Michael Goitein
/michaelgoitein
Digital writing on product, newer ways of working, and great teams | Enterprise Agile, Product & Discovery Coach at http://key.com | http://michaelgoitein.com/
Michael Goitein
4y ago
Most managers' one-on-one meetings are a waste of time both for them and their employees.
Small wonder quiet quitting and the Great Resignation continue to erode companies from the inside out.
But quality 1:1s can increase engagement and fuel growth. How?
By using just 5 simple questions in every 1:1 conversation
Questions 1-3/5:
1. How would you like to grow within this organization?
2. Do you feel a sense of purpose in your job?
3. What do you need from me to do your best work?
Questions 4-5/5:
4. What are we currently not doing as a company that you feel we should do?
5. Do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?
Asking these questions, and deeply caring about and taking action on the answers, can literally transform your organization.
For more insights, subscribe to "The OKR Journey" newsletter for regular, curated insights and industry thought leadership:
https://theokrjourney.beehiiv.com/subscribe
Michael Goitein
Product Management
4y ago
A product manager's most valuable skill: Persuading people effectively.
But no one teaches you how to do this, and no one helps you understand where your persuasion skills may be off and how to get back on track. Without the ability to influence stakeholders, the team, and customers, it's simply impossible to be effective in the product role.
This simple model can help you get there.
Giles Turnbull's Three Layer model
Giles Turnbull, author of Agile Comms, has brilliantly framed the different aspects of effective communication, starting from one basic premise:
"Everyone is already too busy, most of the time."
The model immediately helped me grasp how the most effective product managers I coach communicate through:
Lure
Context
Details
Turnbull likens them to the layers of a cake, and challenges us to simplify our message and present it thoughtfully and incrementally through these layers.
Lure
"The lure has two jobs: grab people’s attention, and get them interested in finding out more. The lure gives people a reason to overlook their overcrowded calendars, and divert their precious attention to you and your thing, instead of someone else, and someone else’s thing."
Giles Turnbull, Agile Comms, p. 17
How many people realize the need to “hook” their listener? Veteran startup leaders, Hollywood producers, and marketers alike know the importance of a crisp "Elevator Pitch," a disruptive call to action. But how many of us use this effectively, in our verbal, written, and presentation communications?
Context
Now that we’ve given our target person something to entice them to break from their busy schedule, it’s time to give them the next layer of information.
Unfortunately, inexperienced and effective communicators tend to jump right into the Details at this point.
"This [Context] layer is longer and slightly more detailed, but not to the point where it makes huge demands on people’s time.
After reading (or watching, or clicking through, or listening to) the content in the context layer, the reader should be able to answer a question in their head: “Do I know enough to stop here? Or do I want to know more?”
Giles Turnbull, Agile Comms, p. 17
Anyone will appreciate the courtesy of being given the right level of Context - Truly busy people will get what they need and go on their way. I believe most great presentations that truly persuade are more about Lure and Context than Details.
But if you've been effective laying out Context, and the audience and timing are right, people will ask you to go deeper into your next layer.
Details
Now comes the final layer of the cake – the Details.
Unfortunately, most people start here, verbally assaulting their audience with an avalanche of details, droning on with no courtesy or sensitivity to their audience's needs.
Seen in context of Turnbull's Three Layers mental model, it seems cringeworthy to launch into a barrage of details before we've effectively piqued our listener's interest with a well-crafted Lure, and laid the groundwork with the right amount of Context.
Lure and Context are the product manager's tools of persuasion
Note that it's the product manager's responsibility to own and be in full command of the Lure and Context aspects of their product.
These two layers form the crux of a product manager's ability to effectively evangelize for their team and their product across the organization. Consciously and intentionally curating the message at these the Lure and Context levels alone will do wonders for your ability to connect and persuade.
Two questions to increase your persuasion effectiveness:
Where do you currently overindex? Lure, Context, or Details?
How can you continuously improve your Lure and Context messaging across all channels? Verbally, in writing, and in presentation facilitation?
Becoming a more effective product manager starts with understanding where you are now, and where you need to use Lure and Context appropriately to engage and inform your audience.
