The three levels of product work

1. The Execution level
2. The Impact level
3. The Optics level

Important especially for product leaders to be intentional about the level at which they & others need to operate in a given context.

Team Dynamics

Team diagnosis framework

1. Are we defining the product right?
2. Are we defining right, but not building it fast?
3. Are we defining right, building fast, but not at desired quality?
4. Are we defining right, building fast, at desired quality, but not with expected business impact?

Workshop for defining roles & responsibilities (more at this article)

• When to do this: if forming a new team, or if a team has lost its way in understanding who owns/does what - causing inefficiencies, conflicts and frustrations.
• Define the why, what, how
  • Why - to clarify the team's expectations of one another so that you work well together
  • What - working together to understand the team's roles and responsibilities
  • How - one hour workshop with the following agenda
• Agenda

  • Identify the roles on the team (5 mins)

    • Draw a grid up on a whiteboard with enough space to list out the different roles on the team. Leave a space spare for ‘unassigned responsibilities'

    • Illustrative example

      

  • Each team member then clarifies their responsibilities (10 min)

    • Each team member writes down the top 3–5 things that they believe they are responsible for in their own role on Post-It notes and then rank them in order of priority. Put these to one side once they’re done.

  • Think about team mate’s responsibilities (10 min)

    • Ask each team member to write down what they believe the 1–2 main priorities of each of the other roles on the team are.
    • Responsibilities that don’t have a clear owner may also come up during this exercise — ask the team to note those down also for discussion later on.

  • Discuss each role (30 min)

    • Pick one person to start — your Product Manager, for example. Ask them to read out what they wrote down as their top 3–5 priorities and place them in the relevant square on the grid.
    • Next ask each member of the team to read out what they wrote down as the top 1–2 priorities for the Product Manager on the team.
    • At this point the Product Manager can accept or politely decline the responsibilities that other team members have written down for their role.
    • If they decline then the team needs to figure out which role that responsibility should be assigned to, or if it currently doesn’t have an owner then move it to the “Unassigned” column.
    • Repeat for each role, discuss unassigned as you go along

  • Identify next steps (5 min)

    • At the end, team will be aligned on key responsibilities - who owns them and which ones need owners.
    • Next step would be resolving who owns unassigned responsibilities and following up with the relevant parties who can help to resolve things.
    • Someone to write up findings and share with team

PM delegation framework

Task Effectiveness framework

Not all tasks are created equal. 3 types of PM tasks -

1. Leverage (10x effort): Do a great job, be a perfectionist.