Product intangibles: embracing uncertainty
What does it mean to work in an outcome-driven way?
Adopting outcome roadmaps, writing INVEST stories, or setting OKR-style goals may seem like all it takes to achieve success. But this assumption can actually perpetuate a problem by overemphasizing the “things” to do.
The real indicator of a mature, empowered team is that its members have certain intangible qualities that cannot be acquired from a template or scaling framework. Establishing shared values is more effective at driving success for outcome-oriented teams than adopting any existing process or framework. Take an example from engineering: Extreme Programming (XP) is a popular development methodology that can make teams more productive and engineers more engaged in decision making. XP popularized practices like pair programming and Test-Driven Development (TDD) and quickly gained a reputation for being effective at driving value. As a result many companies decided to have their teams start pairing & doing TDD. However, these practices only work when the environment supports outcome-oriented values where teams can learn from the behaviors they see from others. XP is incredibly effective on mature teams because people respect each other, take risks, strive for simplicity, ask “why” questions, and share what they know often. In other words, it’s the underlying habits and values within the right environment that make XP look like magic, not the practices themselves.
Outcome-oriented work is similar: it requires a team to have shared mindsets and intangibles and an environment that supports them. Practices and frameworks don’t scale without a strong foundation. Otherwise, outcome roadmaps can turn into just another list of features and deadlines, stories might not support shared decision-making, and product managers become glorified project managers.
One of the most essential intangibles for any person or company that wants to be outcome-driven is being comfortable with uncertainty.
No approach to collaboration, planning, or scaling survives intact far from where it was created (for example, the Spotify model works at…Spotify). What does work everywhere for outcome-oriented work is critical thinking, deep curiosity, and a burning desire to be more right than you were yesterday. When you are ready to choose the “way” you do it and the artifacts and processes to use, what matters is how comfortable you are with fundamentals not which template you choose.
To do “outcomes over outputs” you need to be fundamentally ok not knowing things. Outcome-oriented teams use practices explicitly designed to help structure the inherent uncertainty in their work. Work is centered around delivering to learn and expecting what they know to change instead of predicting the future. Energy is focused on creating clarity where it’s ambiguous and executing what is certain.
So why is embracing uncertainty so useful?
Uncertainty teaches you to love problems, not solutions
Uncertainty can be intimidating, especially when working in an environment with clearly defined deadlines and scope. Thinking that more constraints require more certainty is a common misconception. It can be difficult to solve a problem and remove all uncertainty within a given timeframe, or when committing to a new feature set or track of work. Surprisingly, sometimes the more constraints you have, the less certainty you need. Why?
First, it's important to remember that you can't eliminate all uncertainty. There will always be some degree of uncertainty when you reach a deadline, scope lock, or other constraining factor. That's the nature of the situation. Solutions need certainty.
Remember that if uncertainty exists there is more to do. Whenever uncertainty matters past a deadline, then a problem still does too.
A lot of ambiguity means there is a lot to learn, and every time something that was ambiguous becomes clear you improve your opinion, strategy, and confidence in success. When you have the tools to manage uncertainty it becomes a near endless pipeline of work that feeds your roadmap and makes your strategy better and better as you go.
Uncertainty makes todays opinions better than yesterdays
An outcome mindset requires you to have strong opinions about your product. It also requires you to be critical about your opinions because in many ways your opinion shapes your team’s product strategy. If your opinions are wrong your strategy might be too.
Analyze your opinions, especially the most powerful ones. Break down each component and figure out the validity of the individual parts.
What things are undeniably true based on evidence? These are certainties.
What pieces are not supported by data? Here are uncertainties.
Uncertainty is not the same as being wrong, and breaking down what you are unsure of into smaller parts helps build clarity and confidence in what is actually known. It's like an inverse assumption that you assume is wrong until proven right. Just like assumptions, you should start with a low level of confidence.
Be critical and don't cling to yesterday's opinions. A wrong opinion may hurt your pride, but a wrong strategy will hurt your team. Start with uncertainty and take steps to create certainty.
Uncertainty makes you flexible, not future-proof
Trying to control the future is a leading cause of creating overstuffed documents full of details, dates, and commitments. Instead of predicting the future, look at the things you are not certain about and make sure you’re prepared for the possibility of each one.
There’s a great story about Theodore Roosevelt that illustrates this idea. As an avid outdoorsman Roosevelt loved to hunt. But his poor eyesight meant he was always worried about damaging his glasses, so when he hunted he always carried a few more pairs with him. Of course most of the time he only needed the one pair, but knowing he had extras allowed him to go all in on his hunting excursions without having to worry about potential consequences. Rather than trying to future-proof himself by preventing ever losing his glasses, Roosevelt made himself flexible in an extremely low effort way.
When faced with uncertainty, there are decisions you can make today that will prepare your team for an unknown future and commit to strategies based on what you do know. You have to take calculated risks and make leaps of faith. And because you can’t predict the future, think about the lowest effort ways to give yourself future options. You might not end up needing it but you’ll be glad if you do. Are there simple things you can commit to doing like carrying extra glasses?
Increasing comfort with uncertainty is a sign of skill growth.
Novices usually don’t worry about uncertainty because they don’t have the knowledge to see it it. Everything is new, so they simply follow the instructions of their teacher.
As you advance towards beginner and then competent levels of skill mastery, you become increasingly uncomfortable with uncertainty because you’re being held accountable for results but you don’t have the experience yet to have good intuitions to handle what you don’t know.
However, as you increase proficiency skill level, you become comfortable with uncertainty again. But this time you are comfortable because of an accumulated experience and a growing intuition for a wide range of situations. In other words, you can make decisions confidently despite incomplete or missing data.
The most successful outcome-oriented companies emerge because they encourage a culture of learning and respect - where teams take risks, strive for simplicity, ask “why” questions, and share what they know. These companies roadmaps and goal frameworks and team rituals probably look different from many others. They found certainty after starting from deep uncertainty. Now it works for them. The best things often do.