Michael Goitein
Product Management
4y ago
The product people I coach on a regular basis include the some of the most intelligent, thoughtful, and creative people I've ever worked with.
Frequently, they and their teams feel caught on the constant crush of constantly delivering too much work in too short a timeframe with too few people. Many of their teams seem strained to the breaking point by the pressure from the avalanches of features "The Business" wants delivered.
Fortunately, there is a way off this hamster wheel.
Realize that every stakeholder feature request is a hypothesis
Simply put, every stakeholder feature request is a guess of what might solve business or customer problems.
It's possible that, once delivered, the feature could possibly deliver value at some point. Yet these software feature requests are treated as sacred, as things the business is convinced it absolutely "needs," features that will finally make the difference to the company. It's important to remember:
You are not one feature away from success. And you never will be.
Teresa Torres
The simplest way to check this is simply go back and measure the actual benefits received from the last 5-6 stakeholder-requested features released. Were they anywhere near what was promised or anticipated? Research reveals that upwards of 60-80% of stakeholder-requested features fail to deliver on their promise. Leadership needs to recognize & accept that every request across every team’s backlog is simply a hypothesis.
Once that recognition sets in and stakeholders gain some humility from that realization, it's time to try a different way to figure out what to build.
The two crucial product competencies:
#1: Use OKRs correctly to set & achieve Outcome-focused goals
When stakeholders hand down feature requests, ask them to set Outcome-focused goals for teams, combined with appropriate success criteria. OKRs can be helpful here, IF they’re written and used correctly.
#2: Use Continuous Discovery to tackle risk collaboratively earlier
Once Outcome goals are set, product managers need to lead their teams to cross-functionally and collaboratively reduce risk earlier in the process through Continuous Discovery. Key will be to bring stakeholders along on the journey as they work through discovery. This practice will radically reduce risk for the solutions teams ultimately do deliver.
These two competencies demonstrate strong modern product management through product, instead of project thinking. Product managers who can help set proper goals, and collaboratively reduce risk through Discovery can ultimately help lead their organization from relentless wheel of feature bloat to delivering solutions that solve meaningful client problems in a way that deliver business value.
Michael Goitein
OKRs
4y ago
The need for the Four Square
Until now, teams setting goals with OKRS have had no simple way to focus.
Popularized and expanded in the latest edition of Radical Focus 2.0, Christina Wodtke's simple Four Square ("4sq") model finally gives teams a way to see everything that matters in one place. Based on coaching I've done with teams, I've found the right side of the Four Square to be the most powerful for two major reasons:
1. Top Right: Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) Confidence
OKRs represent a significant departure from previous goal-setting frameworks in that they pair a qualitative, aspirational statement (the Objective) with measurable indicators of success towards that goal (the Key Results). On a weekly basis, in a quick, non-scientific way, the team measures their confidence in achieving each Key Result, on a scale from 0-10:
OKR Confidence (The higher-level moonshot "why" behind the work)
Objective: Become the iconic rebel of online whiskey purveyors
KR: Increase whiskey club membership retention from 40% to 80% - 5/10
KR: Increase organic referrals from 10 to 30 per month - 7/10
KR: Increase Average Revenue Per User from $30 to $60 - 4/10
The team uses this reflection to discuss how to get back on track if things start slipping, or how to keep them on track throughout the quarter. It's always amazing to watch teams make major pivots after rating KR confidence.
2. Bottom Right: Health Metrics
Health metrics represent the 1-3 things the team needs to pay attention to while reaching for their OKRs.
It's crucial there be few, and carefully-chosen. Team health, Client Satisfaction, Code health- There aren't too many metrics that fundamentaly matter to team and business health. Right after tracking KR confidence, the team similarly goes through the Health Metrics in a brief, informal and conversational way, rating each on a simple Red-Yellow-Green scale:
Health Metrics (What to watch out for as we strive for our OKRs)
Customer Satisfaction - Green
Team Health - Yellow
Daily Active Users - Yellow
Monitoring Health while reaching for OKRs provides the crucial link.
How the two dimensions relate: Push and Protect
In the push to achieve great things, teams must protect what matters.
