- "Cracking the PM Interview: How to Land a Product Manager Job in Technology" by Gayle Laakmann McDowell
- "The Product Manager Interview: 164 Actual Questions and Answers" by Lewis C. Lin
- "Decode and Conquer: Answers to Product Management Interviews" by Lewis C. Lin
- "The Lean Product Playbook: How to Innovate with Minimum Viable Products and Rapid Customer Feedback" by Dan Olsen
- "Swipe to Unlock: The Primer on Technology and Business Strategy" by Parth Detroja
- "In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives" by Steven Levy
- Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman
- Rise above the noise
- Interview math
- Thinkertoys
- Web UI design patterns
- Mobile UI design patterns
- Go to Lewis C. Lin’s website: 90 Product Manager Interview Questions
- Jackie Bavaro’s Quora page: ‘The Art of Product Management’
- Go to Stellar Peers: a community platform that helps you prepare for interviews. They have sample questions and answers on their site.
- Go to thepminterview.com to practice some of the above questions and answers with a timer.
- Interview Preparation
- Lewis Lin Courses
- Cracking the PM interview (video)
- How to ace the software engineering interview (video)
- Quora
- Glassdoor
- “My Personal Formula for a Winning Resume” by Laszlo Bock
- The Muse has some “standout” examples that I would not use but you can start to see what grabs attention.
- Be ready to talk about your favorite physical/digital product for yourself or for other people and do a proper “product tear-down”. Use the ‘CIRCLES’ method from Lewis Lin, by far the most useful mental model.
- Know the “SAR” (or STAR or SPAR or similar) structure and the “pyramid principle” for organising your thoughts and answers. S, T, P, A, R refer to situation, task (or problem), action, result. Basically: some context, what was the problem, what did you do about it, and what happened? The pyramid principle developed by Barbara Minto, a consultant, refers to grouping your answers into themes that are easier to digest.
- It also helps to know a few frameworks — 3C, 4P, Porter’s 5 forces, Market Entry, etc at the back of your mind.
PM interview:
- Design
- Strategy
- Estimation
- Behavioral
- Technical
The best way to get better at Product Manager interviews is by actually doing them. You can practice by yourself out loud or even better with someone else. Here are some sample interview questions to get you started:
- How would you increase YouTube’s daily active users ?
- What are some ideas for improving mentorship on the LinkedIn platform?
- What is your favorite product and why?
- Start a new product category for Amazon -- what would you choose and why?
- If you want to launch a new social networking product, what are the primary considerations?
- Learn hard facts: I know I said you don’t need to know the answers to the questions, but let me rephrase that. While you don’t need to memorize the answers, it’s crucial to know certain ubiquitous numbers. Let’s say you’re interviewing for Google. What is the market share of Google Search? How much of the pie does Google Cloud Platform have? What was Google’s revenue and profit in 2017? Knowing these numbers, and more, helps more than you’d think. To make your life easier, here is a short (and shabby) fact sheet I created while preparing.
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Data Structures and Algorithms: GeeksforGeeks was my best friend here. I went through all the sorting algorithms and basic data structures used. Also brush up your CS fundamentals: OOPS concepts, Networking frameworks, how internet works, how WiFi works, what are the different protocols used and so on. Remember, you have to be so well-versed such that you can explain all this even to a 5 year old. To make lives easier, here’s the word doc I used while preparing, use this and keep adding more.
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System Design: Ooh, we've hit bulls eye. Most people either don’t prepare or don’t prepare enough for this. Avoid that mistake, and use this GitHub repo as your Bible or Quran or Bhagavad Gita. Donne has done a brilliant job of breaking down everything needed. But no need to delve too deep; just practice the ten example questions given first.
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Pseudocoding: Leetcode and a brilliant engineer friend of mine were my strongest pillars. I did not spend a lot of time here, as I knew they wouldn’t ask anything too crazy. If you’re well versed with coding, this should not be a hard section. Just make sure to enunciate, brute force first, optimize next and check for edge cases. This YouTube channel by Kevin Naughton is super, super useful.
The best way to get better at Product Manager interviews is by actually doing them. You can practice by yourself out loud or even better with someone else. Here are some sample interview questions to get you started:
- You are part of the Google Search web spam team. How would you detect duplicate websites?
- What are some of the technical challenges with building a system to help restaurants receive orders electronically?
