Review

Roman is one of my favorite product management authors. His concise, to-the-point writing style is incredibly respectful of your time. He delivers wall-to-wall concepts without any storytelling fluff, providing just enough prose to get the point across.

This book focuses on the practical challenges of the product management role. To be a successful product manager, you need to work closely with your team and with stakeholders. Roman does a great job of identifying the challenges of working with others, and provides actionable advice on how to overcome them.

Key Takeaways

The 20% that gave me 80% of the value.

• Product management is hard because:
  • You lack transactional power (you’re not their boss)
  • You work with a large and heterogeneous group
  • You have limited influence over the group selection
  • You have a dual role (leader and individual contributor)
  • You have to lead at different levels (vision, strategy, tactics)
  • You have to be available to participate in agile practices
• Leadership is about influencing people to work toward shared goals
• Empathy is a key leadership skill. Empathy is our capacity to understand other people’s feelings, needs and interests and to take the perspective of the other person.
• Knowing your s#it makes it easier for people to trust you (users, market, competition)
• You have to choose the right leadership style for the moment: visionary, democratic, affiliative, delegative, coaching, pace-setting, autocratic leader.
• Build trust with your development team by leading with curiosity and care. Be open minded and act with integrity. Get to know people, and involve them in product decisions.
• Don’t take on scrum master duties. You’ll overload yourself while making it look like your team don’t need one
• The best performing teams are formed around products, colocated and stable.
• Collaborate with your stakeholders (don’t manage them). Involve the right people, build a stakeholder community and involve them in strategy. Leverage their expertise and creativity, build a shared understanding. It will make alignment easier.
• Goals are the key to guiding a development team and stakeholders. They create purpose, align effort and enable autonomy
• As a product manager, it’s your job to create a chain of goals, that stretch out into the future and make it clear where you’re going, and how what you’re doing will help

Type	Goal	Description	Timeframe
Visionary	Vision	Ultimate purpose, positive change.	5 years out
Strategic	User and business goals	Value propositions and business benefits, captured in the product strategy	For the life-cycle stage
	Product goal	Desired outcome or benefit product should provide, stated on the product roadmap	2 to 6 months
Tactical	Sprint goal	Benefit of a sprint, shown on the sprint backlog	1 to 4 weeks

• Great goals are shared, realistic, inspirational, alignment creating, autonomy fostering and linked together

• Listen deeply. It helps you build connections, acquire information and garner support for decisions
• Covey’s listening levels: ignore < pretend < selective < attentive < empathic
• Listen inwardly → what thoughts and emotions are being triggered? are they helpful?
• Be mindful of your mood before you start a conversation. Your mental state changes how you see reality.
• Ask clarifying questions, summarize what you’ve heard, pay attention to body language
• Let people finish, don’t interrupt. Pause before you respond.
• Buddhist principles of ‘Right speech’
  • Say only what you believe is true
  • Only speak if it’s beneficial for the person listening
  • Don’t use harsh or harmful words
  • Make sure you speak at the right time and place
• Flipping and framing:
  • Name it: What is the problem?
  • Flip it: What is the positive of the problem?
  • Frame it: What is the desired outcome of the positive opposite?
• Separate problem from person.
• Apply kind speech to not only the people who are present but also those who are not

Paraphrase	Summarize	Clarify	Mirror
Draw out the other person	Acknowledge feelings	Encourage	Pause
Postpone if you need to	Chunk	Positive first	Flipping
Keep on track	Redirect

• Conflict is normal, it can be a source of creativity and innovation if handled well.
• Win-lose dynamics create unhelpful strategies (Competitive confrontation, passive aggression, conflict avoidance, passivity). They don’t provide sustainable positive outcomes, they damage relationships, lead to a lack of trust and have a negative impact on well being
• We often think ‘we’re right’ because…
  • We think our perceptions are correct
  • We’re attached to our ideas
  • We find it hard to admit that we’re wrong
• Bad behavior isn’t justified, it helps to understand how it developed. Accept some responsibility. Move from a blame game to a contribution mindset.
• Resolve conflict with non-violent communication.
  • Look for positive qualities in the individual
  • Stop reinforcing negative thoughts and emotions
  • See things from the other persons perspective
  • Be willing to forgive and ask for forgiveness
  • Share observations (what you saw and heard)
    • the less blame and criticism the easier it will be for the other person to hear you
  • Explore feelings and recognize emotions
    • Emotion: how do you feel?
    • Location: where do you feel it?
    • Tonality: Tone of the emotion? Neutral or unpleasant.
    • Meaning: What word best describes it?
    • Need: What is it connected with it?
  • Share your feelings
  • Uncover the needs at the root of your feelings
  • We all need recognition, respect, trust, safety and financial security

• Make complex high impact decisions with your stakeholders and team. You need their expertise and their buy in
• Decide when to decide. Don’t rush, but don’t procrastinate either. Determine the last responsible moment
• Engage the right people in the right way → set ground rules
• Choose a decision rule: unanimity, consent, majority, PdM decides afterwards
• Disagree and commit. Even if you disagree… commit to it, accept it, follow through with it
• Delegate decisions that others are better qualified to make.
• Take the right decision making steps
  1. Gather diverse perspectives
  2. Build shared understanding
  3. Develop an inclusive solution
• Avoid negotiation if you can. Else try these techniques:
  • The Principled Negotiation Method (1981 Ury and Fisher)
    • People: separate people from problem
    • Interests: don’t argue over positions, look for shared interest
    • Options: invent multiple options, look for mutual gains. Don’t rule out options too early
    • Criteria: use objective criteria for a feat standard to determine the outcome
  • The Behavioral Change Stairway Model
    • Active listening
    • Empathy
    • Rapport
    • Influence
    • Behavioral change
• Are you negotiating too much?
  • Lacking authority
  • Lacking vision buy in
  • Not involving the right people in the process
  • Individuals are not willing to be collaborative / transparent
• Develop options together

• Benefits of Developing Mindfulness
  • Greater serenity → catch yourself getting tense and stressed out, stay calmer for longer
  • Calmness → trustworthy
  • Increased capacity to be empathetic
  • Better decision making, so you can take into account your mood and bias
  • Improved communication → you’ll be more considered
• Hold personal retrospectives
  • What did you get done this week?
  • What did you learn?
  • What challenges did you overcome?
  • How are you feeling?
  • How has your mood and energy level been?
  • What changes do you want to make?
• Be aware of your workload and manage your time
  • Adopt a suitable pace, so you can go indefinitely
  • Ruthless prioritization > cramming