As an Amazonian in my past life, the 'Working Backward' mental modal and PRFAQ framework has been the true-and-true methods for me regardless me being an IC PM or now a PM executive.
It is versatile, compelling, easy to understand/share with stakeholders; more important, it is a forcing function to ensure critical/thorough thinking during ideation and validation stage of product development.
For accompanied reading, besides Ravi's "Strategic Thinking for Product Managers", I would also recommend Roger Martin's book, 'Play to Win'. It is another good mental framework for PM who are looking to improve strategic thinking and strategic narrative.
Thanks for sharing your Amazonian experience, Alexandria! Great to hear how the Working Backward approach has served you well throughout your PM career. I'm jealous I didn't get to experience it first hand.
"Good Strategy / Bad Strategy" by Richard Rumelt is another book I love. Rumelt's work cuts through strategic fluff and focuses on identifying the core challenge and creating coherent actions to address it. I haven't read Playing to Win. I'll check it out.
Thanks! I have read 'Good Strategy, Bad Strategy'. It was one of the reading list items that I typically recommend for rising PMs (3+ yr experiences). And I def re-read chapters every now and then.
And of course, the Amazon bible, 'Working Backwards'.
Recent favorite for people manager, 'Scaling People' by Claire Hughes Johnson.
Great post Ravi! - airbnb went through a phase of hiring a lot of Amazon execs, I had the chance to existence the silent 20 minute document review at the beginning of a meeting too!
Curious to hear whether you think this way of working is as useful for small teams? - I get the sense that it’s mostly valuable when you need to align large groups of people, wdyt?
Hey Danny! Thanks for weighing in. I actually think this approach is even more important for small teams. At a high level, there are two formats for communication in most orgs: "Slides + Presentation" and "Document + Debate". At the heart of the PRFAQ process is the insight that "Slides + Presentation" is great for disseminating information, but not great for vetting ideas and making decisions. At a big company, there is usually a "decider" who will come in and make a "go/no-go" decision at some point in the process. At a small company, its more collaborative. A "Slides + Presentation" approach is likely to come across as "This is what we should do" rather than "What should we do?". So, I think small companies benefit from the clarity that comes from writing ideas in prose and the explicit process of debating those ideas.
That doesn't mean you need to sit in a room silent for 20 minutes (that makes sense in a large company where people are in back-to-back meetings), but it is nice to take some time to read and think before heading into a decision-making meeting rather than thinking on the fly.
Yeah it feels like there’s elements of Amazon’s process that would be useful for a startup to emulate, even if not everything about it. Thanks for sharing thoughts, Ravi!
Yet another excellent post!
As an Amazonian in my past life, the 'Working Backward' mental modal and PRFAQ framework has been the true-and-true methods for me regardless me being an IC PM or now a PM executive.
It is versatile, compelling, easy to understand/share with stakeholders; more important, it is a forcing function to ensure critical/thorough thinking during ideation and validation stage of product development.
For accompanied reading, besides Ravi's "Strategic Thinking for Product Managers", I would also recommend Roger Martin's book, 'Play to Win'. It is another good mental framework for PM who are looking to improve strategic thinking and strategic narrative.
Thanks for sharing your Amazonian experience, Alexandria! Great to hear how the Working Backward approach has served you well throughout your PM career. I'm jealous I didn't get to experience it first hand.
"Good Strategy / Bad Strategy" by Richard Rumelt is another book I love. Rumelt's work cuts through strategic fluff and focuses on identifying the core challenge and creating coherent actions to address it. I haven't read Playing to Win. I'll check it out.
Thanks! I have read 'Good Strategy, Bad Strategy'. It was one of the reading list items that I typically recommend for rising PMs (3+ yr experiences). And I def re-read chapters every now and then.
And of course, the Amazon bible, 'Working Backwards'.
Recent favorite for people manager, 'Scaling People' by Claire Hughes Johnson.
Great post Ravi! - airbnb went through a phase of hiring a lot of Amazon execs, I had the chance to existence the silent 20 minute document review at the beginning of a meeting too!
Curious to hear whether you think this way of working is as useful for small teams? - I get the sense that it’s mostly valuable when you need to align large groups of people, wdyt?
Hey Danny! Thanks for weighing in. I actually think this approach is even more important for small teams. At a high level, there are two formats for communication in most orgs: "Slides + Presentation" and "Document + Debate". At the heart of the PRFAQ process is the insight that "Slides + Presentation" is great for disseminating information, but not great for vetting ideas and making decisions. At a big company, there is usually a "decider" who will come in and make a "go/no-go" decision at some point in the process. At a small company, its more collaborative. A "Slides + Presentation" approach is likely to come across as "This is what we should do" rather than "What should we do?". So, I think small companies benefit from the clarity that comes from writing ideas in prose and the explicit process of debating those ideas.
That doesn't mean you need to sit in a room silent for 20 minutes (that makes sense in a large company where people are in back-to-back meetings), but it is nice to take some time to read and think before heading into a decision-making meeting rather than thinking on the fly.
Yeah it feels like there’s elements of Amazon’s process that would be useful for a startup to emulate, even if not everything about it. Thanks for sharing thoughts, Ravi!