- Facebook recently identified that mobile app users in 3rd world countries with significantly lower bandwidth have a poor user experience. How would you reduce bandwidth consumption across Facebook’s mobile app?
- If you were the Product Manager for Gmail, how would you reduce the storage size on Gmail servers?
- How do you monitor performance and measure success of a recently launched product/service ?
- How do you gain credibility from the development / engineering teams as a new product manager?
- What is the importance of engineering and technical teams as stakeholders ? How do you integrate them into the overall product vision?
- There are multiple sites that give you example behavioral questions, but at the least, cover the basics: Why you? Why this company? Why this role? What’s your expectation? What’s your biggest success? What’s your biggest failure? and How do you cope with a bad manager?
Consider the following best practices:
- Clearly define the problem and the objectives
- Make sure you understand the problem upfront. Candidates will sometimes latch on to a small part of the prompt that they heard and spend a lot of time going down an obscure path.
- You should restate the problem and your assumptions about that problem in your own words and confirm it with the interviewer.
- State any key assumptions you are making and ask follow up questions to clarify.
- Start with user needs
- No matter the type of problem, keep the needs of your users first.
- Communicate your approach and provide some structure
- Think and communicate how you are going to structure the problem before diving into it. The primary goal of case questions is to evaluate your problem solving process and abilities, not to evaluate whether you got to the correct answer. In many cases, there is no single correct answer.
- Creating some structure around the problem is not only a good way to demonstrate that this is how you approach problems, but it is also a helpful interview tool. If you start by outlining your approach, you are less likely to forget to cover a certain aspect.
- Have a clear methodology
- There are many prioritization models out there (e.g. the RICE model). Find one or two that resonate with you and be prepared to use them, since prioritization questions are quite common in Product Manager interviews.
- At each part of the problem, start broad and then narrow in
- At each part of the process that you’ve structured, start by brainstorming several different options, and then use some stated criteria to prioritize and narrow in.
- You want to make sure you consider a wide range of options and show that you can think creatively, but also that you know when to focus on the most promising option. Both are critical parts of the product management process.
- State your approach at the outset
- Structure is critical - provide some outline upfront for how you plan to attack the problem.
- Gain familiarity of common technical solutions
- It’s valuable to have a basic architectural understanding of some well known products -- for example Google Search and Facebook Newsfeed.
- Understand the differences between mobile and desktop applications
- In preparation for your interview, review the key differences and considerations when building an application for mobile vs desktop. This is particularly important if the company you are interviewing with has a mobile product.
- Study the technology of the company you are interviewing with.
- Prior to the interview, gain a basic familiarity with the company’s key technology. This preparation will not only help you answer questions you are asked, but can also inspire questions for you to ask the interviewer.
There are many factors that can go into prioritization. Some common ones includes:
- Engineering Effort
- Revenue Impact
- Customer Satisfaction
- Competitive Advantage
- Mission Alignment
- Stock options: If you’re in the US, working for a startup, you need to know about how companies are funded and how stock options work. That’s tricky territory not easy to explain in a summary other than to say “get clued up about finance because it’s your money and future we’re talking about.” Regardless of gender, ignorance is not cool. If you’re curious about the employer perspective on stock options for employees, I recommend Fred Wilson’s MBA Mondays posts from back in 2010, particularly the ones on “How Much?”, Vesting, Restricted Stock and RSUs and Options.
- For all other negotiations (money, time, flexibility): I found that Josh Doody had some helpful advice for how to think about negotiations. His newsletters are informative but you can read his book too.
- For women in particular, Anna Marie Clifton wrote a long post about how she negotiated for an additional $15,000 at Yammer. Silence can be a great ally in negotiations, and it’s useful to learn how to wield it.
- Оптимизация ставок: зависимость между ценой клика и установленной ставкой
- Теоретико-информационный подход к анализу воронки продаж в контекстной рекламе
- This blog post that describes the job hunting process of landing an SF-based Product Manager role
- This article written by a Product Manager that had experience interviewing with some of the biggest tech companies in Silicon Valley, including Salesforce, Google, Dropbox, and Facebook
- A HackerNoon post on how to prepare for a Product Manager interview
- This blog post highlights a recommended four-step approach
- Watch another product strategy mock interview with a LinkedIn PM, including a follow up discussion of best practices
- This productboard article that discusses various product prioritization frameworks used in industry
- This article lays out a three-pronged approach to prioritize product features and improvements
- View this article that highlights a recommended three-step approach for questions that involve client-server relationships and back-end structure of algorithms
- Watch another technical mock interview with a Google PM, including a follow up discussion of best practices
Conversion Funnel Analysis:
- Everything You Need to Know About Funnels
- Introduction To Website Funnel Analysis Checklist
- Secrets of the E-Commerce Conversion Funnel: Effective Ways To Boost Conversions and Drive Sales
- Conversion Rate Optimization
- How to Create a Website Conversion Funnel
- Talk to other Product Managers: It's valuable to hear a first hand perspective -- what they enjoy, the biggest challenges, etc.
