PM Mental models - Part 1

How to supercharge your decision making and execution skills

Mental models have recently gained a lot of popularity in the PM community. Wikipedia defines a mental model as an explanation of someone's thought process about how something works in the real world. Mental models are important as they help you plan and predict future actions within a system. In this article we have picked 5 mental models that we have recently used as Product Managers to identify and prioritize opportunities and to ship customer value faster.  

 👽🤖 Multiplying by Zero

Any number multiplied by zero is zero. This is true in the mathematical world as also in the product development world. Failure in a critical area of a system can negate heroic efforts in all the other areas combined. As such identifying and prioritizing fixing such points of failure is crucial. Say you are the product manager for a Enterprise SAAS mobile application and have recently prioritized your product backlog for the quarter. One day you notice a lot of customer complaints that they cannot login to the app to use it. Fixing this must take priority over any other feature on your backlog. If a user cannot log into your product, none of the product innovations being worked on matter. 

🙂 🙃 Problem Inversion

The German mathematician Carl Jacobi followed a strategy of man muss immer umkehren translated as “invert, always invert. The idea behind this mental model is that problem inversion fuels creative thinking and can help you find new solutions to an identified problem. For example: Let’s say you are trying to get more adoption for your product which is a mobile app, instead of asking “How do I get more users to download this”, invert it to “What are all the reasons users may not download the app” to find more creative solutions. 

🔧🔨 Forcing Function

“A forcing function is any task, activity or event that forces you to take action and produce a result.” Having a forcing function means you have some skin in the game i.e. there might be consequences of not completing the task.  These consequences need not necessarily be dire, sometimes it can just be losing face. Forcing functions often take the form of pre-scheduled calendar events. As a product manager you can use this to your advantage to enable your team stay focused on what matters the most. A daily stand-up ensures that all assigned tasks for the day are completed before the next stand-up. Similarly weekly demo days either for the team or for leadership can help increase development velocity. Product milestone planning is another forcing function where you break down a large scope and create a timeline to track progress towards the larger goal. 

🚪🚪One-way doors vs two-way doors

There are two types of decisions — two-way doors, which are reversible and can be easily changed later, and one-way doors, which are irreversible and difficult to change. If a decision is reversible, we can make it fast and without perfect information. If a decision is irreversible, we better slow down the decision-making process and ensure that we consider ample information and understand the problem as thoroughly as we can. Let’s say you want to watch a Netflix movie. You can look up the movie review and even though it’s incomplete information, you can start watching the movie. You always have the option to switch it off if you don’t like it. Compare this to buying a house which is a difficult to change decision with significant monetary implications. You might want to do a fair share of reflection on what you value combined with significant research about the locality, owner, realtor, financing options etc. 

🚴‍♂️ 🚴‍♀️ Bikeshedding

Cyril Northcote Parkinson proposed “The Law of Triviality” which led to coining of the term “bikeshedding”. He gives the example of a committee discussing a £10M nuclear reactor, a £350 bike shed, and a £21 coffee fund. The committee is unable to grasp the enormity of the nuclear reactor, and passes it quickly. In contrast, they spend forty five minutes on a bike shed as they can easily visualize it and end up with ways to save a small amount of money. Finally they spend hours discussing the coffee budget and plan to continue discussing in the next meeting. 

This phenomenon is seen in organizations everyday. How many times have you gone into an important review to get feedback on trivial aspects or spent significant time in a meeting debating over a minor issue. As a product manager you can help your team avoid bikeshedding by constantly asking the question “Are we utilizing our current resources effectively” and taking actions accordingly. In a meeting, you can time-box discussion of a minor issue or start with the most impactful problem to discuss. You can structure product reviews by categorizing feedback as major vs minor problem feedback. These tactics will help you get more done and ultimately get your product out of the door sooner.

We hope these mental models can help you prioritize product work and execute effectively. Leave a 😀 or 😐 in the comments below to let us know what you think about this article. Also, don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter to receive updates every week 📆 on more product learnings. Share it with your friends so that they can join us on this journey 🚀

Credits: Images via Unsplash, Wikipedia, Jeff Bezos Letter From 1997.