Editor's note: Todd Jackson was the product manager of the Google Gmail project and the product manager of the Facebook News Feed project. As a senior product manager, he has now turned around to start a company. In this article, he shared his personal experience, And summed up his years of experience, and finally pointed out the future development of the product manager.
Todd Jackson sits in a small office with Mark Zuckerberg, designers, and engineers for a company meeting. The topic he's going to talk about is redesigning Facebook's News Feed to optimize Facebook's user experience and increase engagement. They'll discuss the latest models, including image size, text density, and site navigation. Then, they discussed a detail, such as changing the color of the user's name from blue to black. In this room, Jackson's role is that of a product manager, and he knows the project is a bit more complicated than he thought. In fact, Zuckerberg has a simple philosophical stance on the matter - people's names should be in bold blue because people are logged into Facebook, users are at the heart of the content, and they should be prominent . But Jackson's team sees it differently: To gain a deeper understanding of its audience, Facebook needs to focus on what it shows.
In this exchange, Jackson had to consider the feelings of many people, he needed to digest Zuckerberg's point of view, he needed to support his designers and engineers, and he also needed to think about other people: internal operations users, external press releases users, website users. Usually when this happens, there are two factions: the founders and leaders who urge the change of the product; and the engineers and designers who create the product.
This is the dilemma that product managers often encounter. Jackson's experience is more profound than anyone else's. He was a product manager for Gmail at Goolge, a product manager for the Facebook News Feed, and now he's starting his own company, Cover, to solve puzzles with many of the biggest names in tech. If you're wondering who has a good balance of interests, it's Jackson .
After these experiences, Jackson came up with very specific techniques for product managers to effectively manage teams. He begins the presentation with the attributes of the new product, emphasizing that meeting with founders and cross-functional stakeholders is a top priority .
Product Management Founders Meeting
There’s a reason product managers prepare for such meetings, and there’s a reason you often see their names at new product launches. They are the heart of the project, and all of them will do things the way they want .
Jackson says, “ It’s the PM’s job to prepare for the meeting. You want the engineers to spend time writing code, and at the same time, you need to be 100% representative of your team. That means sharing your PowerPoint before the meeting, sharing the synopsis, so they’ll get the hang of it. information and have a detailed understanding of the matter .”
Rule 1: Does your team trust you to speak on their behalf.
In this case, Jackson has a lot of other rules - especially useful for PMs across industries.
- Familiarize yourself with the current situation: know who are the key people, what key things they are doing, and why they are arranged this way. You should also know who you are competing with.
- From the nitty gritty to the big picture: "You should clearly know the strategy at the top level of a product, but also be able to explain why a particular UI element is set up the way it is."
- Be courageous but not self-promotion: praise the team. Give honor generously to others. Credit your successes to your team and your failures to yourself.
- Be an influencer, not an authority: Obviously, you're not as authoritative as the founder, and you probably don't have as much authority as the engineer you work with. Your job is to be a good communicator and make things easier for people. Jackson says: "Test a new feature, write your first blog, make a mockup (your designers may think you're an amateur, but this mockup inspires them.), do something boring but useful. Things, keep pushing things forward.”
- Decision-Making: You may not be the one who makes the final decision, but it is your job to make sure you can. Your job is to get the right information to the right people.
In more detail, Jackson recommends reducing PPT presentations to 10-15 . Most of the time, they are emailed to the team unless the matter is very controversial. You should have as few meetings as possible.
Condensing the product preview into 10 PPTs was a challenge, but it forced us to present the project comprehensively and simply . “These meetings force you to string together what’s happening into a story. Allow everyone on the team to see the bright future of the project, the goals that need to be accomplished, the resources needed, etc. ” For specific stakeholders, you The most important thing is to understand their needs and what is important to them. Once you understand their value, you can speak "their language ". Founders focus on completely different things than operatives or marketers—even in the early stages. "Everyone sees it differently. How does founder Larry or Zuck want to understand the user experience of the product? Why is it strategically important? Operations and legal people want to know how difficult is it to support the product? How much do they ultimately need to provide? User service? Knowing your audience or communicating directly with your audience is a priority .”