- Ask yourself why: It's important to do some introspection on your motivations for being a Product Manager and why you believe the role is the right one for you.
- Mentorship is key: When evaluating job opportunities, take into consideration the expected level of mentorship and guidance you can receive from an experienced Product Manager at the company.
- Passionate: Does the candidate truly care about the users and the problems they are trying to solve? Candidates who are excited and energized about solving hard problems are going to be more successful.
- Problem Solver: A skilled problem solver is comfortable taking a large problem and breaking it down into smaller ones.
- Strong Communicator: A Product Manager has many audiences -- it's critical to know how and what to communicate depending on who you are talking to.
- Self-Starter: A successful Product Manager takes initiative -- one who not only identifies problems but takes the next step of trying to solve it. A Product Manager's role is filled with ambiguity, and it's important for individuals to have the mindset to just figure things out.
- Behavior Questions: These are extremely common and intended to assess your skills as a Product Manager based on your prior experiences and background. Know your resume really well so you can speak to any part of it. It's also a good idea to be prepared with a few projects or products you worked on that you are most comfortable talking about.
- Case Study Questions: These can take different forms but are usually Strategy, Design, or Technical or some combination of the three. Practicing example case questions will prepare you to be more comfortable and confident answering these types of open-ended questions. Check out Lessons 2 and 3 from this course to review case study interviews in more detail.
- Use the STAR: When answering a behavioral question, such as describing a problem you solved, consider the STAR Method to structure your answer:
- Situation : Provide context for the problem
- Task : Explain what needed to be done
- Action: Describe specifically what you did
- Results: Explain the ultimate outcome
- Remember to demonstrate learnings: Often, more important than the ultimate outcome is what you learned along the way that helped you grow as a Product Manager. Make sure to highlight this when discussing your experiences.
- Always break down the problem: Candidates who provide some clarity and structure to open-ended questions will stand out.
- Above and beyond: It's not always practical or appropriate, but to really stand out, consider creating a product related proposal or project that is beneficial to the company and provide this as part of the interview process.
Growth Product Manager is a relatively new role within the Product Management domain. Some aspects of a Growth Product Manager role that are unique and exciting:
- Tinkering is key: Growth Product Managers are constantly trying new experiments, testing new ideas, and doing many of these at once.
- New experiments more than new features: Growth Product Managers focus on how to get more customers to use existing features. A major challenge is identifying and experimenting new ways for customer adoption.
- Quantity, not just quality: Sometimes in Product Management, the focus will be on building a small set of very high quality features to address customer needs. As a Growth Product Manager, quantity is critical -- you need to test a lot of ideas at once.
Examples of her day-to-day role as the VP of Product, including:
- Morning review of emails to identify which need urgent attention
- Looking at product metrics to see the direction her products are headed
- Structuring her day to spend time on day-to-day tactical work as well as long term strategic thinking
- Balancing the various requests that come to her (e.g. production bugs, sales team requests, customers feature requests, etc)
Feedback is the process of helping others gain self-awareness about the impact of their actions.
The focus of feedback should be to help others to thrive. Good feedback speeds up learning and builds collaborative and engaged teams.
A way to think about feedback that avoids this is as 'reinforcing' or 'redirecting'. In this framing, all feedback is positive.
Reinforcing feedback is when your feedback encourages someone to continue a certain behavior.
Alternatively, redirecting feedback encourages someone to adopt a new behavior in favour of an old one.
In both cases, the focus is to help a person to thrive. Criticism on its own is not feedback.
Whether your feedback is reinforcing or redirecting, your focus should be on helping a person to improve. To do that it is important to ask yourself:
- What is my intention in giving this feedback?
- What impact do I want my feedback to have?
- Is my feedback constructive?
- Is my feedback actionable?
Take the 'blur' out of your feedback.
- Micro-yes: get buy-in and prepare the individual for the conversation. For example, "Can I share feedback with you about X?"
