Don’t Ask For More Resources: Do More With What You Have!

Introduction

Instead of asking for more, focus on helping your team succeed. Ensure you align your goals with the team’s current capacity: this is the only way for you to lead the team and help each team member grow.

As a Product Manager, there is no way we can prioritize all the critical needs improvements and new ideas from our users, stakeholders, customers, family and friends.

We can have two attitudes when faced with too many projects and not enough resources to accomplish our dreams and product goals.

1. — You can ask for more resources; or
2. —  You do more while asking for less.

Let’s examine the consequence of asking for more:

1. — It will sap your mental energy. You will live in the future and pester stakeholders for more. Stakeholders will consider you as an immature product manager (leader) that is not in control of his/her team’s outcome.
2. — Your team will perceive you as never satisfied: you may even impose unreasonable scope and deadlines (the so-called death march) and lead your team members to burn-out and repetitive failures to execute and deliver value.
3. — Your team’s best interests and yours are not aligned. Your own goal is extrinsic: you want an even bigger (smarter, more senior, etc.) team. Because of this, you will focus your attention and efforts on these externalities. You will be unable to give your team the attention and care it needs to succeed.

Let’s examine the consequences of doing more and asking for less:

The mindset of doing more with less is essential for any leader including product managers. Instead of focusing on what you don’t have (larger team, more skilled team-members, simpler problem space, etc.) you focus on what you have (a great team, a big and hairy ambitious goal, a super-complex project, etc.) and work hard to optimize the outcome of your team. This will set you up for success:

1. — You will set ultra-realistic goals and deadlines and prioritize better. You will focus your attention on execution and make sure scope creep does not happen. Not under your watch.
2. — You will become laser-focused and very skilled at avoiding distractions and shielding the team from distractions. The team will notice, trust you more and help you reach your shared goals. You can only succeed if the team succeeds!
3. — Your stakeholders will be positively impressed by your ability to ship tremendous value with few resources.

Conclusion

It may be counter-intuitive to less experienced product managers but focusing on the team and embracing each members’ strengths and weaknesses (including your own) is the best way to have an impact. Embrace this fact and make it your mantra each time you interact with a team member.

Only once you will have a proven track record will you be trusted with additional scope. It will open up the world for you regarding product leadership opportunities, stakeholder trust and ultimately, team size.

Convinced? Please watch

Thanks

Thanks a lot to Cliff des Ligneris & Nicolas Lupien & Ramya Srinivasan for proofreading & super valuable feedback.

Feedback is a gift 🙏: Please do not hesitate to share your thoughtsts

• via the contact page form
• via a LinkedIn connexion or message