For Jackson, the "multilingual" approach boils down to empathy -- something many product managers don't think of, but it's crucial. “As a product manager, you have to empathize with a lot of perspectives. You have to be the one who can communicate with anyone and keep talking .”
At the same time, you also want to make sure that there is enough time in the meeting for everyone to discuss issues and concerns in various areas. Jackson said: “ Usually, in an open discussion, you are interrupted right away, but you should be actively involved in other people’s discussions. This will lead to a lot of good questions and perspectives. However, since founders generally You may also be biased by their thinking in the big picture ."
During his time at Google, Jackson wanted to design a new UI that would allow simultaneous search in Gmail, Calendar, and Docs. "Larry suggested that we go a step further, thinking that we could continuously implement optical character recognition across the entire computer screen so that people could easily search on the computer and find out what they've seen before. It's a good idea, but this technology is very different from The technology we have right now doesn't matter and it's 10 times harder than what we have right now. The same conversation, for us, we think it's beyond the scope of our team; but for Larry, with these ideas , companies can make amazing products like driverless cars.”
Jackson advises: Let yourself get off track for a while, but not too far. “ If they give some detailed advice and you don’t agree with it, try to understand the spirit of the advice. Sometimes you strongly disagree with the advice, but you agree with the higher-level goals. At the same time, the founders will let you It’s a challenge to the team, and in the long run, if you think further, you’ll end up with good results .”
If the founders seem to be making a decision. Jackson will directly ask the truth: "Has it been decided yet?" Then clarify the next action: " We will do it according to your ideas, and then communicate with you the progress ."
It is important that in a meeting, agree to a decision only after you have thought it through and believe that your team is competent . “Typically, founders come up with new ideas in meetings and everyone nods. Decisions are made in a hurry, and later you realize it’s a 'big hole' or it's not in the It was so influential in the meeting. The best way is to let them know which general direction you agree with them, but decide the details yourself .”
Jackson joined the Gmail team for the first time in 2007, the first time an email service provider offered IMAP support for free. Other companies like Yahoo, Hotmail, and others offer this service as part of their value-added programs. Google's executive team had problems with how to proceed. Meanwhile, Gmail's lead engineer was drawn to the iPhone's launch event. He wants to make the users of the product have a better experience on the platform. IMAP will sync users' phones and desktops, apply tags and archive information, so everything is centered around this strategy.
"But we still don't know if it's going to be free," Jackson said. "That would mean letting Gmail users use the service and not see any ads, so we're paying for their storage with the cost, but Larry and Sergey argue that It should be free. Their reasoning is that if people like Gmail on their phones, they will use the service more fully, and there will be more valuable impact on users who like Gmail."
Jackson and his team investigated, and there is no doubt that this strategy will be expensive. But Brin and Page say, "We're going to do it anyway." Now, the decision has paid off, and it's clear that the move is the right move. The decision even pushes competition for mail services, offering free IMAP and increasing their storage space. This is a really good move!
The product manager's job is to be able to clearly distinguish between the things the leader cares about and the low-priority and random thoughts . People are not going to come forward and talk to you about these things differently. "This thing could be technical or something completely different from PR, sales. As a PM, you need to know about these things, but the best thing you can do is 'give me a moment and let me think about it. '"
To make stakeholders aware that you considered their feelings, Jackson recommends repeating the most important items, decisions, and follow-up commitments at the end of the meeting .
In the meeting, there should be no misunderstanding, even if only one person has a different conclusion, but also to the root.
Many product managers leave the meeting room stressed about a new project, but they must present it to the team in a coherent manner. Jackson suggests changing that mindset. “ Use the founders’ decisions to solve things. Use the founders’ decisions to motivate your team, and your team needs your support. Often, people stay at the company because they respect the founder.”
encourage your team
If meeting the needs of founders is a major part of PM work, a more critical part is motivating and coordinating designers and engineers to achieve company goals. If Jackson had one piece of advice for you, it would be this: Motivate your team and tell a good story. Then break it down into executable plans.