- Data: provide a specific data point. For example, "I noticed yesterday that you did X."
- Impact: explain the impact on you or others. For example, "I mention it because as a result, Y happened."
Giving feedback without thinking it through can result in a confusing mess.
You can give structure to your feedback by using the LifeLabs Learning ‘BIQ method’. BIQ stands for Behavior, Impact and Question. The BIQ method is super useful for both performance reviews and informal feedback conversations.
- Behavior: What did you actually see? Don't make assumptions about intent.
- Impact statement: What was the consequence? Why does it matter and who was affected?
- Question: What question do you want to ask to open the dialog?
Focussing on specific behaviors reduces ambiguity, sharing the impact gives understanding, and asking a question opens the dialog for real change to happen.
Rule of thumb: When it comes to feedback, especially redirecting feedback, avoid surprises.
The fix: ask permission first.
Asking permission gives others a say in when they receive feedback. This has several benefits:
- Prepares them to be open to your feedback
- Shows your intention is to help
- Ensures enough time and space for a full conversation
When you ask for permission, be specific about what you'd like to share. For example:
- “Can I share some feedback with you about our meeting earlier today?”
- “Do you have 10 minutes today to debrief on the presentation this morning?”
- “I noticed a few things that might improve your presentation. Would you like me to share them with you?”
To avoid making assumptions, focus on behaviors you can observe. For example:
- “In the team meeting yesterday, you were giving short answers.”
- “I noticed that you didn't finish that task on time.”
This makes it much easier for the person to understand what triggered your feedback. It allows them to explain what they were thinking or feeling so you don't have to guess.
Feedback is important for your team's growth, but too much too fast can be overwhelming. It's a lot to take in and makes it harder to act on it in a constructive way.
Counteract this by prioritizing your feedback. Focus on what will have the most impact on people’s success.
Focusing on 1 or 2 feedback areas at a time will give them space to absorb it and respond constructively.
If you're unsure about what feedback will be most impactful, just ask! For example, before giving feedback on a document, you might ask: "Are you looking for feedback on the strategic direction? Or more on spelling and grammar?"
- Communicating data-driven feedback to reinforce or redirect behavior
- Separating the person from the problem to increase openness
- Asking questions to generate a genuine conversation
- Seeking to understand feedback rather than responding defensively.
| Title | Description |
|---|---|
| Hold kick offs and retros |
➡️ Ritualize feedback by holding kick offs and retros for every project Normalize feedback sharing and accelerate team performance by starting all major projects with a kick off.These sessions where you define project outcomes (including productivity and learning goals). Next, schedule your project retrospective, reviewing what went well and what could have been better. Why? Research on surgical teams shows that taking time to reflect and learn from successes and failures improves performance even more than getting additional practice! Instructions |
| Ask the 10% Question |
➡️ Next time you ask for feedback, say: "What could be 10% better?" To create a feedback culture, pull for feedback on a regular basis. Not only will you expedite your own development, you will send a strong signal-setting message to your team, demonstrating that feedback is expected and rewarded. Make it easy for your direct reports to give you feedback by showing how it will benefit you, and by keeping your ask small Why? We find it easier to give feedback when a request is specific and the risk feels low. Instructions Pull for feedback at least once this week by asking the 10% Question. For example: "I would really love your help. Can you share your feedback on X? What went well? What could have made it 10% better?" Want to get better feedback? Ask a better question. Here’s how. |
| Reflection moments |
➡️ Team reflections at the end of meetings and projects Build time into the end of meetings and projects for all team members to reflect on the process. For a team meeting, when announcements are made or decisions agreed, ask them to spend 5 minutes reflecting on the process of the meeting and how communication went. For larger projects use a tool like GroupMap to take the team through an hour long process. Why? These moments of reflection are a great way to evaluate success, gather feedback to share, and take on learnings. The team can implement changes for future projects and use for individual development. Instructions Great questions to ask and discuss include: |
| Break up triangulation |
