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Take a walk through talks about frameworks to deliver efficiently, how to deliver an experience, effective writing, express information in a compelling manner, admitting uncertainty, and setting clear boundaries.
it's about going beyond the mere functionality of a product or service. It's about creating a seamless journey that engages and delights users at every touchpoint. Think about it this way: every interaction a user has with your product, whether it's visiting your website, using your app, or engaging with your brand, contributes to an overall experience.
Essentialist product thinkers understand that the experience they deliver can make or break user engagement and loyalty. They focus on ensuring that every aspect of interaction aligns with the brand's identity and the users' expectations. For instance, it's not just about having a functional app; it's about designing an interface that's intuitive, visually appealing, and aligns with the users' needs, creating a delightful experience.
Moreover, delivering an experience extends beyond the digital realm. It includes how users perceive your brand through customer service interactions, marketing materials, or even unboxing experiences. Essentialist product thinkers recognize that these moments shape user perceptions and influence their decision-making. Therefore, they strive to create a cohesive and memorable experience that resonates with users long after the initial interaction. Ultimately, it's about crafting an immersive journey that leaves a positive and lasting impression, turning users into loyal advocates for your brand or product.
Now comes the most important form of communication with respect to a product team member. We often document, edit, write and summarize various aspects or features related to a product. Writing reports, case studies, and user personas involves great skill. We need to set the right narrative and make the reader focus on the content we want them to focus upon. Finding great detail in a piece of writing is as difficult as inculcating the detail while writing a piece of information.
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When you're communicating through writing—whether it's crafting emails, reports, or documentation—it's crucial to convey your message with confidence and authenticity. Essentialist product thinkers understand that the way you write significantly impacts how your message is received and understood by your audience.
Writing with conviction means being clear, direct, and purposeful in your communication. It's about being confident in your message and expressing it in a manner that leaves no room for ambiguity. Use straightforward language and structure your content logically, ensuring that your audience can easily grasp your ideas or insights without confusion.
Authenticity plays a vital role in effective communication. When you write authentically, you're genuine and honest in your expression. It's about staying true to your voice, tone, and values. Authentic writing establishes trust and credibility with your audience, fostering stronger connections and resonating with them on a deeper level.
Moreover, writing with purpose involves understanding the intention behind your communication. Whether you're persuading, informing, or seeking collaboration, every word should serve that purpose. Essentialist product thinkers ensure that their writing is intentional, focusing on delivering the right message to the right audience, at the right time.
Lastly, precision in language and clarity in thought are fundamental. Avoid unnecessary jargon or overly complex sentences. Use concise and impactful language to convey your ideas effectively. Edit and revise your writing to eliminate any ambiguity or confusion, ensuring that your message is crisp, compelling, and aligned with your intent.
In essence, writing it like you mean it means being clear, confident, and authentic in your communication. It's about expressing your message purposefully and genuinely, ensuring that your written words effectively convey your ideas while resonating with your audience.
Deep Dive
ABC’s of Effective Writing
The articulation of words we speak often makes a great impact, be it the place of significance or not. Your tonality and choice of words affect every small detail people notice about you. The Adam’s apple is indeed an interesting thing to know about. Being in the product team makes it an even more powerful weapon in your wardrobe. Let’s see how good you are at it. Look at this interaction and determine the important verbal communication aspects you know about yourself.
When you're delivering information, whether it's data-driven insights or presenting a concept, it's crucial to understand that it's not just about the information itself. How you present that information matters just as much—if not more—than the content itself. Essentialist product thinkers grasp this concept well. They know that to truly make an impact and drive action, they must deliver their message in a compelling and engaging manner.
To make people want to listen, it's essential to tailor your delivery to your audience. Understand their preferences, their language, and what resonates with them. Craft your message in a way that aligns with their interests and concerns. Whether it's using storytelling techniques, compelling visuals, or relatable examples, find ways to make your information relatable and meaningful to your audience.
Another key aspect is to focus on clarity and simplicity. Complex jargon or convoluted data can often be overwhelming and turn people away. Essentialist product thinkers communicate in a clear, concise, and understandable manner, ensuring that their message is easily comprehensible and digestible for their audience. Additionally, incorporating elements of persuasion—such as emphasizing benefits, addressing pain points, or presenting a call to action—can further encourage active engagement and receptiveness from your audience.
Ultimately, delivering in a way that makes people want to listen involves understanding your audience, tailoring your message to resonate with them, and presenting your information in a clear, engaging, and impactful manner that not only informs but also inspires action or consideration.
Admitting that you don’t have all the answers can be a product manager’s greatest strength. There’s no way that you can create something precious from your ideas alone.
You're showing you're human by admitting you don’t have all the answers. You’re vulnerable. It also creates transparency. Instead, bring to the table your objectives and ideal customer outcomes. This allows your talented teammates to bring their ideas and creates a truly collaborative environment.
During customer discovery, it creates clarity by showing customers what we don’t know or features we see a product won’t have (yet). When writing documents and business cases for internal stakeholders and development teams, having a section stating what you don’t know is helpful.
The concept of “incomplete by design” shines here. In traditional organizations, there is a virtue in completeness. Even if that completeness is fiction and risky. The truth is that most organizations are continuously changing, and there is no such thing as “complete.”
You can achieve better results by purposefully coming to the table with an unfinished document or deliverable and collaborating with engineers and people on your team.
Incompleteness stimulates real innovation. “My deliverables” become “our deliverables.” Ultimately, your team will acknowledge and advocate for your work because they contributed.
Are you allowing other people to decide how you spend your time? Solid boundaries help ensure you spend your effort on the right things. Without boundaries, other people will prioritize your time for you. You’ll be a happier product manager (and human) if you don’t obsess about making everyone else happy.
Boundaries require that you sometimes will put off some people. While we want to be good teammates, bosses, or partners, we don’t have to solve other people’s problems for them instinctively. Boundaries are particularly important for many of us working in distributed teams. It’s easy for the boundaries between work and home to become fuzzy, especially with the technology that connects us to work on every device. If you don’t have clearly set boundaries on your schedule, your work will seep into your home and family life.
Most product managers work for someone else and, therefore, must define many boundaries that give some flexibility for important projects and (sometimes) stakeholder needs. For example, if you’ve decided not to work during your lunch hour, you might decline some less-important lunchtime meetings but might fit a meeting during lunch for an upcoming major release.
However, if you’ve decided to stop rescuing your co-workers when they don’t meet their deadlines and ask you to help, that’s perhaps a boundary you want to keep. It’s possible to be a team player yet be protective of your time. While helping your co-workers may not take much time and might feel good at the moment, you aren’t focusing on what’s most important to you if you do that too many times a week. And you’re training your co-workers to come to you the next time.
“An essentialist will look at boundaries to protect their time and avoid becoming stressed by the lack of it.”
Of course, when enforcing your boundaries, being a good communicator is necessary. In Product Plan’s annual Product Management report, communication consistently ranks as the most important skill in product management. The more you practice, the better you’ll be at saying “No”, and you’ll be able to say it with less discomfort. These tips might help you enforce your boundaries when people ask you to do something that doesn’t align with your goals:
