"Can I Get a Decision, Please"?
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So you finally got that meeting with key executive decision makers that you've desperately been trying to get.
You've worked hard on your slides.
You've practiced your presentation.
You've prepared for any questions that may come up.
You show up. You crush it.
And the meeting ends with no clear direction.
At best, you're asked to "circle back with more information."
Result: No decision made.
And you leave the meeting tearing your hair out. (And your head filled with some colorful language!)
Most execs would rather kick the can down the road.
Executives are faced with a myriad of big and little decisions every day.
Decisions that can have an impact across teams, the organization, the state of the business, and customers. Sometimes across entire markets.
On top of that, each is being held accountable for meeting certain objectives while pursuing their own personal goals.
They've also got their own set of stakeholders to manage - their fellow execs, the CEO, the Board, key customer relationships, important strategic partners, investors.
They are accountable for every decision they make. It could cost them their credibility, their reputation, their relationships, sometimes even their job and future career prospects.
Every decision they make could come back to bite them.
So, it's really no surprise that even the most well-meaning executive is tempted to delay making decisions when they have too much on their plate with everything to lose and very little to gain, especially personally.
Even I was admittedly guilty of this as an exec.
Of course, I absolutely wanted to support my team and keep things moving.
But, frankly, given all the critical and urgent decisions I faced every day, and the pressures of a high stress job (and, make no mistake, an exec job is a high pressure one), if I could defer one more decision, I'd be tempted to do it.
Inaction is safe, preserves the status quo, and let's them continue to accumulate significant personal wealth via equity without rocking the boat.
But, as we all know, making decisions is a critical part of moving forward and executing in product management.
Most product managers simply present a list of options with pros and cons, and then expect the execs to make a decision.
Unfortunately, this rarely works.
So, how can product managers help get decisions made?
With two simple tactical changes to how you present:
- Show them to true cost of not making a decision.
- Present a well-founded recommendation.
Let's discuss each.
Make inaction seem like the far more expensive and dangerous option.
This starts by presenting inaction not only as an option, but as the DEFAULT option.
When presenting the options to solve a problem, always include the result of not making any decision within the next 3-6-12 months.
This will show them exactly what will happen if they choose to "circle back with more data" (which is a way of preserving the status quo).
Of course, make sure you have reasonable confidence that the consequences of the default choice will actually come to pass.
Be as truthful and data-driven in your representation of the status quo.
State your assumptions and provide a brief overview into the data or analysis you used to arrive at your conclusions. And be prepared to provide a detailed look, if asked.
We've got 3 main tools do help us do this:
- Cost of delay.
- Competitor action.
- Regulatory, compliance, or other type of risk.
Cost of Delay
I talked about this in last week's issue.
The cost of delay is the economic impact of NOT doing a thing or in delaying doing it.
Cost of delay analysis forces us to ask two important questions:
- What would it be worth to solve this right now?
- How much would it cost us if we solved it later?
Some examples:
- Potential lost revenue or bookings - e.g., loss of a major customer or set of customers, inability to win new business, user churn.
- Delay in revenue recognition - e.g., a client won't go live with our product unless an important feature is made available.
- Impact to cost of goods sold, cost of service, or production costs.
- Increase in customer support costs.
- Increase in product costs because a key vendor or 3rd party is dramatically increasing their pricing.
- Cost of solving the problem later - e.g., if necessary resources will get more expensive over time.
- Contract breach.
- Regulatory fines.
Competitor Action
I was in charge of a $60M telehealth product portfolio when the COVID pandemic hit.
Almost overnight, our users started using Zoom.
Discovery helped us understand that many providers were taking care of isolated COVID patients in the ICU and were placing a laptop or iPad with Zoom at the patient's bedside as a way to check in on them.
And although this approach lacked many of the features our users had come to depend on - call tracing, context-aware linking, records integration, reporting, security, etc. - in that moment, given the stakes, none of that mattered.
Furthermore, they were ignoring their own corporate policies in using an "unsanctioned" solution.
Of course they would.
They needed to delver patient care to their most at-risk patients.
Zoom was cheap, easy to install, and quick to use.
Naturally, Zoom was watching the trends and began to invest heavily in scaling up their capabilities.
This was undoubtedly a major threat to a business we had worked so hard to build over the previous five years.
We quickly scoped out a competitive tablet-based telehealth solution that could help our providers.
It was a 3-month development effort that required a dedicated development team. It meant they would not be able to work on anything else during that time.
How were we able to get those resources and that investment approved?
By using the threat of Zoom.
It became of a simple matter of showing how many of our users across our key accounts had already started using Zoom and, via some straightforward math, showing how it would become an escalating problem over the next 6 months if we did nothing.
This represented some major customer accounts totaling millions of dollars in annual recurring revenue.
And it was impacting our sales pipeline, as prospective customers were taking notice too.
When we use competitor action to force executive decision making, key questions we want to ask are:
- Does the business face serious damage if a competitor solves the problem first?
- Could we lose sales? Lose existing customers? Could our brand or market share be negatively impacted? Our stock price be hit?
- Or, is this action being forced on us because a competitor has already moved? What's the potential impact of that?
- Is there a threat from a new entrant in our market? What are the potential repercussions of that?
Regulatory, Compliance, or Other Risk
Does not solving this problem expose us to regulatory, compliance, or other risk? What's the cost of that?
Are there contingencies and mitigations against those risks? How viable are they?
Are there dependencies to account for? In other words, by not solving this problem, does it impact anything else? What's the impact of that?
Make a firm recommendation.
Part of being a product manager is to OWN the problem.
A big part of demonstrating that ownership is offering a solid recommendation with appropriate justification.
Of course, your recommendation should be well-founded. Be information-driven, state your assumptions, and be succinct in your articulation:
"I recommend X. The alternatives are A and B. But doing X will get us Y."
So many product managers simply present a bunch of options but no recommendation.
And, in doing so, give up their agency.
Don't give up your agency.
Making a clear recommendation demonstrates your command of the situation.
Summary
So much of managing executive conversations is using the right framing device.
You’ve got that precious 30 or 60 minutes with the decision makers. You want to get to a decision quick. So you need to make it easy for your audience to help you.
When you're framing the options available in terms of action choices - "we can do X or Y or Z" - it can be easy for execs to punt.
But remember: not making a decision IS a decision too!
By presenting inaction as the default option - something they choose simply by not making a decision - and making clear the negative consequences of choosing that default option, it makes it harder for them to choose it.
They may push back at the validity of your claims. That's ok. If your assumptions and analysis are solid, back yourself and state your case. Because the mere fact of presenting the direness of inaction will make them uncomfortable.
Psychologically, human beings are wired to remove discomfort. Use that to your advantage to influence them to seek to remove that discomfort by going with one of your other options.
By adding the default option, you've shown the opportunity cost of inaction.
If you've done your homework and presented the options correctly, the action options actually start to look like the safer bets!
Executive decision making for roadmap prioritization
Nowhere is executive indecision felt more acutely than in roadmap prioritization.
Conflicting goals, customer demands, stakeholders asks, and competing priorities can often get in the way of developing a coherent product roadmap that everyone can get behind.
If you want to get really serious about how to craft a roadmap that aligns company goals, stakeholders, and customer asks, consider joining the interest list for my upcoming cohort class, One Week Product Roadmap.
You'll join me live to learn how to transform a messy backlog of product asks into a coherent, actionable, outcome-driven product roadmap, and come out with a playbook to use for your own product.
Right now I'm looking for committed product folks interested in joining a beta cohort. Interested? Apply here to get on the waitlist and be the first to hear when enrollment opens.