➡️ Encourage direct feedback on your team Triangulation happens when someone offers second-hand feedback. This scenario is common among individuals or teams who are not comfortable sharing feedback directly e.g. "A tells B about something that C did, and B delivers the feedback to C." And, if not handled well, triangulation can quickly escalate to distrust, disengagement, and a toxic work culture. Why? When a recipient doesn’t know the feedback source, the message is typically too vague to be helpful. Worse yet, the recipient is often left feeling frustrated and anxious, wondering who said something behind their back and why the message wasn't delivered directly. Instructions Let your team know that you do not support triangulation, and ask everyone to hold one another accountable to giving feedback directly. If someone brings you feedback about someone else: Pro tip: Learn more about not getting tripped up in triangulation. |
| Establish feedback norms |
➡️ Set expectations with your team about how and when to share feedback Share why you think feedback is important. In your next team meeting and in your 1 on 1s, share why you think feedback is important e.g., "when we give one another feedback, we help each other grow. Being direct about what we think is going well and not so well is the most helpful thing we can do for one another”. Invite your team to give you feedback, and ask them to share their feedback preferences. Bonus: ask each direct report what they'd like you to give them feedback on. Why? Feedback expectations vary widely by culture and by individual. Without shared feedback norms, miscommunication and conflict are likely to happen. Instructions At your next team meeting, share your commitment to creating a feedback culture. Ask team members to share their feedback preferences and capture your decisions in a team playbook. For example, answer the questions below together: In your 1 on 1 meetings, ask each direct report about their feedback preferences and what they would like you to give them feedback on. |
| Elephants, Dead Fish and Vomit |
➡️ Categorizing better dialogue in meetings Arrange your conversations in a way that makes everyone feel heard. After receiving survey feedback that employees didn't feel they could be open and honest, the Airbnb executive team categorized their dialogue in meetings under three areas: 'elephants', 'dead fish' and 'vomit'. Why? Improve meeting effectiveness with clearly-defined opportunities to contribute on what often goes unsaid in organizations out in the open. Instructions |
| Timing is everything |
➡️ Providing feedback in the moment or as close to it. Timely feedback increases the chances of people being more aware of their performance and being able to make changes. Whether the feedback is positive or constructive, provide the information as closely tied to the event as possible. Within 24 hours is ideal. Why? Normalizing feedback as part of everyday conversation on what people are doing well or areas for improvement vs. waiting for a formal review helps it be better received. Instructions |
| Feedback loops |
➡️ Team speed is a function of the frequency and quality of its feedback loops. Don’t use smart goals, OKRs, or similar mechanisms as the only way to create focus. Instead, inspire the team with questions that frame its goals as challenges to be solved, and then solve those challenges through constant experimentation. That is the only way to make decisions both quickly and effectively. Why? Imagine you’re driving a car down a windy road. Now imagine that you’re only allowed to touch the steering wheel once every ten minutes. How fast would you drive the car? Most people would say, “really slowly!” In this sense, your team is just like a car: in order to move fast, you need frequent, high-quality feedback loops. Instructions Take the following steps to implement fast feedback loops: |
- Four-part formula from TED Conferences
- In Praise of Praising Your Employees
- Understanding When to Give Feedback by Harvard Business Review Editors
- Research: Vague Feedback Is Holding Women Back, Harvard Business Review
Strategic thinking is a process that enables you to work with your team on plans to achieve your goals.
Develop these skills to make better decisions in the face of uncertainty.
Some common scaling questions to get you started:
- Completion: How complete is the project I’m working on, 1-10 scale? What would move it one point?
- Efficiency: How streamlined is xyz currently? Where would I (realistically) like it to be by now? What would move it one point?
- Satisfaction: How happy am I with how things are going?
- Impact: How successful is xyz?
- Skill level: How skilled am I at xyz?
These are just a few sample questions. The key point is to train the brain to think in terms of numbers.
Why practice scaling questions?
Researchers at LifeLabs Learning studied the difference between good and great managers. They saw one key difference between them: the great managers had a habit of helping their teams think in concrete, measurable ways, even when things don't seem measurable. Adding numbers creates both a reality check and a relative progress bar to track change against.
So, teams with great strategic thinking skills have a habit of asking:
- Where things currently are
- Where one would like those things to be by a certain date
- What actions move the needle between those two points.
The best managers don’t just run meetings, they design experiences.
