People, Products, Strategy

Pilots have a saying that reminds them, especially in emergencies, how to focus on what’s most important. Here’s how one flight school…

Pilots have a saying that reminds them, especially in emergencies, how to focus on what’s most important. Here’s how one flight school explains it:

Aviation studies have found that pilots get so focused on solving a problem in an emergency that they sometimes forget to fly the airplane. In one accident involving Eastern Airlines Flight 401, the pilots became so distracted by a burned-out indicator light in the cockpit that they actually flew the airplane into the ground.

The axiom “Aviate, Navigate, Communicate” teaches pilots to fly the airplane first, then navigate, and once the situation is under control, communicate.

https://pea.com/blog/posts/6-pilot-rules-that-everyone-should-live-by/

“People, Products, Strategy” is how I’ve adapted the pilot’s saying to my work as a product leader. I use it to help me make decisions about what to prioritize, where to start my work day, and how to resolve conflicts in my schedule.

People are my top priority. Without my team, I cannot succeed. Even if we’re doing a great job at a retention, a growing company requires that we’re continuously identifying, recruiting, hiring, and onboarding new talent.

Once we’ve hired great people, my priority every day is working to retain them. Retention is a trailing indicator of my effectiveness as a manager, which I have to assess and calibrate continuously to ensure I’m performing well. Relationships in general are extremely important to my success, so I also prioritize the continuous cultivation of my partnerships with colleagues and upper management.

Even for a product manager, products come after people. I cannot hope to build effective products if I’m not effectively recruiting and retaining my team, building relationships, and collaborating effectively.

When I’m ready to turn my focus to our products, my priority is looking for inputs that come directly from my customers in their own words, often through channels like support and sales. This feedback is qualitative and often fairly narrow in scope, but it’s relatively easy to synthesize and derive insights from.

Second, I’m looking to metrics that are reliable indicators of customer success, like conversion and retention, rather than introspective metrics that only have meaning to the makers. These quantitative data are often broad in scope, and more difficult to draw conclusions from.

Overall, I’m looking to ensure that my overall assessment of how products are performing is continually informed by a combination of qualitative and quantitative data.

When I am confident that things are steady with my people and my products, I can turn my attention to strategy. An experienced and effective pilot makes only the necessary inputs at the controls.

I’ve learned that my team does not appreciate me tweaking or adjusting our strategy more often than is necessary. My primary contribution is to make sure that all of contributors are aware of, understand, and support the strategy and that all of my projects are properly aligned with it.

“People, Products, Strategy” is how I start each day. I hope it helps you think about how you prioritize your work. Let me know your thoughts, please.