Pressure Before Clarity - Follow Up Story

What happened after writing a recent Product Management IRL article? These insights are for paid subscribers to Product Management IRL.

This week’s backstory is about changes in collaboration:

For several weeks, I noticed increasing harshness from multiple directions in my product management job. Both public and private comments about:

• going faster

• making more sales

• overexplaining in a presentation

• don’t work on X, focus on Y

And the tone of these directions seemed angry. Plus, there was little information about the desired outcome.

At first, I thought this was something happening only in my organization.

Next, collaboration opportunities dropped:

• meetings cancelled at the last minute

• people too busy to meet

• delayed responses to instant messages

• people out of the office due to illness or vacation

I began to consider that other product managers are seeing the same thing.

A little research turned up Reddit product managers concerned about decision pivots and unreasonable demands.

The pressure is real for product managers as we go faster with process changes. I wrote about six things to do instead of passing on the tough talk:

I felt better after these reminders to myself. I also saw these actions as a way to continue being productive even though I expected the pressure to continue.