Meetings are common and difficult. That’s why knowing how to lead them is one of the most powerful ways you can stand out as a manager.
| Title | Description |
|---|---|
| ‘P’ is Purpose | Purpose is why the meeting is happening. For example: “The purpose of this meeting is to [update, explore, decide...]” This first P links up to the goal of the meeting, to make sure it’s a strategic use of time. Without a purpose statement, conversations will pull in different directions. This causes confusion, frustration and inefficiency. Clarifying purpose up front also helps participants focus on the topic at hand. It means they’re less likely to get distracted by thoughts from earlier meetings. |
| ‘P’ is Product | Product is what the group will have at the end of the meeting that didn’t exist at the start. For example: “We will leave here with [five ideas, a decision, a list of next steps...]” We’ve seen how purpose means there’s a broad focus area. Product creates a mental progress bar in everyone’s minds toward the ultimate result of this specific meeting. The more tangible the product, the more likely people will be to hold each other and themselves accountable for staying on topic. |
| ‘P’ is Personal benefit | Personal benefit is the reason meeting participants will feel motivated to contribute. For example: “This will help you/us [save time, feel aligned, make an impact...]” The personal benefit statement should spark motivation to achieve the product. Without an explicit personal benefit, it can be easy for people to ‘check out’ and become passive bystanders. A personal benefit statement also gives you, as the meeting leader, an opportunity to link to why you’re passionate about this topic. Research shows that the meeting leader’s mood at the start of a meeting spreads to the rest of the participants, whether it’s positive or negative. When you’re excited about the meeting topic, your team is more likely to get excited too! |
| ‘P’ is Process | Process means how we will structure the conversation. For example: “We’ll spend the first half on agenda point X, and the second half on point Y.” Process outlines how the group will achieve the product. Ideally, this takes the form of an agenda shared in advance of the meeting and again at the beginning. Research shows that agendas rapidly improve meeting quality. Now let’s look at how an agenda gives the structure your meeting needs. |
The most common meeting types are:
- 🔸 Inform: share information, news, thoughts, and/or feelings or answer questions
- 🔸 Explore: ask questions, generate ideas, spark insights
- 🔸 Narrow: debate, prioritize, vote, decide, work out a plan of action
The agenda is a tool to keep focus throughout the meeting.
- Make your agenda visible throughout the meeting
- Check off each item on the agenda as you complete it to spark more dopamine (the chemical released in the brain that makes you feel good)
- Write time estimates for each agenda item, then record how long each item actually took to build time awareness skills.
As well as the agenda, you can also clarify other process points for the meeting. These are things like ground rules and instructions for how to use any technology used in the meeting.
A round-robin is a process of going around to hear from each person in the group. Round-robins are efficient because you don’t have to wait around and wonder who will speak next. They also help harness the collective wisdom of your team, instead of letting just a few voices run the show.
Research shows that when people take equal turns in a conversation, this leads to better team performance. This is more important for performance than even collective team member IQ! So, when you do round-robins, be sure to give everyone equal speaking time.
And a final tip from the professionals. Use a timer you can hear so people can track their own talking time, or use a video call plug-in that shows participants how long each person has been speaking.
A round-robin is a helpful tool whenever you want to hear from everyone in the group, and it’s especially useful at the start of meetings. When you get people’s voices in the room early on, they’ll be more likely to contribute throughout the meeting.
Here are some examples of common round-robin prompts we’ve seen great managers use in their team huddles. Choose one question you could use for your next round-robin.
- What is one win, frustration, or learning from the past week/yesterday?
- What did you get done yesterday?
- What are you working on today / what are your top priorities?
- What are your roadblocks or obstacles?
For regular meetings to give information, great managers ask team members to take turns leading. That way people don’t get stuck in a position of high power or low power. Common roles to rotate include:
- Facilitating
- Timekeeping
- Note-taking
- Sending minutes
Rotating roles gives everyone an opportunity to be visible and to share in administrative tasks. It teaches people to be better meeting participants by building empathy for all roles. As a bonus, each person brings their own ‘flavor’ to these roles, creating variety in what could otherwise become a monotonous meeting.
A fun ‘law’ of meetings is Parkinson's Law which states that work expands to fill the time allotted to it.
If you’re meeting for an hour, experiment by reducing it to 55 or 50 minutes. If you’re meeting for half an hour, reduce it to 25 minutes. Besides giving people more free time (they will love you), shortening the meeting time creates a little bit of extra stress which focuses the mind.
We've seen how ‘Inform’ meetings are all about a simple exchange of information. The purpose of ‘Explore’ meetings is to generate new insights and ideas together. Over the years, these types of meetings have become more popular. But sadly, research shows that they are usually less productive than coming up with ideas on your own.
So, how can you avoid the common pitfalls of these meetings and harness their power? First, make sure you set aside time for silent, solo ‘ideation’ (when you come up with ideas), as well as ideation in a pair or whole group.
