the outcome we reached here?
What did you like about (x) & what is it that you didn’t?