Jackson is a motivator who is proficient with Photoshop, with a particular emphasis on showing the team what needs to be done before creating a product, and what it would ideally be like . PM metrics may be related to team progress and velocity, but there is a good way and a bad way to get there.
"I like to create some mockups and then have a discussion with the designer to show him what the product will look like. Then start telling the story. For example, when we do a News Feed redesign, I'd say 'News Feed' comes out Problem, and it's been a problem for years. When people swipe down, as soon as they see an ad, they close Facebook and do something else. Wouldn't it be great if News Feed looked like this? Then I Would show them my model, 'You see a lot of pages you follow, links your friends share, photos your friends like. If we could make that better, wouldn't people look at it every day? Twice this ad? If that's the case, they'll spend twice as long on the site. Others will see it twice, so we'll have double the revenue.' That's a story the team can understand. "
Essentially, you're trying to get people to see things in your shoes and say, "Great. Users will love it. Your friends and family will love it. And it's good for the company." But this This strategy responds differently to everyone, and Jackson found this statement more motivating for engineers, possibly because they have a more isolated conception of the project. He said: " I think engineers are interested in the future. They can be engineers because they want to create the future. So show them what the future looks like and get them excited about what the future will look like. If they're excited. Then they'll work on it. work to make it a reality .”
Of course, this is the big picture. When you break things down into small details, how do you make sure people are still excited about it? In this regard, Jackson provides some very detailed suggestions:
- Milestones: Set small milestones at work, ideally two weeks . It is impossible for the engineering team to have a detailed six-month roadmap, because that would certainly not be precise. In a two-week period, people can define what they're going to do this week and the next, and they're in complete control. At the same time, they have plenty of time to keep improving and keep improving. "At Gmail, we often have meetings on the last Friday of two weeks so people can show they've got things done, and two weeks have done enough to wow you. "
- Keep meetings short and focused: There are generally two types of meetings: decision-making meetings and progress-update meetings . Both types of meetings should be kept as concise as possible, involving only the relevant people. Status update meetings should revolve around the tasks people accomplish. “ Demos are the best way to do it. Demos shouldn’t be too demanding and don’t need a lot of polish so people don’t worry that they’re showing the product too soon. Applaud the other person and create a sense that engineers can’t wait to talk to each other. The environment where people share their work.”
- Be an umbrella, not a funnel: you have to make the most of your time and that of your team . As a PM, you will always be in a meeting state. During the meeting, the leader may bluntly say that the product is not good, and the team needs to do a better job. " That's when you learn to be thick-skinned and learn how to turn those critical words into motivation ."
- Think through the scenarios: Engineers often have to think about all scenarios in all scenarios, but PMs and designers would appreciate if they could help them think through the problem.
- The great thing about designers and engineers working together is that they can make each other more motivated and produce more stuff. Engineers are inspired by the creativity and ideas of designers, and designers are motivated when they see what they imagined come to life. "If you want both designers and engineers to get the most out of it, you should have them working side by side," Jackson said. " Both groups will be driven by the high-level goals of the new product. After they understand the high-level goals, the design will be developed." Iterate ."
To increase productivity, Jackson recommends pairing design-conscious engineers with designers . If the engineer can quickly nail down some details in the first place, this is the most exciting for the designer, and they will work harder to "please" the engineer.
Jackson saw this phenomenon firsthand when he worked on Facebook's "school team." The project started with just one designer and two engineers. They arranged for a small conference room and chose to post one by one on the university campus. In the conference room, they can see what each other is doing and ask questions. On the whiteboard, they write high-level goals on one side and specific strategies on the other. Because of the short iteration cycles and tangible milestones, they accomplish their goals every week.
