Balancing a High Priority Project with Your Workload
Keeping momentum on your product while managing a high-stakes product initiative
Your product sales have been struggling for months. You can no longer shrug this off as competitive pressure and a new market for your organization. You and your stakeholders have decided to overhaul your product to re-energize sales.
With this big product initiative landing on your shoulders, do you drop everything and focus on it?
It is very challenging to keep your motivation on your regular product initiatives when the big new initiative could overturn your work. Of course, you want to shine on the big new initiative.
It is best to hold back from abandoning your product even while you work on the next big thing.
Why Not Go 100% on the Urgent?
You know the downsides of multi-tasking. You have so much attention on the new initiative. What's wrong with focusing exclusively on the new initiative?
A few undesirable outcomes of going 100% on the urgent new initiative:
The new initiative isn't feasible to execute
Often the conclusion is unavailable resources and too many dependencies
Your product is in worse shape since you neglected it
Product momentum slows
You are busy with the new initiative and lose touch with the product team
Your product team starts going around you
Your relationships get stale
You cancel 1 on 1s and don't respond to emails
You lose touch with your best allies
Your customers are neglected
Issues that you normally handle go unanswered
The customers you need for the new initiative are less willing to help you
It would be so nice to just focus on the high-priority initiative and let everything go!
What can you do to take care of the new initiative and prevent damage to your ongoing product work?
Thriving with a New Initiative as a Product Manager
Product managers have several tactics for handling a new high-priority initiative while keeping their product running smoothly:
Define clear objectives and get alignment
Communicate about changes in commitments
Iterate on the new and old
Mitigate risks as you go
Keep celebrating milestones
These steps are effective for the new initiative and for keeping the momentum of your product.
Tactic 1: Define Clear Objectives and Get Alignment
Summarize to your stakeholders and product team the new initiative and how it relates to ongoing product work. Be sure stakeholders agree with the objective and the costs - including possible lost opportunities.
Side note: Sometimes new, urgent product initiatives are confidential. For example a merger or a key leader leaving the organization. In this case, you limit the exposure of the new initiative to people that need to know. You still set objectives and align with the broader team. In the case of a confidential initiative, you let the broader team know that you are focusing some of your time on a new strategic project.
Tactic 2: Communicate about Changes in Commitments
As you examine your outstanding commitments, you have 3 choices
Keep your commitment unchanged
Delay your commitment
Hand-off your commitment
Your product team and stakeholders are depending on your product leadership even though you have an urgent priority. Whatever you do, don't drop or delay your commitments without communicating to the affected teams.
When you delay a commitment, take into account the affected team's needs. If the delay will cause harm, explore other options such as breaking up the commitment or getting help.
Handing off a commitment could mean someone else on the team absorbs the delivery or you could drop the commitment. Check your decision with stakeholders and the affected people before finalizing the decision. Communication before and after the decision is key.
Tactic 3: Iterate on the New Initiative
Break down the new initiative into chunks so you can iterate on it while keeping momentum on your product. By breaking down into smaller efforts, you set targeted times to keep your stakeholders updated. You can save time by making the same update to your stakeholders and your product team.
You can keep time available for ongoing product work by doing the new initiative in chunks. Don't abandon your product! Instead, collaborate with your product team as usual.
Tactic 4: Mitigate Risks As You Go
The new urgent product initiative is going to raise a bunch of questions for you. Don't let the unknowns bog you down. Keep a list of open questions as you go. Revisit the question list frequently to guide your investigation and point of view on the initiative.
As you proceed, a few of these questions turn into risks for you to mitigate. You will need to decide how to mitigate the risks if you and your stakeholders decide to execute the initiative. Spend a limited time on risk mitigation until you decide the new initiative is feasible.
Tactic 5: Don't Stop Celebrating Progress
In the urgency of the new initiative, don't forget to recognize and thank people for making progress. Especially when people step up to leadership roles while you are involved in the new initiative.
Conclusion - keeping momentum while handling a high-stakes initiative
You don't need to abandon your product to handle a new urgent product initiative. You can cause a lot of harm by throwing yourself completely at the high-stakes initiative. You can communicate your objectives, break down the initiative into chunks, and let others step up to get the best outcome.
My Othe Activity:
Guest posting on Pivot to Product I discuss how product managers can add value during the development phase. Product managers are uniquely positioned to represent the customer perspective and avoid problems late in the development cycle.
Why LTV to CAC is flawed. This article covers why it is flawed, typical mistakes with LTV / CAC, and what to use instead. CJ Gustafson discusses this and the relation to Nickleback in this article - and CJ likes Nickleback like the rest of us! The article is from Mostly Metrics.
This is an underappreciated perspective. PMs have many ongoing commitments and honoring those demonstrates consistency and teamwork, two essential traits we shouldn't neglect. Although it's hard to uphold those when shiny new opportunities emerge, you make a great case for doing so with practical tactics - especially #3: PMs also have capacity constraints!