Achieving great goals at the expense of fundamental health metrics like team, code, or business viability is an illusion - success will be temporary, at best. And when a Health Metric turns Red, it's time for the entire team to stop work against the OKRs, and shift to addressing the metric at risk. Once that Health metric is green again, the team can go back to the OKRs.
Health Metrics can even become KRs until the team has them under control.
The Four Square, combined with the regular check-in cadence, provides teams a simple and powerful way to stay on track for long-term success.
Michael Goitein
Leadership & Management
4y ago
As an Agile Coach working with multiple teams, I have struggled to help them stay focused on the highest-priority work.
As we introduced Objectives and Key Results to gain more client- and Outcome-centricity, teams have lacked a simple way to keep the most important work front and center. Traditional roadmaps were either too high-level, or unhelpful to show progress against the metrics that mattered. Regular OKR check-ins proved helpful, but teams lost context on short-term execution, and would get blindsided by crucial tanking metrics.
There had to be a better way, but any alternative seemed too complicated.
Meet Christina Wodtke
Christina Wodtke is former Director of Design at Yahoo!, Principal Product Manager at LinkedIn, GM at Zynga, and a current Stanford University lecturer. She's shared many of her insights across teachings, talks, and three books: Pencil Me In, The Team That Managed Itself, and Radical Focus 2.0, the quintessential OKR guide.
Enter Christina's Four Square
Initially introduced in the first edition of Radical Focus, I immediately recognized the sheer brilliance of Christina's Four Square ("4sq") model.
Finally, teams could see everything that mattered in one place.
A Four Square example
The below example focuses on an online whisky retailer, going clockwise from the upper left-most quadrant:
Priorities This Week (What needs to get done NOW)
P1 - Finalize creative
P1 - Understand client journey drop-offs
P1 - 5 interviews with valid engineer candidates
OKR Confidence (The higher-level moonshot "why" behind the work)
Objective: Become the iconic rebel of online whiskey purveyors
KR: Increase whiskey club membership retention from 40% to 80%
KR: Increase organic referrals from 10 to 30 per month
KR: Increase Average Revenue Per User from $30 to $60
Health Metrics (What we should protect as we strive for OKRs)
Customer Satisfaction - Green
Team Health - Yellow
Daily Active Users - Yellow
Upcoming Big Projects (Highest-priority things to stay ahead of)
Mobile app revised biometric login
Onboard new bourbon wholesalers
In-app and SMS notifications upgrade
Test new subscription models
Going deeper into the Four Square
Over the next few essays, we'll delve more into each quadrant, and how to make best use of the Four Square to help your team, in Christina's words, achieve "Radical Focus."
Michael Goitein
Product Management
4y ago
As a kid, whenever I did something that hurt someone, my parents always told me to "treat others as I wanted to be treated," or "The Golden Rule."
The Golden Rule
We've been raised to see the Golden Rule as the Gold Standard of human interaction.
These parables of our upbringing continue to pull strongly on our everyday actions, with many people instinctively treating in ways they want to see. Software product managers, especially those coming to the role from another discipline as a "Subject Matter Expert," or "SME," are particularly prone to believing they already know what's best for others. Many spend months or years on the "perfect" startup, only to release it to silence.
To get out of this "Ivory Tower" belief that we know what's best for others, we need a better rule.
Enter the Platinum Rule
Coined by @davekerpen, the Platinum Rule takes the Golden Rule, and subtly shifts it to massively increase it's power -
Instead of treating others as we wish to be treated, treat them as they wish to be treated.
Rather than us inflicting our likes, dislikes, and preferences on others, the Platinum Rule differs by inviting us to consider the needs of others first.
Empathy at the core
The core shift is based on empathy - actively seeking to understand first.
Empathy involves actively putting yourself in the shoes of the other person, and experiencing the world through their eyes. Instead of inflicting what we believe others should like, we open up to a deeper understanding.
Better product outcomes through empathy
The Platinum Rule's empathy focus has a direct impact on product management.
One great approach is to use generative user interviews, a technique that asks users to "tell them about a time..." in an open-ended fashion. Applied skillfully, product managers can start to truly understand their customer's worldview, and gain an appreciation of their users' unique needs, pain points, & desires. Working backwards from these needs to actual product outcomes is the primary empathetic focus that de-risks better solutions.
