Recently the topic of finding heads-down strategic time has been coming up a lot for me in conversation – with coworkers and mentees alike. I guess that's not really that surprising: finding time for strategic work is one of the classic, everyday struggles product managers face. (It's essentially a product meme.)
Nevertheless, it got me thinking about two things. First, what's a reliable process to use if you don't have enough time to devote to strategic work? (This is a question I get from mentees fairly often.) And, second, what if the focus on finding uninterrupted time for strategic work is actually somewhat unhelpful – or at least misleading?
So, today's post is about precisely that: a process for getting strategic work done that isn't original but which I've found helpful in my own practice; and an argument for seeing strategic work as broader than those coveted two- or three-hour blocks.
Part one: process – let's get specific!
When we think about the challenge of finding time to devote to strategic work, we tend to focus predominantly on the surface level challenge of, well, not having enough time. Over a decade ago, Marty Cagan set the gold standard of time management when he wrote in Inspired that product managers should ideally devote 2-3 hours to product work each day.1 I think two things are true about that standard. One, Cagan is right: product work is more than meetings and writing tickets (and don't you forget it, buddy!). Two, many product managers fail to achieve that standard and don't have a clear plan of action to better manage their time. (Instead, we tend to fall into this weird pity party where we complain about having too many meetings but, deep down, sort of like having a lot of meetings at the same time.)
But I think there's something else going on beyond being too busy, and this is my first strategic work hot take: I think we, as product managers, often do have enough time to focus on strategic work, but we don't leverage it wisely because we're not clear on what we're actually trying to achieve in that time. That's a problem: it means we're chasing after an ideal rather than a concrete goal, which makes us unhappy as well as unproductive. (And, hey, sometimes we really are just too burnt out from all the meetings we did have.)
Fortunately, there's a better way: getting specific. (And, if you call in the next 20 minutes, you can get extra specific!)
Seriously, though, finding and using strategic time well requires us to get specific – not only about how we're using our time now and want to use it in the future, but also about how we need to use it.
There are two processes/frameworks I've found helpful for freeing up and using time in my day-to-day work. Neither of them is original, but I hope the combination of them may be beneficial.
The time portfolio: getting specific about how we're using our time
The process I recommend for freeing up time is the "investment portfolio" time management analysis that Jackie Bavaro offers in her comprehensive tome Cracking the PM Career. (Actually, I don't think she actually calls it the "investment portfolio" approach, but that's what it reminds me of.) Here's the gist of it:
On a piece of paper, think about how you'd like to spend your time weekly (e.g., 15% strategic work, 25% current projects, 10% release management, and so on).2
Once you've drawn up your ideal "portfolio," spend a week or two tracking your time and see how much reality matches your expectations.
This process is fantastic for multiple reasons. First, it encourages you to think deeply about how you'd like to be spending your time. It's easy to want more strategic time; it's harder to pinpoint how much time you think you need to actually get your strategic work done. Second, it forces you to categorize your non-meeting time, which is something very few of us do. (Spoiler alert: you may be surprised by how unproductive you are outside of meetings and realize it's not just all those meetings dragging you down.) Finally, using categories makes it easier to notice where you're "overspending" and which areas of your calendar or task list need your attention. For instance, someone recently told me that he had multiple meetings to update different teams about the same topic. Situations like this, if you notice them, are great opportunities to streamline and consolidate work by combining separate update meetings into one or replacing them entirely with a regular update email.
Projects, tasks, and prioritization, oh my! Getting specific about how you want (and need) to use your time
The second "process" I've found helpful for time management can't be easily summarized because it's more of an overall productivity framework – maybe even a lifestyle. Still, I'll recommend it: Getting Things Done by David Allen – also known as GTD.
There's a lot to GTD that I won't be able to get at here, but there are some tricks I learned from it that I think are particularly helpful for getting strategic tasks done:
Distinguish between "projects" and "tasks." Writing a vision statement is not a task, nor is conducting a competitive analysis. Instead, both are projects. And, too often, we fail to break down those projects into concrete actions until we encounter an uninterrupted block of time. By then, it's too late: we waste time and mental energy trying to identify the best way to use the rare focus time we have. In GTD, Allen advocates for keeping a list of projects and then contextual lists of concrete tasks (more on this next) so that there's never any doubt about the next steps for your projects. For strategic work, keeping a list of your strategic goals and identifying the next task for each of them ahead of time ensures that you can jump right in when you have time to do so.
