You shouldn't skip dailys, unless you are the 1% | GrowthMail#11

Lately I’ve had a couple of PM friends telling me different versions of this argument:

“I stopped going to dailys,
I want my team to become more independent .
I need to focus on high level strategy.”

Now, you likely thought about it yourself at some point. You tried joining the daily three times a week. You tried not joining at all. You’ve made your mind. I get it. But let me share with you a simple mental model useful in tackling this question.

There are two types of PMs when it comes to this. The control-freak, need-to-know-all kind of PM. Since it is rooted in your personality, it manifests in more ways such as:

🔍 Relentless acceptance tests, testing pixel-by-pixel.

🤓 Attention to details, especially when it comes to slidedecks created by others :)

📊 Uncontrollable love for spreadsheets.

On the other hand, you have the high-level thinking PMs. Right brain dominates; tend to look more on competition and the market, macro trends, positioning. They’d do execution because they have to, not because they necessarily want to. Usually is bundled with:

🧑🏻‍🎨 Artsy soul, UI/UX plays a key role.

🫶🏻 Stronger empathy and user-centralism

❓”Let me go back for a second for The Why”

Now, I bet you know what kind PM you are.
Identifying strengths and weaknesses will help you much further then just deciding on your dailys’ strategy, but for the purpose of our discussion here’s my take.

For type 1s, control-lovers, the following argument doesn’t matter. You need to feel in control and you would join the dailys anyhow.

For the rest of us, this just comes down to two simple questions:

1. Who’s in charge for “pushing the ball”? identifying blockers, removing them, meeting deadlines?

2. If that’s not you, what agreed-upon framework do you have in place to document daily-decisions, reflect current status, and keep track of action items and blockers?

You probably have seen GrowthMail#10 where I covered 2023’s best yearly recaps AKA Wrapped.

I got a lot of great feedback 💙.
But, what I didn’t expect is to have Spotify’s interaction designer who worked on 23’ Wrapped(!) to run into it:

The internet is a small world after all :) 🌐

See you in two weeks,