Have you heard? My new book Continuous Discovery Habits is now available. Get the product trio's guide to a structured and sustainable approach to continuous discovery. This post is part of a series about making better product decisions.
Do you ever find yourself making snap decisions?
An engineer asks you for more detail on how a feature should work. You hadn’t considered that specific use case before. So you come up with a solution off the top of your head. Or maybe a sales rep requests a feature and you respond with your gut instinct.
Too often, product teams focus their energies on being the deciders and not on communicating the process by which decisions will be made. But as product professionals, so much of our success depends on our relationships with the other groups in our organization. We can’t afford to just be deciders. We need to make sure that our colleagues understand how and why we make the decisions that we do.
Procedural justice refers to the process by which decisions are made and whether or not it is perceived to be fair. The perception of procedural fairness can go a long way in driving acceptance of decisions. Research suggests that in many situations, people will accept a decision, even if they disagree with it, if they perceive the process by which the decision was made to be fair.
So even though we probably encounter the above scenarios on a daily basis, it’s important that we slow down and consider our process, and the perception of our process for making decisions.The Heath brothers, in Decisive make the following recommendations for ensuring that the decision process is perceived as fair.
Give people a chance to be heard.
First and foremost, make sure that people have an opportunity to be heard. More often than not, people don’t need to get their way. They just need to know that they are being heard.
Listen
Don’t just give people an outlet. But truly listen. Don’t argue. Don’t explain why their suggestion can’t work. Just listen. As Stephen Covey advised, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”
Rely on Accurate Information
Make sure that you are using accurate information to inform your decisions. Give people a chance to question the information itself. The more people trust the information, the more likely they will accept the outcome.
Be Consistent
If you rely on key principles to justify your decisions, then apply them consistently, not just when they support your own opinions.
Avoid Bias and Self-Interest
Product isn’t about you and what you think. It’s your job to synthesize the needs of the user / customer with the needs of the business. Opinion has no place in this process. Don’t compromise your position by letting your biases and self-interest interfere with your ability to do your job.
Be Transparent
Explain how and why you made the decision that you did. Not everyone is going to agree with the outcome, but the more that they agree with the process for making the decision, the more harmony you’ll create. Expose the process. Let people pick it apart. It will only make the process better and your job easier.
What do you do to ensure procedural justice? Please share in the comments.
This post is part of a series about making better product decisions.
Good stuff. The most effective product leaders facilitate a process that instills a sense of product ownership in the entire team. While great product managers do inform the process with market knowledge and principles, they also actively involve others on the team in making product decisions.