A letter to the PMs Working from Home in this time of CoViD-19
It’s been four weeks since I and my team have been working from home. Yes — four weeks. And, lately my team started showing visible signs of frustration and exhaustion. I could hear it in their voices. The social isolation, mixed boundaries and unstructured work finally caught up. I decided — I should to write to them.
When read it out before sending it, I realised it seemed that it is as if I was talking to myself. I also realised that the various groups and networks that I’m part of — same sentiments have been floating around.
I felt may be a lot more people than just my team and myself can possibly and hopefully benefit from this general advice.
So, here is an open letter — to myself, my team, and if you are in product management, then to you. (you’d know when proxies are used to hide sensitive information)
Sub: Acknowledgement of current situation — and how do we keep moving forward
This is a note to acknowledge the current situation — and help streamline the thought process and direction. And, this is going to be long. So, grab your evening cuppa and bear with me.
Things are a little crazy. And, no false hopes — it’s probably going to continue that way for some time. We will have changing priorities — and great opportunities. We will have to react and move fast. We will have to deliver fast. I’m sure I’m going to be pulled in a myriad of different things. And, I’m going to pull you guys as well.
As long as we do the things we are about to talk about right — we will do alright.
What are we working on?
I know that there has been a lot of confusion around ownership areas, deliverables, actionable with things changing/added/deleted/updated on a daily basis. We all have been spending a lot of time in meetings and calls, and the actual time at hand to close things at our end has dropped considerably.
But, I hope we have high-level clarity and accountability of the areas that we are owning and driving -
Outlined the member names and the areas they are accountable for
As a group we have the sole-accountability for the ABC platform. Period. It’s our product.
A large enough — tech, ops and business team depend on us and our output for theirs. So, it’s natural that we will be spending a lot of time unblocking and supporting them to keep moving and doing the right things.
Multiple open threads. Low on bandwidth. What do we do?
By the sheer nature of the role we are in — we will always be low on bandwidth, with multiple threads and most of the time that would be too many. And without sounding cliche — that is the reason why we need to be ruthless at two things -
Time management, and Prioritisation
And, we have to manage these for both ourselves, and the teams that are dependent on us. Given the current things that you are running/owning, see this as a guidance -
1. Grey Areas — I do understand that there are areas which are grey, esp. with changes on the component XYZ side. Let’s work together and figure out how to work best. We should be cognisant of areas where we are driving things (A-B) and where we are just messengers (C-D), and delegate/loop the later to the right stakeholders. We are absolutely responsible and accountable for the areas that we own and drive. It’s important that we focus on those.
2. Open Priorities — If the rate of items incoming is greater than what we can close, then we will be inundated. So, it’s important to close the items. Closure doesn’t necessarily mean solve them. It may mean dropping them, pausing them and picking them later. And, most importantly communicate that. So, when we get a task we need to do three things — acknowledge, evaluate, communicate.
3. Don’t do everything yourself — As a virtue of excellent ownership that we all have, very often we tend to take every matter in our own hands. And, it’s great. But, am I the best person to do that? Can I add more value by doing something else? Who else can be a better person to own this? And, how can I drive accountability for that person to achieve that?
We cannot do everything. It’s ok. But, what we are working on — should be items with the highest long-term impact, and most importantly should keep the current business running/growing.
But, don’t get me wrong. To achieve an output of sum greater than the whole — we as a team do have to pull output of at least 150% of our bandwidth. And, that is why we need to build a deeper context of the things that we own — and move really really fast. We should be very cautious of Build-Traps and Analysis-Paralysis.
I’m exhausted. Being asked status all the time. What can I do?
This is where I believe we need to be — process masters, org. designers.
I know that we are being asked for status on a daily basis, and tracked on task level. Let me assure you that this is not a reflection of my confidence in you, or the confidence of your skip level on you. And, I’m absolutely sure it is the same with my Mentor and my skip level. Given that things have been changing really fast, it is just to ensure we are all focussing on right priorities. So, do ask yourself -
How can we give the required visibility through what we do — so that the communication doesn’t have to be explicit? And, how can we communicate the impact of the items that we are working on?
I also do understand that with WFH — we have lost the boundaries between home and work, the structure and schedule of work, and social isolation took away the tiny breaks for our mind. And, I think that might have had a larger role to play in our stress and exhaustion than anything else.
I don’t want to call it a new normal. It isn’t. It shouldn’t be. And, we have to work towards ensuring so. I would urge you to do the following -
- See if you can work the way you work in office. — get ready for work, take a few breaks etc.
- Get into the work mind-set. If possible separate the work area from personal space.
- Get your mind to call out that you have come home.
It’s also perfectly okay to take some time off. As long as we have acknowledged all the communications, agreed and communicated what we are going to deliver, and delivered what we have committed in the right time and with the right quality — it’s perfectly fine to unwind. As long as we have made sure no one will be blocked because of our absence — it’s absolutely okay.
What should we be focussing on?
This is a time of opportunity as ground noise is completely absent. We should use this time to move fast on our roadmap items. We should get them picked and drive them aggressively to closure:
Laid out three major areas of focus — and KPIs that those would impact, and expectation of closure, e.g., timelines
But, that’s just my understanding. If you feel there is a relatively higher priority item for your product that hasn’t made the cut in my list — let’s catchup on those. And, if we agree, we will reprioritise and communicate to the stakeholders.
Parting notes
Once again — things are a little crazy. And, no false hopes — it’s probably going to continue that way for some time. As long as we do the things we spoke about in the narrative right — we will do alright. We depend on you.
Do reach out to me if something has been bothering you or you want to talk about something/anything.