Make tasks specific and contextual. Before implementing GTD, I used to write tasks like "Analyze Competitor X's last release." The problem is that this task is neither concrete nor specific. It's also not contextual: I likely need Internet access to research, say, Competitor X's release notes, whereas I may be able to do another strategic task anywhere. This distinction may seem trivial, but I promise it's not. Think about two tasks: (a) "Analyze Competitor X's last release," and (b) "[Internet required] Look at Competitor X's last release notes {link}." The latter is far more specific and actionable. Having a to-do list full of contextual, specific actions like this makes it easier to progress on larger strategic projects.
Consider energy level when prioritizing tasks. I mentioned above that, sometimes, we really are just too burnt out to focus on strategic work when we hit an uninterrupted block of time. Let me say first that having clear projects and contextual tasks actually reduces the likelihood of burnout: "[Internet required] Look at Competitor X's last release notes {link}" is a lot less mentally intimidating than "Finish competitive analysis." But, sometimes, we just don't have the energy. In GTD, Allen advises prioritizing by context, time, energy level, and urgency. That means if you really are burnt out, just give yourself the permission not to focus on strategic work. It doesn't make you a bad product manager – in fact, not forcing yourself to work on strategy when you're tired will probably prevent burnout and make your work better in the long term.
Part two: socializing strategy
Okay, so there’s my suggested process for freeing up time for strategic work and using it wisely. As I mentioned above, however, something else I’ve been thinking about is how much the focus on finding uninterrupted time is helpful – and if it’s ever not.
In general, strategic work does require a lot of individual, uninterrupted time. But my second strategic work hot take is that the focus on finding uninterrupted time to "do strategy" can sometimes create a dangerous PM mindset in which strategy is seen as finite and happening in a vacuum – and that's insanely incorrect.
As the product manager, you own the product strategy. But what you do in those uninterrupted blocks of time is not "create the strategy" – for multiple reasons.
First, strategy is vast. You can work on a piece of it (say, a market analysis) in a day, but no one piece you work on is "the strategy" – it's just a piece of it. I don't care if your project is to write a Confluence page or six-page document called "Product Strategy." Strategy is larger than that.
That’s in part because, second, strategy is living. You don't create a strategic deck and call it a day – you keep investigating it, interrogating it, tweaking it. Even if you do a competitive analysis today, you’ll need to keep it up-to-date. There’s no “once and done.” The benefit is that strategy doesn’t require constant updating – in fact, if you’re constantly changing your strategy, that’s a bad sign – but there’s no final form.
Third – and most important – you may own the product strategy, but don't think for a second that you are the sole creator of it. That's because strategy is both dependent on broader contexts (e.g., the market, your company’s strategy) and social. You should always be shopping your ideas around and socializing them so that you can stress test them with customers and members of your team. This doesn't necessarily mean carting around your strategy deck; it just means sharing the rough outputs of your strategic tasks or sharing ideas early and seeing where you get pushback – especially from executives. Maybe in your individual work you’ve uncovered a theme across, say, a few of your key competitors. The next step isn’t to put that in an official doc, it’s to shop it around and see what reactions it elicits.
This mindset shift between "strategic time" as an individual activity and preparation for socializing strategy is (I think) fundamental. The former manages to be at once isolating and arrogant. You don't go into a locked room for hours only to emerge with a brilliant strategy because strategy isn't some single "thing" that, if you do it right, will make you a "good PM" and get you a gold star. Instead, strategic work is about continuously making time to understand the product, your customers, and the market as each inevitably change so that you can help your team make the best decisions possible; it’s about consolidating that understanding into a narrative to get everyone focused on the same obstacles and moving in the same direction. In short, the change and the feedback that comes after the uninterrupted block of time is as essential as the work that happens during it – drive towards that, not just an idealized output.
And with that, I'm off on this high horse to ride into the sunset.
No, but in all seriousness – I think both these challenges (process and socialization) are common, authentic, and challenging in day-to-day product work. I’ve experienced all of them and coached others through them. It can be hard to find time to devote to strategic work; other times, it's more of a consequence of the fact that we haven't really specified our strategic needs. And, yes, I do think that it's easy to stress ourselves out by assuming that strategy is all on us in those two- or three-hour blocks. It's important to remember the social component of strategic work and how we can leverage the meetings we have to surface and test ideas – it doesn't need to wait for uninterrupted time.
Okay, that's actually it for now. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next time.
Or something to that effect. I also want to distinguish between strategic work, which I’m focused on here, and product work, which I think Cagan is focused on. Strategic work is a subset of product work and spending three hours a day on it would be pretty unreasonable for an IC (individual contributor) PM.
Bavaro gives suggests some categories you can use which I won’t duplicate here because you should just buy the book and thank me later. This process is on pages 151-3.