How to Make Hard Decisions
Making tough decisions is messy—no perfect answers, just trade-offs and courage. Here’s how to keep moving forward without letting complexity hold you back.
Insights and advice from the deeper layers of product leadership
Making tough decisions is messy—no perfect answers, just trade-offs and courage. Here’s how to keep moving forward without letting complexity hold you back.
Product management can be overwhelming, with endless to-do lists and constant demands. To thrive, you need more than just getting by. It’s about taking control of your time. Here is a simple, proven way to prioritize, reduce stress, and focus on what really matters.
Explaining the ‘why’ when asking for something is important both in personal and work relationships. In product leadership, clear context and purpose make all the difference, building trust and understanding across teams. Here’s a guide to making sure your ‘why’ is as clear as your request.
We all make mistakes—some help us grow, while others can chip away at trust and success. Here’s how to recognize which mistakes you can afford to make, which ones you can’t, and find the right balance in product management.
Getting your product team to take full ownership can feel like an uphill battle. It’s not just about giving instructions but about changing mindsets. Here’s how to help your team step up, take charge, and own the outcomes—inside and outside their usual boundaries.
There is no way to succeed without talking to customers. But whenever I say that, people bring up the famous quote about ‘faster horses.’ Whether the quote itself is authentic or not, you shouldn’t take it as an excuse not to talk to your customers. Instead, you should know how to do so and what to ask. Here are the concepts that you need to be aware of.
Product leaders and CEOs often see things differently. That’s how it should be. But many product leaders take it personally, and instead of partnering with their CEOs they try to minimize the interference. Here is what you really need to do when you feel they don’t get it.
We all know that good planning starts top-down by understanding the strategy and drawing your actions from it. Unfortunately, for various reasons, it’s not always possible to do so. Sometimes, you need to plan bottom-up, but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Here is how to ensure you don’t remain at the bottom, even if you can’t start at the top.
Outcome-based roadmaps are considered the best practice; however, they are not as common as you would expect. While the idea is nice, implementation is much trickier, and many companies revert to simple feature stacking instead. Here are three reasons not to give up and stick to the important principle of working with outcomes.
Most candidates hate home assignments. They view them as a chore, an unfair or unnecessary request from the potential employer. But it doesn’t have to be this way. While home assignments are a lot to take in, they can also give you an opportunity to shine and make sure the job is right for you. Here’s how.
Home assignments are a hot topic in the product management community these days. Candidates complain, and some recruiters overuse or even abuse them. If you still want to use them (and I think you should), here are five ground rules for doing it right.
Product people attend meetings day in and day out. But many approach meetings passively—attending because it’s expected, sharing updates, or responding to questions. Effective meetings though are far from spontaneous. A well-prepared leader uses every meeting as a strategic tool to influence outcomes, build momentum, and clarify direction. Preparation is key to achieving this. Here’s a simple guide to mastering this art.
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
cookielawinfo-checkbox-advertisement | 1 year | Set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin, this cookie records the user consent for the cookies in the "Advertisement" category. |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional | 11 months | The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-non-necessary | 1 year | GDPR Cookie Consent plugin sets this cookie to record the user consent for the cookies in the "Necessary" category. |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. |
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance | 11 months | This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". |
CookieLawInfoConsent | 1 year | CookieYes sets this cookie to record the default button state of the corresponding category and the status of CCPA. It works only in coordination with the primary cookie. |
elementor | never | The website's WordPress theme uses this cookie. It allows the website owner to implement or change the website's content in real-time. |
viewed_cookie_policy | 11 months | The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
_hjAbsoluteSessionInProgress | 30 minutes | Hotjar sets this cookie to detect a user's first pageview session, which is a True/False flag set by the cookie. |
li_gc | 5 months 27 days | Linkedin set this cookie for storing visitor's consent regarding using cookies for non-essential purposes. |
lidc | 1 day | LinkedIn sets the lidc cookie to facilitate data center selection. |
UserMatchHistory | 1 month | LinkedIn sets this cookie for LinkedIn Ads ID syncing. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
_gat | 1 minute | Google Universal Analytics sets this cookie to restrain request rate and thus limit data collection on high-traffic sites. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
_fbp | 3 months | Facebook sets this cookie to display advertisements when either on Facebook or on a digital platform powered by Facebook advertising after visiting the website. |
_ga | 1 year 1 month 4 days | Google Analytics sets this cookie to calculate visitor, session and campaign data and track site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookie stores information anonymously and assigns a randomly generated number to recognise unique visitors. |
_ga_* | 1 year 1 month 4 days | Google Analytics sets this cookie to store and count page views. |
_gcl_au | 3 months | Google Tag Manager sets the cookie to experiment advertisement efficiency of websites using their services. |
_gid | 1 day | Google Analytics sets this cookie to store information on how visitors use a website while also creating an analytics report of the website's performance. Some of the collected data includes the number of visitors, their source, and the pages they visit anonymously. |
_hjFirstSeen | 30 minutes | Hotjar sets this cookie to identify a new user’s first session. It stores the true/false value, indicating whether it was the first time Hotjar saw this user. |
AnalyticsSyncHistory | 1 month | Linkedin set this cookie to store information about the time a sync took place with the lms_analytics cookie. |
CONSENT | 2 years | YouTube sets this cookie via embedded YouTube videos and registers anonymous statistical data. |
ln_or | 1 day | Linkedin sets this cookie to registers statistical data on users' behaviour on the website for internal analytics. |
outbrain_cid_fetch | 5 minutes | Outbrain set this cookie to gather information about how users navigate and behave on a website. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
bcookie | 1 year | LinkedIn sets this cookie from LinkedIn share buttons and ad tags to recognize browser IDs. |
bscookie | 1 year | LinkedIn sets this cookie to store performed actions on the website. |
li_sugr | 3 months | LinkedIn sets this cookie to collect user behaviour data to optimise the website and make advertisements on the website more relevant. |
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE | 5 months 27 days | YouTube sets this cookie to measure bandwidth, determining whether the user gets the new or old player interface. |
YSC | session | Youtube sets this cookie to track the views of embedded videos on Youtube pages. |
yt-remote-connected-devices | never | YouTube sets this cookie to store the user's video preferences using embedded YouTube videos. |
yt-remote-device-id | never | YouTube sets this cookie to store the user's video preferences using embedded YouTube videos. |
Cookie | Duration | Description |
---|---|---|
_hjIncludedInSessionSample_1994967 | 2 minutes | Description is currently not available. |
_hjSession_1994967 | 30 minutes | Description is currently not available. |
_hjSessionUser_1994967 | 1 year | Description is currently not available. |