When the fog rolls in, it is very hard to get your bearings. As a system's health deteriorates, its ability to identify and resolve challenges is progressively impaired. This kicks off a vicious cycle of declining health and increasing difficulty in diagnosing and addressing problems. Imagine a team that is struggling with high workloads and frequent production issues. Chances are the team will make less-good decisions, which will lead to more production issues, which will lead to more stress and impaired decision-making.
An interesting analogy to this is burnout - which is often more evident to folks around, and much less apparent to the person suffering through it. The “fog” just compounds.
One of my past PM roles was on a team working ourselves out of this problem. Took about 18 months to make meaningful change. Resonate deeply with your articulation; thanks for putting words to it so well, John.
I found we had to ground ourselves in the reality of the situation in order to get out. Sit there with the oars just floating, looking around thinking "shit, we really cannot see a thing right now" and really accept that. We owned too much, it was all in a state of disrepair, and we were being pulled left and right into incidents and issues so frequently we didn't have the time to think clearly.
Accepting it enabled us to recalibrate expectations. This was easy to do in terms of what's achievable - just keeping the lights on is a win. What was more challenging - but more impactful - was to recalibrate our expectations around risk. We had to raise the bar around how we respond to things that in a more healthy system you'd leap on straight away. Learning to override an intuitive response and ask "given our current context - can we live with this risk?" was what really created the space for us to think clearly & invest where it made sense to clear the fog.
Post-rationalisation might call it strategic implementation of short-term pessimism. When you really accept 'we're completely lost in the fog' you stop some of the knee-jerk responses and find yourself with a certain space to assess your options.
The other thing that'd be interesting to hear your thoughts on is the allure of this challenge for product folks. In my observations working your way out of this challenge doesn't seem alluring to most PMs - it's too easy to chase the new shiny opportunity instead. My personal experience of it was that it is one of the best challenges of product thinking out there. The growth that came from it and the outcomes I was a part of achieving are probably the most fulfilling in my career to date.
Look forward to reading your follow up thoughts on digging yourself out. Cheers
An interesting analogy to this is burnout - which is often more evident to folks around, and much less apparent to the person suffering through it. The “fog” just compounds.
One of my past PM roles was on a team working ourselves out of this problem. Took about 18 months to make meaningful change. Resonate deeply with your articulation; thanks for putting words to it so well, John.
I found we had to ground ourselves in the reality of the situation in order to get out. Sit there with the oars just floating, looking around thinking "shit, we really cannot see a thing right now" and really accept that. We owned too much, it was all in a state of disrepair, and we were being pulled left and right into incidents and issues so frequently we didn't have the time to think clearly.
Accepting it enabled us to recalibrate expectations. This was easy to do in terms of what's achievable - just keeping the lights on is a win. What was more challenging - but more impactful - was to recalibrate our expectations around risk. We had to raise the bar around how we respond to things that in a more healthy system you'd leap on straight away. Learning to override an intuitive response and ask "given our current context - can we live with this risk?" was what really created the space for us to think clearly & invest where it made sense to clear the fog.
Post-rationalisation might call it strategic implementation of short-term pessimism. When you really accept 'we're completely lost in the fog' you stop some of the knee-jerk responses and find yourself with a certain space to assess your options.
The other thing that'd be interesting to hear your thoughts on is the allure of this challenge for product folks. In my observations working your way out of this challenge doesn't seem alluring to most PMs - it's too easy to chase the new shiny opportunity instead. My personal experience of it was that it is one of the best challenges of product thinking out there. The growth that came from it and the outcomes I was a part of achieving are probably the most fulfilling in my career to date.
Look forward to reading your follow up thoughts on digging yourself out. Cheers
Extremely recognizable example of how a people in a system are overwelmed by... the system. Is this post on Linkedin?