Plan to understand user needs first so you can treat them to the Platinum Rule - as they wish to be heard, understood, and treated.
Michael Goitein
Lean & Digital Writing
4y ago
I would furiously type 20 minutes nightly, and never got anywhere.
Searching writing advice on the Internet to improve my lackluster blogging cadence, I landed on some random advice that the key to writing success was to write for 20 minutes a night. Based on my work coaching teams in product thinking and Continuous Product Discovery, I've uncovered a crucial goal-setting distinction that can help writers maximize their effectiveness.
Unfortunately, many Digital Writers work on things for the wrong reasons.
Output-based goals are not what writers need to target
Output-based goals measure just that - the things we produce.
My original goal - type 20 minutes a night - was classic Output-based goal. Parallel examples of Output-based goals would be "write 1,000 words a day, every day;" "write 50 Tweets a day."
You get the picture. It's purely focusing on the "stuff" we do.
Digital Writers move from targeting Output to Outcomes
The truth is that, while these aren't inherently bad goals, authors could accomplish all of these Output-focused goals above, and not be any closer to the writing success they seek.
The goal is to set Outcomes-focused goals. What are Outcomes?
Jeff Gothelf defines Outcomes as:
Outcome is a measurable change in human behavior we see when we give the output to our [readers]. Outcome answers the question, “What are people doing differently now that we have delivered the output?”
Digital/Lean writers maximize their impact not by focusing on their Output, but targeting specific reader behavior-change Outcomes.
Always ask: What will readers be doing differently as a result of this (Tweet, Thread, Atomic Essay)? How will I know?
The foundations of Lean/Digital Writing are data-literacy, and Thinking Big, Starting Small, and Learning Fast - one writing example for this could be:
Tweet >> Twitter Thread >> Long-Form Article >> e-Book (etc.)
At each step, set goals and monitor reader behavior-change signals that signal when to go to the next level; i.e., if the Tweet engagement hits X, turn into a Thread; republish as an article; if that gets traction, continue through expanding and watching for signals.
Set & closely track Outcome goals for Lean/Digital Writing effectiveness.
Michael Goitein
Lean & Digital Writing
4y ago
I never thought anything I wrote was good enough, agonizing over every word.
Now in my second cohort of the Ship 30 for 30 digital writing course, I have achieved consistent, small breakthroughs. Enough to make me finally understand there actually is a better way, and Nicolas Cole and Dickie Bush have been the sherpas on the path. And it's helped me finally enjoy writing through one amazing, central discovery:
Lean & Digital Writers don’t write for readers; they co-create with readers.
Understand what the world wants from you through data.
The central insight is to move to being data-informed in choosing what you write, and how you approach it.
I used to pick some coaching observation, and write 20 minutes on it every day, without stopping, generating pages of meaningless tangents until I would eventually end up hating my rambling tirades I'd written, and abandon it. Or I would finally ship something after months, and wonder why I wasn't getting traction. But through the act of co-creation - putting something out there, monitoring the signals, adjusting, and expanding - I could finally get actionable data against which to improve my writing and my message.
Based on my experience, I'll summarize the three best pieces of actionable advice I've internalized from Dickie, Cole, and Ship 30:
#1. You can't steer a stationary ship.
Until you get something out in front of readers, there's no data to learn from.
The beginning writer's biggest enemy is perfectionism. My favorite quote here is from James Clear, quoted by Dickie Bush, who this year had the best-selling book on all of Amazon:
To master the creative process, give yourself permission to create junk.
@jamesclear via @dickiebush
Write and ship!
Real artists ship
Steve Jobs
#2. Lean Writing - Start small, get data, iterate.
If you are going to ship, it's important to start small & constantly be aware of the signals readers are providing every step of the way.
Dickie Bush and Nicolas Cole's Lean writing framework is the most immediately actionable way to ship work that people want to read. Start with a Tweet >> Twitter Thread >> Short-Form Article >> Long-Form Article >> Free Email Course >> Digital Product >> Online Course/ Community >> Business
Every step of the way, look at how readers are responding, what their questions are, and watch the engagement metrics.
#3. Community is the heart & soul of your writing.
