Without Taking the Driver’s Seat, Product Owners FAIL!
You cannot lead any team from the passenger seat.
You cannot lead any team from the passenger seat.
During your day, do you sit on the driving or passenger seat?
If you let others define how your day unfolds, you will be flooded with shallow work that won’t allow you to reach your true potential.
“What we choose to focus on and what we choose to ignore plays in defining the quality of our life.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work
Product Owners are often too busy to do what matters for the product. Their days are easily consumed by shallow activities, like, replying to dozens of e-mails, messages and attending many meetings. Yet, they find little time to search for opportunities to maximize the product value. The question is, why does that happen?
Some Product Owners feel powerless because they believe they cannot reject meeting invitations or take a day to reply to e-mails. They want to be available to their stakeholders. Unfortunately, this behavior is unsustainable and block Product Owners from succeeding.
Product Owners cannot let others define their days. To succeed as a Product Owner, you need to grab the driver’s seat and make your own direction.
“Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four hour days.” — Zig Ziglar
Unlimited Availability = Poor Outcome
I think the world becomes a little faster day by day. People become more and more impatient; they expect an immediate response to all of their messages. Therefore, the more you can multitask, the more efficient you are. At least, that’s what many people expect from Product Owners. Therefore, many Product Owners try to handle gazillions of activities simultaneously without letting any plate fall.
When Product Owners fall into this trap, they become the master of shallow work. They may do a lot every day by replying to all messages in a couple of minutes, or even seconds, attending all meetings, but are they prioritizing their activities to maximize value? I don’t think so.
More output doesn’t mean more impact. Often more effort is wasted doing things that don’t matter than doing something meaningful. Elimination is the highest form of optimization. As Winston Churchill once said, “You will never reach your destination if you stop and throw stones at every dog that barks.”
When daily activities define how your days develop, you are failing as a Product Owner. Most of the interruptions can wait or even be ignored:
The world won’t become worse if you don’t reply to your emails for half a day.
People won’t hate you if you reject meetings because you have to invest your time in identifying alternatives to deliver value.
People won’t die if you cannot reply to their messages immediately.
If you don’t have time to focus, you become the master of distractions. Shallowness will never lead to excellence; only deep focus can lead to it.
Taking the Driver Seat
From my experience, focus is the only way of maximizing product value. Still, the ability to focus isn’t trivial. To focus, Product Owners have to own their schedules instead of letting external factors define what they will do day in, day out.
When Product Owners don’t take over their schedule, the day unfolds as e-mails, messages, and meetings emerge. Ultimately they end up with no time to think strategically.
“Who you are, what you think, feel, and do, what you love — is the sum of what you focus on.”
― Cal Newport, Deep Work
To excel in the Product Owner role, you cannot let others overwhelm you with their agenda. You should instead create your plan and strive for it. Let me share with you my strategy:
Plan the day: before I look at my e-mails, messages, and so on, I plan what I want to achieve for the day. Then, I block time for each activity. The planning takes around fifteen minutes, and it’s the first thing I do before work.
Open e-mail three times a day: I leave my e-mail client closed. I open only three times a day: morning, after lunch, and an hour before I finish work. Yet, I don’t reply to all e-mails straight away, only the ones that I consider essential.
Turn off notifications: I turn off all notifications. I don’t let interruptions define what I do next. I book a time to look at messenger apps, e-mails clients, etc.
Block time to measure the outcome: I constantly measure the product outcome. It’s vital to have clarity on how the features impact the lives of the end-users.
Talk to customers: only the end-users know whether they benefit from products or not. That’s why I believe great Product Owners should often talk to real customers instead of proxies.
Make the product goal transparent: I often reject meetings by justifying I couldn’t see the connection between the meeting's goal and product goal. Therefore, I ensure stakeholders are aware of the product goal.
Empower developers: I don’t want to be the bottleneck of anything. That’s why I agree with developers on the Sprint Goal. Sometimes we also have items unrelated to the goal, but then we agree on the problem we want to solve. I trust developers on how to solve a problem.
“He who every morning plans the transactions of that day and follows that plan carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life.” — Victor Hugo
Final Thoughts
It’s easy to lose control of our days. Notifications constantly try to take us out of our focus. People are anxious and impatient; they want answers for the sake of having them. It’s hard to fight against all of that, but if you give up and renounce control of your time, mediocrity is the only outcome you can expect.
Remaining in the driver’s seat is not an option if you want to thrive as a Product Owner. Therefore, you should pay close attention to certain signs:
When was the last time you rejected a meeting?
How often do you check your e-mails?
How fast do you reply to your messages?
Who defines what happens during your day, you or external events?
Do notifications drive your attention and actions?
“It’s only after you’ve stepped outside your comfort zone that you begin to change, grow, and transform.”
― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
