The 90% Product Management Rule
I’m a man of accomplishments, I love to clear the stage, finish everything off my plate and check check check all of my ‘to do’ lists.
This is why I rarely play RPG games — they have too many submissions to finish and it distracts me from the main story. This is why I love playing linear games — the goal is clear and I’ll do whatever it takes to get to it.
During my first year at Fiverr, I tried to be that RPG player, I sat with my team every 3 months, we built up a queue of tasks that we thought were important enough to deal with, and cleared them one by one. Whenever we got to the last checkbox, we felt proud and had a good feeling, until I understood that the sum of all of our tasks moved the needle just an inch. We were focused on clearing the stage so much that we didn’t notice that we forgot to progress on the main storyline.
The second-year gave us a huge punch in the face when we were forced to think big. We understood that we must take big leaps forward and maybe even change the whole story — because if we didn’t we were playing in a very small square.
So we’ve changed the story.
Your Number One Blocker
Let’s imagine you’re waking up (late!) one morning to the sound of running water. You’re going to the kitchen just to find your faucet on the floor and lots of water all over the place, ruining your paper bags of groceries, seeping to your wooden closets. You’re in a hurry for a super important boss/client meeting at work and right now you’re in your PJs, looking at all of this mess and thinking “oh God, what am I doing now?”
Your goal is to get to the meeting, because, let’s face it, nobody at work cares about your stupid kitchen. But you obviously can’t leave the situation as it is or you won’t have any kitchen left by the end of the day.
This is where you need to remember this first rule:
90% of your product blockers reside in one giant issue.
Back to the story, let’s try and break it:
- You need to pick your groceries up off the floor
- You need to move all the furniture that may be in the way
- You need to close the main faucet of the apartment
- You need to get a mop and a bucket and clear the water
- You need to open the windows and let the air dry everything
Do all of these to-dos and you’ll be able to come back to a dry and tidy apartment. Do all of these and you’ll surely miss your meeting. This is the part where you need to figure out which one of your problems is the 90%. It’s like prioritizing but instead of stacking all of the tasks one after the other, you point on a single, major one and deal with it.
In our little example, things are really obvious (you can’t move an inch until you somehow stop the running water) but in the real product life, the answer is often vague. There’s no magic formula, you need to think about the users, the business, the future and isolate the 90%.
Let me emphasize: The first rule is all about identifying the biggest blocker. Not solving it. Everyone can point to problems, but it’s your job to understand which is the biggest one. Don’t think about a solution before you have identified the blocker.
Your Number One Solution
Congratulations! You figured it all out. You now know which blocker is the 90% and all that’s left is to actually do something and solve it.
Back to the story: Your Lyft ride is on its way to take you to the meeting, your kitchen is leaking like crazy and the main faucet is somewhere in the building basement, locked. The only one who has the key is the gardener who will probably come to work in an hour.
Again, let’s break it down:
- You can wait an hour for the gardener to arrive while you fill buckets upon buckets of water and drain them into the toilet
- You can go to the nearest store, buy another faucet and replace yours
- You can drink all of the water until you drop dead and the police will find you in a stinky apartment
Some solutions will take too long, some will be too complex and some will simply get you nowhere. There’ll also probably be lots of other ideas that will be really great and it’s up to you to figure out which one is the simplest, quickest and most efficient way to solve the blocker.
The solution won’t solve all of your blockers but it should solve at least 90% of it and be clearing 90% of it will make the problem way smaller which will enable you to move forward to your next product phase.
People tend to try and create that one-absolute-perfect solution, but it’s impossible because there’s never a perfect solution, and with every solution you deliver, you will probably create a dozen more new problems. Don’t believe me? Just try and explain your solution to other people and count the number of “yes…that’s a great idea…..but….have you thought about….?”
There’s always something that you haven’t thought about, always a crack in your big plan — so don’t try to chase the inevitable and stick with the second rule:
Focus on the 90% — solve a major part of your blocker and watch as it goes down your priority ladder.
In the End
As a product manager, your every day should spin around making sure you understand the cause of 90% of your blocker and that you and your team are delivering 90% of the solution.
I understand that it’s hard and you may feel like you’re always doing only part of your job but trust me, the sooner you face it, the faster you’ll move — issues will never stop, your product is never completed and there is no perfect solution. Understand this and you’ll move faster than ever before, and feel way more satisfied with what you do.
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