Value is, ultimately, about risk
The life of a product manager is supposed to be pretty easy… We would figure out the thing that has the most (estimated) value, with a fair confidence level, maybe contrast that to the level of effort needed, and use a sort of cost of delay principle for prioritization.
If only was that easy, then we could just say…
Now, maybe there are contexts in which that can largely be the case. For instance, if you rather operate delivering services to others, even if that implies building products, but the value is agreed upon upfront, then ‘luck you’! Your focus can be primarily on delivery and making that a well-oiled machine.
How often that’s the case though? YMMV, but in my experience not a whole lot!
The work world I tend to live on, is much more probabilistic in nature, not to mention frequently with degrees of randomness…So in the words of Nassim Taleb, we can easily be “fooled by randomness”....
Just like Amazon has famously been in their AWS business case, which some speculate was originally estimated at “a few hundred million” in revenue, and now it’s close to reach 100B in revenue per year! They were lucky it went their way… often that’s not the case and we grossly overestimate the value of things.
Once we accept that reality, at least in my mind, there are a couple of fundamental implications which then further guide my actions knowing that context:
I will aim at doing what it takes to learn faster (whether we are wrong). And in my “book" that is why I like to promote focus and flow. Putting slightly differently, it is about grounding ourselves on the primary measure for progress, to use the agile manifesto language, being working software (at the hands of users), and that’s what obsessing with value practically means.
I will look at planning with an investment lens, which also implies taking into consideration the different risk profiles (and contrast that with our current appetite, in the temporal context) of options under prioritization.
And if you follow this for a while, you may know I like patterns because they are powerful in helping to simplify things (but hopefully not to be simplistic). So here’s another one:
All of that, fundamentally, does point out to the fact that, therefore, the best chance we have to focus on delivering value is, ultimately, to think about it with a risk management perspective.
Or put it simply: value is, ultimately, about risk!
From reducing the uncertainties of our options the best way we can, before moving ahead; to deliberately taking more or less risk depending on context and circumstances of the moment, to then also, finally, approach delivery with that same lens of reducing uncertainty by learning faster (whether we are wrong).
If of any worth to you (just like it is to me): that’s how I can describe in not too many lines what I might as well call “my philosophy” when it comes to work (and often also beyond).
I would even claim – at least has been my experience – that having that mind frame helps to deal with the inherent pressures of dealing with complex problems when so much at work still largely operates with an expectation coming still from a kind of deterministic thinking. It has been quite liberating to me, and I hope it may serve you well as well.
I’m not saying it makes things easy, but surely makes them simpler. And organizations that learn to sort of leverage and harvest that in productive ways are much more set for long-term success in the world we live in, IMHO. We can all start small by adopting it in things that are in our control and then figure out what to further ‘move the needle on’ and might be in our realm of influence.
No ‘what ifs’... Start always where you are…
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By Rodrigo Sperb, feel free to connect, I'm happy to engage and interact. I’m passionate about leading to achieve better outcomes with better ways of working. Can I help you?