The number one rule for ideation is to defer judgment (which is different from ‘no bad ideas’). Deferring judgment simply means you do not judge the merit of an idea during the brainstorming session.
Studies show that when we defer judgment we come up with more ideas and better ideas. Researchers at LifeLabs Learning observed that great managers reminded people to defer judgement. They did this even if they were generating ideas in silence (sometimes we can get in our own way).
And when exploring ideas out loud, they pointed out when participants were critical or even gave excessive praise. Doing this helps avoid switching on the group’s judgment filters.
Explorer: Oh! Another option we haven’t considered yet is changing our work hours.
Narrower: That would never work. People won’t agree to a different schedule.
Meeting facilitator: Whoops. That sounds like an evaluation of the idea. Can you hang onto that concern until we start narrowing down our options?
Want an easy shortcut to helping people be less judgy? Assign an idea quota.
For example, set a goal of generating 10 ideas in 10 minutes or have teams compete over who will come up with more ideas. Paradoxically, a focus on quantity leads to higher quality. An idea quota also helps push people beyond boring, surface-level solutions. It keeps people digging even after they think their well of ideas has dried up.
The enemy of exploration and ideation is ‘groupthink’: going along to get along. The best managers recognized the power of bringing people with diverse backgrounds and views together. They made their exploration meetings better, faster, by deliberately cross-pollinating people’s perspectives. Just as cross-pollination gives life to brand new varieties of plants, it also gives life to brand new ideas.
To become a great cross-pollinator faster, get in the habit of asking questions to encourage looking wider.
- Whose perspective might we be missing?
- Do we have enough diversity of people and perspectives in the room?
- What other people, departments, companies, industries, or even species have solved a similar problem?
- What can we learn from them?
Many of the great managers LifeLabs Learning studied used some kind of decision-making framework with their teams. They did this both in general and especially during narrowing meetings. One of our favorites is the ‘DACI Model’, which stands for:
- Driver: the person ‘behind the wheel’ of an initiative who is responsible for getting it across the finish line. Just as in a car, there should only be one driver.
- Approver(s): the person or people who make the final decision. Sometimes the Driver and Approver are the same person. If there are many approvers, make the approval process clear. For example: single approver, two approvers and a tie-breaker if needed, consensus (all agree to support the decision), majority vote (51%).
- Consultants: people who give input, suggestions, feedback, or execute components of the work.
- Informed: people who are updated along the way and when the work is done.
Without a clear Approver and Approval Process, debates can go on for some time and the loudest voices typically win out.
The beauty of DACI (and similar models) is that it helps you and your team make implicit (or unexpressed) expectations explicit.
To make an immediate improvement in the quality of your Narrow meetings, declare the DACI and Approval Process from the start.
When everyone is clear on how the decision will be made, it’s time to do the work of moving toward the decision. If you’ve already generated a wide range of ideas, a helpful tool to narrow the list is an Impact or Feasibility Map.
Here’s how it works:
- Write each idea the team generated on a separate physical or digital ‘sticky note’.
- Combine all the ideas.
- Remove any duplicates.
- Plot each idea on the spectrum of ‘impact’ and ‘feasibility’.
Impact is how likely it will be that the idea achieves the desired result. Feasibility is how realistic it will be to act on this idea given existing constraints like time, money, and the team’s skill level.
For example:
In this chart, imagine your team’s goal is to double the number of attendees for the next conference.
- Idea A might be to invite an A-list celebrity. It would probably have a big impact, but it isn’t workable given your budget.
- Idea B might be to rename the conference. It would be easy, but it’s unlikely to have a significant impact.
- Idea C is the sweet spot (high impact and high feasibility), for example letting attendees buy a second ticket for 50% off.
The goal of this exercise isn’t to have complete agreement or even to know for sure how to categorize each idea.
The point is to narrow your list of ideas down to those that are most likely to succeed and to hear people’s reasoning in the process.
While impact and feasibility are the most common criteria, you can also do this exercise with other criteria like:
- speed versus cost
- aesthetics versus functionality
- convenience versus environmental impact
The final tool for improving Narrow meetings keeps any conflicts that come up focussed on the ideas, not the people.
After your long list dwindles down to a small list of workable, high impact ideas, it’s easy for debate to follow. When conflict is constructive it can be a terrific force for ensuring that decisions are thoughtful and strategic. But conflict can also easily turn personal. One of our favorite tools to keep conflict helpful is spelling out the pros, cons, and mitigations for each idea.
