“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities”
It doesn't matter what it is
I can’t quite remember what I was reading up on this week when I saw the Stephen Covey quote “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities” but it did stick in my head.
It’s not a new quote by any means and you may well have seen it before, however, most people think of it purely in a “Getting Things Done” kind of way.
It should however be a general rule for product managers everywhere.
Schedule your product priorities
Let’s start with the basics. A large proportion of product management is the prioritisation of new features.
Whether it is the grooming of your backlog or the development of your roadmap the key is to bring forward all the things that are going to deliver the most value to the stakeholders in your product and eradicate anything that isn’t going to move things forward.
However, we all know that isn’t always the case.
If we’re not careful we’ll have the CEO’s pet feature sneaking into the next sprint or adding a new potential partner integration into the roadmap, even though we’re not clear on what they’re going to deliver for us.
“Schedule your priorities”
What are your priorities?
What are the organizational objectives for the quarter?
What are the biggest barriers to you meeting these objectives?
Schedule anything that moves you towards these and don’t schedule things that aren’t relevant to them.
Yes, you might need to say no to someone who asks for something that’s not on your priority list, but that’s fine. Your role isn’t to make everyone happy. Your role is to deliver value.
Schedule your personal priorities
I’ve talked about this previously, but the role of a product manager is quite wide-ranging with short-term detailed activities sitting alongside long-term strategic activities. There are conversations with everyone from the CEO to the Customer Success Executive, and developing a depth of knowledge on not just your own product but those of your competitors and the market at large.
It’s too much to fit inside a ‘normal’ working week, which means as an individual you need to take the same approach to prioritisation as you do with your product features.
“Schedule your priorities”
What are your priorities?
What are your and your company’s objectives for the quarter?
What are the biggest barriers to you meeting these objectives?
Schedule anything that moves you towards these and don’t schedule things that aren’t relevant to them.
Yes, you might no get to respond to every little change request that comes your way, or you might not get to figure out where Chat GPT might fit into your product, but that’s fine. If they’re not priorities they don’t matter now.
Be ruthless
So far nothing I’ve said here is particularly controversial. It’s basically “do what needs doing”.
It’s the impact of this on other people where most product people struggle.
By scheduling priorities A - E you are by definition not scheduling items F - Z because they are not seen as priorities at this time.
Disappointing the stakeholders for item F isn’t a nice place to be.
Saying no to the requestor of item Z doesn’t feel great.
However, this needs to be done in order to do justice to priorities A - E.
The trick is to do it, just in a productive way.
Ask questions to understand all about their needs
Support them to deliver on their goals in any other way you can
Show you understand so they feel listened to
Be honest and explain the rationale for your decisions
At the end of the day, you’ve got a job to do and that job isn’t doing everything for everyone. That job is to provide a valuable product for your organization and for its users.
(for more on saying no head to this post)
Here at Getting Started in Product, we run a bookstore that stocks a variety of books focused on the world of product management; from direct product management books like Inspired by Marty Cagan to stories of success within global organizations like NIKE