Writing has traditionally been one of the most solitary pursuits.
But in the age of Digital and Lean writing, and through the mental models of Dickie Bush and Nicolas Cole, you come to understand that regardless of where you're starting, you can help someone else, they can provide valuable feedback to you, or even just cheer you on when you've lost your way.
The future of writing is Lean, Digital, and Data-Driven
No longer do I slave away on idle writing without focus or purpose. Through regular shipping, starting small, and community, I've made great friendships and learned more about writing, and unanticipatedly, and am actually enjoying the writing process. Thanks to the Ship 30 for 30 community!
Michael Goitein
OKRs
4y ago
The #1 issue I see with product managers new to OKRs is the challenge moving from activity and output to value and outcome goals.
Unlocking the true power of Objectives and Key Results depends on setting value-based goals because it's the only way to focus on what really matters, and measure whether teams are on the right track. Product managers that learn how to make this shift can expect exponential improvement in working on the right things at the right time, and abandoning work that doesn't deliver far sooner, before the "sunk cost" fallacy takes over. Unfortunately, the engrained habits of years of activity focus and project thinking continues to lead product managers and their teams astray.
Fortunately, renowned industry OKR expert Felipe Castro offers 3 reasons why value-based OKRs are crucial, with clues on how to make the shift.
Good OKRs restate success as improvement
Success can't be measured by simply "doing" things - it can only be measured by improving something. This is crucial because
Reason #1 - We want a results-focused culture, and not one focused on tasks.
Reason #2 - If you did all your tasks and nothing improved, that is not success.
Reason #3 - Your action plan is just a series of hypotheses
We'll lay out the forces behind these reasons, and a way to address each:
#1: Moving from task- to results-focused culture
No organization can survive with an army of mindless automatons.
Management needs to shift from holding teams accountable for delivering "stuff" to always re-centering on the crucial "why" behind the work. Everyone on the team should be able to state exactly why they're engaged in the work, what success looks like, and how it's measured. The Product role, as the chief keeper of the "why" and "value" needs to lead with articulate, passionate leadership and evangelism across their teams and pushing back against management when they ask for "stuff," always making sure that there's a measurable definition of success aligned to the Key Results.
#2: Redefining what "Done" and "Success" look like
Many teams ship stakeholder-requested features to great fanfare and celebration.
Days, weeks and months later, no one goes back to measure whether that feature has actually delivered the anticipated results. It won't take too many discovery and delivery cycles sunk into work that doesn't deliver before an organization is out of business, and by then it's simply too late. Product can avoid this by keeping focus on the feature's mutually-agreed upon success criteria after launch. Both quantitative (data & surveys) and qualitative (live interviews) approaches can be employed to track progress against the real meaning of success.
#3: Accepting that everything is just a hypothesis & how to de-risk
Product continuing to work with these concepts opens the door to the necessary mindset shifts to exponentially increase OKR effectiveness.
Moving from task- to results-focus, and redefining what "Done" and "Success" open the door to management and teams alike embracing the humility to accept that everything they're working on is really a hypothesis. The way forward involves Thinking Big, Starting Small, and Learning Fast, continuously aligning progress against OKRs at a regular cadence and pivoting as necessary.
Michael Goitein
OKRs
4y ago
Countless organizations are changing the way they set goals as part of Digital and Agile transformations.
But they'll need to make the central mindset shift away from their current factory-based measures of productivity if they're going to enjoy the benefits of a modern goal-setting framework. Focusing on the same activity- and output-focused measures only leads to new labels for the same behaviors.
None of these approaches is more damaging than the "busyness" trap.
The perils of focusing on activities and output
In larger organizations, teams are largely isolated from both customer and financial realities.
People show up, sit in meetings, write a few lines of code, push some pixels, make a PowerPoint deck, and stop working at 5 o'clock every day. Every two weeks, money shows up in their checking account. Contrast this with a bootstrapped entrepreneur, who has to struggle daily to find a way to pay the bills and keep teams focused searching for product-market fit.
“An entrepreneur is someone who will jump off a cliff and assemble an airplane on the way down.”
― Reid Hoffman
An army of people looking busy without accountability to results signals the end of a company's ability to adapt to constantly-shifting customer needs.
