Managing Up, Part 2: Navigating Directional Clarity
Hello there, lovely product people! I wanted to share a quick note to let you know that this article is a little different from what I usually share here. While my blog typically highlights work I’ve already done (e.g. frameworks I’ve developed, podcasts or talks I’ve given, clients I’ve worked with), this post actually represents a work in progress. I’m in the midst of developing a talk and I wanted to share some of the content I’ve been working on. In other words, this is far from polished.
I hope sharing some of my thoughts here will help me refine what I’d like to say in my talk. And if you have any feedback on any of the content here—please don’t hesitate to let me know by sending me an email at info@petra-wille.de.
In the first post in this series, I covered why managing up is an important topic, introduced the ten boss responsibilities and the ships vs. shipyard metaphor, and explained why your boss might be struggling in these areas. Want to read that post? You can find it here.
In this post, we’ll be looking at one specific situation when you might need more support from your boss and I’ll share some tips and tricks for you to try out.
The situation: You’re having a hard time saying no
If you’re struggling to say no to different requests that come your way, this is often an indication that you’re lacking directional clarity. When your boss hasn’t clearly communicated which criteria (e.g. goals or strategic pillars) you should be using to prioritize, then you can easily be tempted to say yes to things that aren’t really aligned with your strategy just to try to make others happy.
How do you know if this is you? Here are some symptoms you might be experiencing:
You struggle to say no to things like feature requests, meetings, and new initiatives
You are super busy and you feel like a jack of all trades doing too many things in parallel
The stuff you do has little to no impact
Prioritization and decision-making for you and your team is difficult if not impossible
If this is you, you might want to ask yourself: Do I experience these things due to a lack of directional clarity? Would better goals or a clearer strategic narrative help me say no to more things?
If this is the case, here are some things you could try:
If there already is a product strategy but it just hasn’t been communicated throughout your company, your leader could go on a “tour” to share this strategy with everyone. However, they might not yet be aware that this could be a good idea. So you might want to share this situation and bring your observation to their attention. Make sure you also share your concern, the negative impact it might have if they don’t take action. By the way, this SBI (situation/behavior/impact) framework is something I outline in my book STRONG Product People. It’s especially useful if you’re not used to giving feedback and feel concerned about how to give it to your boss. Here’s how you might approach this type of conversation:
Situation: “In our recent team meeting, I noticed that several team members were unclear about our product strategy. This lack of clarity was evident when multiple colleagues asked questions about our priorities and goals for the next quarter.”
Behavior: “It appears that our product strategy has not been effectively communicated throughout the company. While the strategy is well-developed and provides clear direction, it hasn’t been shared widely, leaving team members uncertain about our focus and priorities.”
Impact: “As a result, team members are struggling to make informed decisions and prioritize their tasks. This confusion has led to misaligned efforts and has slowed down our progress on key initiatives. If this situation continues, we risk not meeting our targets and delivering a coherent product experience to our users.”
Suggestion: “I believe it would be highly beneficial if you could go on a ‘tour’ to share and communicate our product strategy with everyone in the company. This could involve presenting at departmental meetings, holding Q&A sessions, and ensuring that all teams have access to the strategy document. This approach would help align everyone’s efforts and ensure that we are all working towards the same goals.”
If there is no product strategy at all, it’s possible your boss was never asked to create one and/or doesn’t know how. In this case, you can offer to help by doing some research (check out books, talks, and other resources on how to create a product strategy) and sharing what you learn.
A brief aside: How to help your boss learn something new
If you want your boss to learn something new, one part of that learning process involves exposing them to books, podcasts, etc. and convincing them to consume this content, but you also need to get them to apply it, which is another task.
Here are a few ideas to consider:
Align with organizational goals and personal development: Try to find out what motivates your boss. How are they rewarded? Point out how they would have personal and professional benefits, such as improving their leadership skills, staying ahead of industry trends, or enhancing their professional reputation by looking into this. Can you align your recommendation/ask with that?
Create a small, engaging group activity: Sometimes you can create a bit of peer pressure by making a learning activity a group activity. So consider that.
Actively ask them if you can help support them by doing some research on the topic like finding potential resources or being a sparring partner in the thought creation process. Sometimes it’s even helpful if you take on some of the meeting or workshop logistics like inviting stakeholders for a strategy review.
Tools that can help you get aligned on direction
To spare you some research, I’m sharing some of the tools and frameworks that I use in my product leadership coaching sessions. One tool you might find to be a helpful resource in clarity conversations with your boss is the alignment spectrum, a simple 2x2 that Emily Tate shared at Mind the Product Engage. One axis shows where the team or company is headed with all their initiatives: moving in different directions vs. the same direction and the other axis shows how well the team is oriented: the team knows why they are doing what they are doing or the team doesn’t know why.
You can show this diagram to your boss and explain where you currently are and why this is causing trouble with your decision-making.
Another tool you might find beneficial is Martin Eriksson’s Decision Stack. (I’ve written more about how I use the Decision Stack with product leaders here, so you might want to check out that article and pass it along to your boss.) Once you’ve helped your boss understand that alignment is missing this will help you get an idea where more clarity is needed. So you could use this drawing in a session with your boss to assess with them which of these layers are missing.
This is how a decision stack for a 2-product company would look like. (The simple yet effective visualization used here was initially introduced by Tobias Freudenreich)
I also have a simple image that illustrates the various steps of communicating strategic direction—it’s not just about creating a strategy document, but it also needs to be shared, lived, and refined. This is particularly helpful if there IS a strategy but it is not widely used. Then you can convince your boss to brainstorm some ideas with you on how steps 2 and 3—sharing and living up to the strategy—could be improved.
And in case there is a vision and/or strategy document but you are not sure it contains all the elements of a good strategy, you could use this template to start writing down some elements that, once defined, would help you and your team make better product decisions on behalf of the company and the users out there.
My recommended reading list (for you or your boss), includes books like Outcomes Over Output, Product Direction, Good Strategy Bad Strategy, and my own STRONG Product People.
Finally, I’d like to share this inspiring example from one of my coaching clients, Matthew Arnold, who created a comic version of his product strategy. I think this is really powerful because it shows how if you have a strategy but it’s not being shared widely, considering a different and more easily accessible format could be a way to get your message to spread through your organization. My suggestion for you: Make note of this since it’s an easy example to share with your boss or the wider product org.
To recap: Generally, we struggle to say no when we’re lacking strategic direction or clear goals. Once our strategy has been well defined, it’s much easier for us to know where we should be focusing our attention.
There are a few key things you can do to help your boss: First, identify the problem. In this case, it’s that directional clarity is the boss competency that’s missing. Let them know what you are struggling with, which pieces you think are missing (vision, strategy, goals, principles), and that you think it’s their responsibility to solve this—or at least help you with it.
In the next post, we’ll be looking at another area where many product leaders (and therefore product managers) are struggling—with conflict with other people and teams—and what you can do to handle that particular situation.