The Balanced Approach to Big Decisions

How Product Managers go from Facts to Intuition

You are facing a dilemma regarding your product. Engineering can develop one new feature, and you need to decide which feature to prioritize. You have two features ready for engineering. Each feature is equal in terms of customer satisfaction, engineering cost, and business opportunity.

Do you pick one of the features or wait for more information?

You must not wait for more information, or you will lose the opportunity to develop a new feature. How do you decide which feature to develop?

Decision-Making Steps with Logic & Intuition

When faced with a challenging decision, start by grounding yourself in logic. Gather all the facts, focusing on the big picture, and sort through your options. Once you've narrowed your focus to the must-haves and considered the risks, opportunities, and long-term impacts, it's time to shift gears.

This is where your intuition comes in—it's the bridge between logical analysis and your decision. By breaking the decision into smaller, digestible parts, you’ll find it easier to connect with your instincts and make a balanced choice.

As you move through the logic to your intuition, take these steps:

1. Gather facts: understand the big picture.

2. Narrow focus: settle on must-haves and nice-to-haves

3. Consider scenarios: look at risks, opportunities, and long-term impacts

4. Decide: follow your heart and make a call

When faced with tough decisions, product managers often start with logical steps to gather facts, evaluate options, and weigh scenarios. These steps provide a foundation, giving you clarity and structure to understand the big picture and potential risks. But logic alone doesn't always provide the answer.

At a certain point, the data reaches its limit. Both options may appear equally valid on paper, or the unknowns might leave you stuck. That’s when your intuition steps in to bridge the gap. Intuition isn’t just a gut feeling—it’s your experience, insights, and subconscious coming together to guide you.

Once you've done the groundwork with logic, shifting to intuition becomes a natural progression. It allows you to sense patterns, evaluate trade-offs instinctively, and make decisions even when unsure.

Let’s explore tapping into your intuition effectively without losing sight of the facts.

Tap into Your Intuition

Some might feel that gut feelings don’t belong in product management. You get advice about data-driven decision-making and being customer-centric, but no framework or prioritization process includes intuition.

However, in product management, your hunches tell you something. Your heart is sometimes smarter than your head.

How can you tap into your intuition in a world of facts and assumptions? You meet the facts and assumptions with your perceptions. Here is what you do:

1. Write down each factor in your decision: focus on your worries and limit yourself to facts that make a difference in the decision

2. Define a range for each factor: for example good is 100 and bad is 0

3. Using your feelings rate each factor: quickly decide a rating for each factor

4. Add the result: each decision now has a number

How do you feel about the number? Does it match your intuition?

Let's look at our example. Two features to develop and engineering can only do one feature.

Your decision factors are:

Background on each feature:

• Feature A: early to market, requested by multiple customers, and low risk to develop

• Feature B: on time for a declining market, requested by customers and risky to develop

You score each decision factor and add the ratings.

Your intuition score leans to selecting Feature A. However, you are not sure Feature A is the right choice. What else can you do?

Look at Scenarios

Continue your thought exercise by imagining what will happen after making the decision. Consider short-term and long-term impacts.

For the short term think about:

• Customer reaction: Are there customers that will be upset?

• Business impact: How likely is the forecast for the decision?

• Stakeholder feedback: Will stakeholders have concerns about the decision?

• Product team support: Can the product team get behind the decision?

For the long term think about:

• Future customers: How much change in your customer base in two years?

• Organization readiness: Will this decision impact your organization in two years?

• Business forecast: How much risk is there to the business growth?

• Pending decisions: Does this decision affect other decisions in the long term?

Reviewing the different scenarios will either

• Make you comfortable with the decision

OR

• Show the decision has little impact

You might update your intuition ratings or add factors.

By this point, you have a hunch about the right decision and you understand the likely outcome of your decision. The final step is communicating about your decision.

Quote provided by Ruth Mitchell

Courage to Make a Call

Product managers frequently are in situations that need decisions without enough data. After tapping into your intuition and evaluating the outcomes with your team, treat the decision as a hypothesis to test.

Close your eyes and aim with your heart.

By blending intuition with a thoughtful evaluation of factors and scenarios, you can navigate even the toughest decisions with confidence. Remember, every decision is an opportunity to learn and grow as a product manager. Trust your process, trust your gut, and move forward boldly. The next great feature may just be one courageous decision away.

---

Last week’s backstory for paid subscribers provided a weekly report template. Updating Stakeholders on Your Key Initiatives.

---

TLDR Product listed Product Management IRL articles recently! This biweekly email provides a consolidated email of recent product management articles.

---

Connect with Amy on LinkedIn, Threads, Instagram, and Bluesky.