In the last six months as a product manager I have been trying to master the art of thinking clearly. Decision making is at the heart of what I do, which seems odd for someone who was labelled as indecisive for many years by friends and peers.
The reality is to move forward with anything, we need to constantly make decisions. Not doing so means being swept along by life’s currents and like a leaf on a stream we are taken wherever the flow wants us to go. This can be fine, but it’s not necessarily where you want to go or, as in my case, the way you want the product to go.
Infinite toolboxes with infinite possibilities
Developing a software product has endless possibilities constrained by time and resources. I almost said “unfortunately constrained” although I’ve learned that constraints are good and that often imposing them artificially can help us make us better decisions.
Small chunks beat analysis paralysis
Take the product delivery method I use, where every two weeks we incrementally improve the product. That two week window forces us to break things down into achievable chunks. The chunks we decide on are big enough to learn from, but small enough to not be too intimidating and generate analysis paralysis, the nemesis of much creative technical work.
Visions are important. Visions may change
Behind nearly every great creative project, there is some kind of vision. It’s hard to drive something forward without a vision and it’s often hard to have any sort of clear vision. The mistake I used to make was waiting until I had a clear visionary moment to proceed. The reality is that moment rarely happens without putting in some actual hard work first.
Accepting the fog of the future
I’ve now come to accept that the future is foggy and that the process used to move forward is more important than trying to squeeze out moments of clarity. Think, act, get and review and the clarity will come. That’s why working in an Agile product development has worked for me. That two week cycle is just enough to achieve something, learn something, make more decisions. And move forward.