The OKR framework as the antidote to Enterprise "busy-ness"
Objectives and Key Results were instrumental to Intel's, and later, Google's success.
When used well, OKRs move teams from simply showing up and trying to look "busy," to holding people and teams accountable for actual results. The OKR "set" consists of the Objective, the inspirational mini-mission for the quarter, paired with 3-5 Key Results, hard measures that demonstrate progress in delivering against the Objective.
Using OKRs is only a small part of a broader shift required.
Beware one-way, top-down OKR goal-setting
But no team can be held accountable to deliver Key Result numbers outside of their control.
Managers setting OKRs for their teams without their input shouldn't be surprised when they either just get a list of tasks accomplished. or repeatedly miss targets set for them. Given the siloed nature of Enterprise technologies, and the mercenary, part-time allocations of people spread thinly across multiple projects to maximize "utilization," much work is kept waiting for either dependent teams or for a key person to become available.
The solution is to set Key Results using numbers the team can own and move independently.
Map the user journey and identify what the team actually can influence
The first step is to collaboratively map the customer's end-to-end journey, highlighting where the team's work appears.
Regardless of whether it's a marketing team, focused on bringing in the right target customers for their product, or a team building an onboarding experience, the customer path can be laid out and management and teams can together identify and set meaningful metric goals aligned to positively influencing decisive moments in the journey.
Managers collaborating with teams to set Outcome-focused Objectives and Key Results within their control offer an excellent platform for teams to get out of busy work and reset their focus on delivering tangible results for both customers and the organization.
Michael Goitein
OKRs
4y ago
Objectives and Key Results offer the promise of the most powerful modern goal-setting framework, proven to offer exponential results.
Unfortunately, given most Enterprises' factory-based mindset focused on efficiency and productivity, they've struggled with the new OKR goal-setting framework. In my work coaching teams in 200 year-old enterprises, I've seen them repeatedly lay out their existing Gantt-chart project plans as OKRs.
Management then wonders why teams don't deliver the anticipated results.
Enter Product Thinking
Shreyas Doshi (@shreyas) shared a fundamental keystone to setting better OKRs with his revolutionary Product Thinking concept in this Twitter 🧵:
https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1471650411341750273?s=20
Shreyas boiled down it down to these five essentials:
https://twitter.com/shreyas/status/1471653151371522053?s=20
Suspend the Project Thinking mindset
Prioritize your real goals
Understand your users' needs
Generate options
Simulate
It suddenly dawned on me that legacy Enterprises are stuck in Project Thinking, and leading with Product Thinking is the key to better OKRS.
Using product thinking to help you set better OKRs
Instead of being inwardly-focused on the Project Thinking values of When, Outputs, and Efficiency, setting better OKRs involves leading with Client-Centricity, Why, Outcomes, and Effectiveness.
Project thinking-based OKR example
Focus: When, Outputs, Efficiency & Internally-focused
Objective:
Get leadership buy-in on the new marketing platform
Key Results:
Create 5 use cases in January
Architecture designed and fully approved
Test data migration and go live
Note that in the Objective, there's no mention of the benefit the new marketing platform might provide, just that leadership needs to buy into it (Pure Output).
Of the above five Key Results, three don't have a number, and those that do don't provide any indication of what benefit might happen from those "5 use cases" or "15 new screens."
Product thinking-based OKR example
Focus: Why, Outcomes, Effectiveness, & Client-focused
Objective:
Provide lower to middle-income clients with the best financial products for them at the right time in their journey, supporting their improved financial future.
Key Results:
Increase client new account application starts from .03% to 0.5-2%
Decrease declined applications from current 40% to 10-20%
50% of clients state "Yes" to the single-question survey "I feel I'm being provided the best products for my individual needs."
Thanks to Product Thinking, we now have a strong sense of for whom and Why.
The above Objective is far more inspirational than just getting a few managers to approve something - We're now focusing teams on bringing a better financial future to those who need it most, something they can really rally behind. Note the Key Results have numbers and ranges that clearly support the achievement of the Objective.
While the Product Thinking mindset will take time to adopt, it's the key to moving from legacy output focus to deliver meaningful results that matter.