Product Managers Let Fires Burn
Have more impact by surveying, prioritizing and seeking leverage
I started on a new team last week. In my first one-on-ones, I always ask a version of āWhere can I help?ā. This helps me understand the team, space and challenges in the area. Iāve been getting a range of answers:
āCan you help us get this feature approved by legal?ā
āWe need the budget to run this test. Can you secure it?ā
āWeāre blocked by another team. Can you unblock?ā
When I first became a PM, I would leave these initial one-on-ones and immediately try to solve these problems. It made me feel like I was adding value early on.
But this was my fourth team at Facebook alone. This wasnāt my first rodeo š¤ . I knew that to best support a team, sometimes you need to let fires burn.
I first heard of this concept in an episode of Masters of Scale, a podcast by LinkedIn Founder and prolific investor Reid Hoffman. He makes an excellent point for startup founders:
If you spend all your time fighting fires, you may miss critical opportunities to build your business. Youāll be all reaction and no action.
This advice applies perfectly to the PM discipline. Iāll explain with an analogy and then some strategies to better fight fires.
š” Building a Neighbourhood
Imagine your team is building a set of houses. As you go to survey the houses, you notice that one is on fire. Someone outside asks you to put out the fire.
Oh no! You can spring to action and start pouring water on the fire. With some time and effort, you may get the fire to die down.Ā
Or instead, you can look at all of the other houses in the block. You may notice something.
Helping put out one fire is good. In fact, itās whatās expected of a junior PM.
But surveying the scene allows you to take two other paths:
š Prioritize
If one fire is especially concerning, start on that one. If you sequence things correctly, you can minimize damage.Ā
Note that not all fires need to be put out. As youāre firefighting, more pressing ones may spark up. Use judgment to know when to leave a small fire burning.
āļø Find leverage
Are there actions that can put out multiple fires with a single action? These are often found when problems share the same root causeāmore on this in a minute.
One high-leverage activity in this analogy: call the fire department.
Remember: your job as a PM isnāt to put out fires. Itās to build the product (in this analogy, the neighbourhood). Donāt get addicted to checking items off of a to-do list. Instead, look for the way to prevent the most damage across the whole area.
š§ÆTwo ways to fight fires
Reid Hoffmanās Prioritization Approach
In Masters of Scale, Reid shares a simple way to catalogue and prioritize your fires:
Assign probabilities for each of the risks becoming a reality
Assign vectors of possibility (is the probability of catastrophe going up or down?)
Whatās the damage if it hits?
Is it correctable?
From here, youāll find a scorecard of the most pressing fires to tackle.
Brian Cheskyās Simple Leverage Approach
Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky has a simple trick to fight the most fires at the same time:
Make a list of all tasks (be as exhaustive as possible)
Group them by their root cause
Then it becomes a game of leverage: ask yourself what one action can take care of these 3? What about these 5?
Do it again and again.
If you do this enough times, a list of 20 to-dos becomes a list of 3 actions that handle most of them.
š Summary
A good product manager firefights. They see a fire, they try to put it out.
A great product manager surveys, prioritizes and finds leverage to minimize destruction. Importantly, they let some fires burn while they tackle others.
Key points:
Donāt tackle the first problems you see. Survey the scene to see the whole picture.
Learn to be comfortable with a persistent problem.Ā
Prioritize the largest fires to tackle first. These are the ones that have the largest potential impact on your product.
Explore high-leverage actions that solve multiple problems in one go. Try the Brian Chesky method for a simple way to find leverage.
If youāre new to Product Life, subscribe below for concise, actionable and often surprising lessons for product managers.
Until next time,
P.S. if youāre enjoying Product Life, share it with some friends or drop a like by clicking the buttons below ⤵ļø
Loved your analogy to explain the concept in such lucid terms ! Definitely trying this at work.
Good read.
Particularly liked two things:
1. As a junior PM, ask the question where can I help in 1:1s.
2. The prioritization approach for firefighting.