PM Prioritization: Walking on Slippery Boulders
One of my biggest pet peeves in product management interviews is any question about prioritization.
How do you prioritize?
Tell me about a recent prioritization decision you made.
How do you prioritize your roadmap successfully
etc.
No matter how flat or hierarchical their organization is, a PM must still consider the company's or organization's politics when making prioritization decisions. But in most interviews, they can’t honestly speak about that ugly truth out loud. Most interviewers want a story about clear, logical decisions based on easy-to-comprehend facts.
But, let’s face it, politics is by far the largest part of our decision-making process for some of the biggest decisions we have made on behalf of our users and products. Thus, facts about what is best for the user (or sometimes the business) don’t factor as heavily as we would like into some of those decisions. We often need to give a black-and-white answer for a very gray situation. All those frameworks we use to build our instincts are theories (Moscow, RICE, Kano), a small part of the realities we face day-to-day when making decisions.
Pitfalls of Honesty
During a job interview, you can’t talk about organizational politics honestly because:
You sound as if you are blaming others
There are too many nuances to explain to an outsider succinctly (see above)
Proprietary information must be explained to tell the truth
Inevitably you make your current organization sound like a clown car
You could use a prioritization framework, but you sound too rehearsed. When was the last time someone used the R.I.C.E. framework literally and singularly to make a product decision?
Theory vs. Reality
Outside of annual planning, PMs rarely have time to make a prioritization decision where they can sit and fill out a grid and determine the Reach, Impact, Confidence/Complexity, and Effort in a methodical manner. (Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, Will Not Have might be closer to reality.) Most truly difficult prioritization decisions have to be made quickly, in the moment, with a team of people looking to the PM to lead. Looking at the PM to make the hard decision. And ultimately, looking for the PM to say if things go off the rails, “It was my call. The buck stops with me.”
In truth, PMs prioritize like a hiker in The Narrows at Zion National Park. PMs constantly read the situation and make minor tweaks to keep everything on track. No sooner have they made a small but crucial decision when another one faces them. If they don’t do the right thing, they will wobble or fall.
The first time a PM tries to prioritize, they take too big of a step and miss some of the nuances. They make a mistake. The next time they get a little better, but were still a little wobbly. By the time they turn around to go back or pivot down a new route, they have figured out how to walk without the aid of a walking stick. They take a thousand small, carefully calculated steps that they are doing on instinct, without even thinking about it.
The Narrows in Zion National Park
The Narrows is a gorge with walls 2,000 feet tall and a river that is just 20 ft wide in many parts. A hike through The Narrows requires hiking upstream in the Virgin River on uneven, slippery boulders. You must get your feet wet the entire time since there is no trail. Flash floods are common. You need to wear shoes, but it helps to have enough flexibility to balance appropriately on the slippery rocks. A walking stick is highly advised (I found out too late). Does this sound like an analogy for product management to you?
The Narrows is one of the most amazing ‘hikes’ I have ever been on in my life, and I have traveled to more countries than I can count. I have hiked Kilimanjaro (when there was still snow on top year-round) and numerous other strenuous trails. What makes the Narrows amazing, fun, scary and an excellent analogy for the life of a PM is the upstream hike in a river on rocky boulders with the constant fear of a flash flood.
As a PM, we are the one charged with leading the team against the currents of our product’s competitive landscape.
Depending on your speed, you might spend 4 to 8 hours with your feet completely emersed in cold water on an uneven surface. You occasionally need to hold your backpack over your head to navigate the narrow passages while keeping your valuables dry. Again, the analogies to being a PM are unmistakable.
As a PM, we start out with one expected timeline, but have to pivot as we learn new things or the world changes around us.
Hiking to PMing
During the pandemic, just a few weeks after a leader at Twitter spent 30 minutes peppering me about product prioritization, I hiked The Narrows. The entire hike out and back I couldn’t help thinking about the analogy between this hiking experience and that of a PM trying to prioritize. Here was my experience:
Arrive at the river’s edge with good hiking boots and backpack, but no walking stick.
My first few steps were treacherous. I probably looked like a human weeble wobble. I was soo lucky not to face plant.
At first my steps were too far apart, I was trying to walk too quickly to get to the narrowest part to see the amazing walls of the gorge as fast as possible.
I quickly learned to slow down and consider each boulder with my foot, establishing my balance before putting my next foot forward.
About an hour in, I didn’t even realize it, but I instinctively knew where to put my foot, how to move and balance it.
I was moving much faster and making split decisions without realizing it.
It was at this point that I realized, this is how a PM prioritizes. We look around us and take into account a number of factors:
how many people will we reach
how big of an impact will we have on their pain
how confident am I in the opportunity
what is the real effort required
Before taking the next step, our brains are doing this quick calculous; if we take a larger step can we move forward faster (closer to the goal or the sun where I can warm up)? Or will we risk falling? We start looking a few steps ahead, deciding if the best route is to stay on the same side of the gorge (or competitor)? Or navigate toward the other wall because the path requires less effort or more effort, but we are more confident in our ability to balance on the wet boulders to keep moving.
At the end of my hike, I couldn’t articulate every small decision I had made, but I knew I was balancing a number of factors every time I took a step. And after a while, I stopped thinking about every decision, I just made it.
How do you Prioritize?
Getting back to the original discussion, when someone asks me “How do you prioritize?” I want to tell them not about reach, impact, confidence or effort, but rather I want to say, after years of building complex products, I balance a number of factors, including political obstacles, that I see and understand intuitively but can’t explain each nuance to you without giving away company secrets.
Each boulder you balance on in The Narrows has been eroded and shaped in different ways, and thus you have to rest your foot just so. Just as the humans you must work with have been eroded and shaped by experiences they had before you encountered them.
There are common patterns that give you rules you can follow for 90% of the challenges you face. But before you place your weight on one of those boulders, you have to sense the subtle differences to carefully place your weight so you both stay upright and propel yourself forward.
And for most PMs, this is the political balance they must play when making prioritization decisions. It is never just about the best thing for the users, or the item with the most reach or the lesser of two complicated engineering solutions.
Every day, PMs must make small decisions that are shaped by previous experiences (Amazon calls it instinct, Meta calls it Product Sense) and knowledge of the political organization they live within that aren’t always easy to articulate.
Decisions on the Rocks
I can’t tell you every decision I made with every rock I stepped on to stay balanced through my nearly 6+ hour hike in The Narrows, but there are a couple of rules of thumb I followed:
Place your foot carefully before you put your full body weight on it.
Sometimes wedging your foot is better than balancing, even if it pinches a bit.
The longer route that is clear is sometimes better than the shorter route that is uncertain and will take time to learn how to navigate anew.
The skills you have at the start are a fraction of those you have when you exit.
But if you try to walk upstream in a new river, your feet need to learn anew how to step, when to step, how long a stride to take and a thousand subtle movements I couldn’t articulate verbally if I wanted to.
For PMs who get the prioritization question, practice talking about, reach, impact, confidence/complexity, and effort. But we all know deep down there is soo much more that you can’t tell us either because it is an instinct that is too complex to explain in the interview or there exist political obstacles you just can’t present in a politically-correct way.
National Park to Office Park
I encourage PMs to try listening to this National Park video and think about prioritization. When they talk about slippery rocks, do you think about the political obstacles you face when making prioritization decisions?
When they talk about what clothing you should wear, do you find yourself thinking about a time when no one prepared you for the audience you were going to face that felt like being dunked in ice cold water?
Or when they talk about flash floods, do you not think about that cross-functional partner who caught you off guard with an emergency you never saw coming (but if they had told you, you could have prepared).
