Product Managers often get pulled in several directions and everything feels urgent. How do we work with our Exec team to help narrow down what we focus on?

One of the biggest challenges in product is managing urgency vs. impact. What’s helped me is shifting the conversation with execs from what feels urgent to what drives real outcomes. I usually anchor the conversation around: Company priorities and OKRs – framing work in terms of alignment, not just activity. Opportunity cost – making tradeoffs visible (“If we do this now, we delay X. Are we okay with that?”). Customer signal and data – even directional insights help ground decisions beyond urgen ...Read More

You need to educate the execs on those several directions. Often, folks assume that execs know (or remember) about those different directions. Be very clear and keep an ongoing education about the context of your situation - it is a part of your role to provide people with the right context and then remind them of it. A part of this is learning to say "no" to execs, which is an answer they are absolutely willing to hear - with a good justification, which describing the context often provides. Yo ...Read More

“Often” is an understatement, but I’m sure you are being diplomatic about it. This happens to most product managers across the board. It’s a major reason why PMs burn out. There are a few strategies for working with executives to help them understand this and narrow the focus of product managers. First, does your executive team actually see everything that you are working on? If not, educate them on everything that you have going on. Depending on the executive, they may have only paid attention ...Read More

If your company uses Objective Key Results (OKRs) or other goal setting framework; that is the best guide for a PM to leverage. Tie your product/projects to company priority and use that to guide what are urgent and important to prioritize. However, this alone is not going to be sufficient, as new things could emerge that you need to respond to - a competitor announcement, customer request, a new technology unlock etc. You need to have a framework to respond.  As a PM, I would encourage you to a ...Read More

This is the constant battle of product management! To work with your executive team and narrow the focus, you should: Always align on the goals - constantly make sure everyone understands and agrees on the strategic objectives. Write them down, so it’s easy to refer back. Make data-driven decisions - use qualitative and quantitative data to showcase how you are prioritizing projects with the most impact Keep an open mind - when new ideas surface, dig deeper to understand the “why” behind them. Y ...Read More

I have personally struggled with this many times in my career and most organizations do. The executives should be able to articulate the overall company goals and targets quarter by quarter (these are commonly OKRs or MBOs) This is the main method I like to rely on to have executives streamline priorities so the product organization can contribute meaningfully. Secondarily, as PM is it essential you identify the business case for your roadmap. What will be the business impact if you can successf ...Read More

I think first of all, we need to have our own opinions of relative priorities. There are so many frameworks out there on prioritization. For me, it always comes down to alignment with strategy, alignment with customer problems, and relative effort level. When communicating with executives, it’s important to bring our tradeoff decisions and rationale to them. Resources are not infinite so there is only so much a team can do. It’s pretty straightforward to force a conversation like: based on team ...Read More