Jackson said: "This week, the product is getting better and better, we can see what is good and what needs to be improved, and we will make some necessary changes before going to the next campus. We found that no one would click the button and say 'the Facebook team is on campus now.' So we decided to ask them questions like which dorm did you live in? What events did you attend? Suddenly everyone started joining our campus team. . . We were able to have this effect because the four of us worked so closely together that we could talk to each other and make changes.”
When engineers are motivated, even if they have a problem they can't solve, they say, "We can solve this problem."
As a product manager, to make the most of this passion, you should reward engineers who solve hard problems. “You look forward to the next Friday meeting where one of your engineers can show the demo to the team, and you say: 'Look at how he did it. He solved a problem that's been bugging us all week.' Sometimes you need to Encourage them to do it so they will have a good feeling too."
The logic behind this is the same as Google's practice of "seeing the consequences" (developing teams using the product they are working on). Many big tech companies now test new products and features internally before releasing them. At this point, both product managers and engineers have the opportunity to work on bugs and then collect feedback. But, according to Jackson, doing so also has an important role: " You'll show your friends and family that, as a product manager or engineer, our greatest joy is to create something that everyone will use and love. stuff ."
When a product is released, if one engineer on the team takes it apart, another engineer will immediately recognize it and fix it. Whether it's at Google or Facebook, there's going to be a system in place so everyone understands how the product is made at each stage. In a way, this repair-creation cycle process makes the product more proud, which makes the product even better. When you feel good about a product you use every day, you feel like it's a good time to get exposure to external users. " Being recognized by peers, or recognized by people we look up to, is the main thing that keeps us going, " Jackson said .
This all sounds great, but for the most part, PMs need to be well-designed, constantly motivating team members, giving them the tools they need, and not bogging down team members and the project. This expectation is especially strong—especially when team members encounter bottlenecks .
"As a product manager, there are a lot of situations where I think, 'Oh my God, this engineer could make models and specs, but they're waiting for me to do them,'" Jackson said. "You have to constantly judge who's slowing down the project. process. I think it's an effective way to use your time as a product manager. Even if you don't hit a bottleneck now, it might be next week.'"
I don't think the PM's job is to have ideas for every aspect of the product, I think PMs should keep the team of engineers and designers moving at full speed.
There are many ways Jackson can keep the team moving at this pace. " You have to get everything in order or you're not a good product manager, " he declared .
- You need to develop a team task list , this is better than a simple bug system. Ideally, this to-do list should be large, written on a whiteboard, and accessible to everyone.
- Regarding mail, you have to be a "ninja" level expert . At Facebook and Google, PMs receive about 500 emails a day, but the key is to respond. " Engineers and designers are bad at using email, but PMs must be good at handling email ."
- Maintain your own to-do list and include it in your affiliated lists: today, this week, etc. Don't silently drop tasks to your team members.
The hallmark of a good PM
So how do you know if you're doing the right thing? After all, when you look back and compare the product identified before and the final product, you will feel that the PM is not doing much work. In most cases, this is a good sign.
Communication skills are the most important. Jackson said, “The biggest hallmark is that founders will email you directly without cc’ing someone else. They trust you to follow through, and they know your team trusts you to be a great conduit for information. Excellent A hallmark of a PM is that when they are talking, everyone else is quiet. Many PMs talk a lot, spend their time on unimportant things, and then people start interrupting them. If a PM is talking , everyone else stops talking and starts listening, and you'll find he's a good PM ."
If the best engineer on the team finds you absent, you are a good PM. You want them to ask, "If the PM were there, what would he do? What would he say?" You want the best people to feel that your point of view has value and that you have the technical prowess to make something meaningful .
Finally, a good PM should have a very clear product vision. Jackson acknowledged that this was not a necessary requirement. Well-organized organization, infrastructure, and a good mindset can get you far. But in order to get to the next step, you need to have an instinctive intuition about what makes a product good or bad.
“In every company, there are a lot of people who have a great sense of the product, usually the founders, senior engineers, product owners. But if you find a product manager who has a certain amount of driving force in product decisions, And when you're talking with these guys, you can think of him as a good product manager ."
Taken from: https://36kr.com/p/5041380.html