From Me vs You, to Us vs the Problem
The brilliance of this framework is that, instead of having people debate one another, you turn the team’s focus toward the ideas. Here’s how it works, one idea at a time:
- Pros: Going round-robin, each person shares what they see as the idea’s pros, strengths, and advantages.
- Cons: Each person shares what they see as the cons, risks, and disadvantages of the idea.
- Mitigations: Each person proposes mitigation suggestions to amplify the pros and reduce the impact of the cons.
For example, if there is little discussion happening, you might say:
“It seems we’re quiet today (behavior observation), which means it’s hard to tell if we’re aligned (impact statement). How about we take five minutes to brainstorm some questions in silence so we can all gather our thoughts, then share (process suggestion)?”
- What would be your observation, impact and process statement if a few people are doing most of the talking?
“I’m noticing we’re not hearing from everyone, so we’re not getting the benefit of different perspectives. Let’s go round-robin (and say “pass” if you prefer not to share).”
- What would be your observation, impact and process statement if people are straying away from the topic?
“Since we only have 10 minutes left and this is our chance to make a decision that impacts all of us, should we go back to the agenda and add the other topic to the parking lot?”
- What would be your observation, impact and process statement if people are shooting down one another ideas?
“It looks like some of us are coming up with ideas and some of us are evaluating them, so we’re not making progress. Let’s defer judgement for this meeting, then we can look at pros and cons of each idea next week.”
| Title | Description |
|---|---|
| Confluence |
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| GroupMap | A real-time online brainstorming tool for meetingsworkshopsconferencesclassroomsevents. GroupMap gives you a simple, yet powerful tool to Design, Discover and Deliver meetings, workshops and training sessions that help people think better together. |
| Title | Description |
|---|---|
| re:Work | re:Work is a collection of practices, research, and ideas from Google and others to help you put people first. |
| Culture Amp Support Guide | Support Guide |
| Culture Amp | Expert insights on performance management, employee development and employee engagement for HR professionals and people leaders. |
| LifeLabs Learning | Your company needs exceptional leaders and powerful teams. And your managers need the most essential skills in the shortest time. That’s our specialty at LifeLabs Learning. |
| Title | Description |
|---|---|
| awesome-leading-and-managing | Awesome List of resources on leading people and being a manager. Geared toward tech, but potentially useful to anyone. |
| Title | Description |
|---|---|
| How Google Sold Its Engineers on Management | High-performing knowledge workers often question whether managers actually contribute much, especially in a technical environment. Until recently, that was the case at Google, a company filled with self-starters who viewed management as more destructive than beneficial and as a distraction from “real work.” But when Google’s people analytics team examined the value of managers, applying the same rigorous research methods the company uses in its operations, it proved the skeptics wrong. Mining data from employee surveys, performance reviews, and double-blind interviews, the team verified that managers indeed had a positive impact. It also pinpointed exactly how, identifying the eight key behaviors of great Google managers. In this article, Harvard Business School professor Garvin describes how Google has incorporated the detailed findings from the research into highly specific, concrete guidelines; classes; and feedback reports that help managers hone their essential skills. Because these tools were built from the ground up, using the staff’s own input, they’ve been embraced by Google employees. Managers say that they’ve found their training to be invaluable, and managers’ ratings from direct reports have steadily risen across the company. |
| Title | Description |
|---|---|
| Product School | |
| Slack Channel created by Lewis Lin | Already has over 5000 people looking for mock practice partners |
| FirstRound Talent | (by invitation only) |
| Ken Norton’s | Blog and newsletter (specifically in the GV portfolio) |
| Culture First community form Culture Amp | The People Geek Slack community brings together diverse individuals and skilled thought leaders from around the globe. Together they share experiences and learn form each other. |
| People Geeks | Encourage you to use this site to ask questions, share experiences and engage in meaningful conversations with other People Geeks around the world. |
| Title | Description |
|---|---|
| Women in Product newsletter | Women in Product Facebook group |
| Women 2.0 | (more engineering focused but there’s the occasional PM role in there too) |
| Advancing Women in Product | |
| Twitter, LinkedIn, Product School, Product Tank, Product Hunt, On Deck Daily, some sub-reddits, etc. | |
| Job Search |
| Title | Description |
|---|---|
| Software Lead Weekly | A weekly email for busy people who care about people, culture and leadership. |