Process is not the product: the shadow of rituals
One thing I left out when chatting with Lenny on his podcast.
Note: It’s been a little while since I’ve published a post! We’ve been heads down shipping Coda 4.0 and the a comprehensive handbook of how to use Coda for product teams. Both are worth checking out!
Last week I got to speak with Lenny on his podcast. It’s always fun to chat with someone like him who asks such insightful questions based on a deep knowledge of the space. And we talked a lot about rituals of course — it’s one of the topics of this newsletter and one that I’m passionate about.
But after our chat, I couldn’t help but think of one big thing I left out. It’s something that I regularly remind our team of at Coda. That is: process is not the product.
As a PM, I think it’s easy to fall into this trap. You write a great doc that everyone agrees upon. You lead a great brainstorm that gets everyone excited. You make it through a tough product review to get the team aligned. That’s all really important. And it’s great to feel a sense of pride when part of the process has been executed well. But, it’s not shipping... Progress in the process should not be confused with getting valuable improvements in the hands of customers.
You should always feel a sense of urgency toward getting the feature, the improvement, the new messaging, whatever it is — in the hands of customers. When in doubt, run toward making a customer happy.
Really enjoyed watching the Lenny recording.
And am a big fan of two way writeups.. albeit mine are not as advanced as yours.
One thing i was surprised works quite well for me is doing something that is a bit like a brainstorm without a meeting... by essentially using sort of a two way writeup. Have you tried something like that?
Example of what I do:
1. I create a Clickup task and title it something like "Brainstorm about XXX"
2. In the description i put some context and mention that i'd like each separate idea to have a separate comment thread
3. Then i add everyone who i want to participate as followers and set a due date in about a week.
4. I also often kick off a few of my own ideas as comment threads on the task.
5. Everyone starts creating their own idea threads and responding to others.
6. I close it off on the due date.
I've found inputs that i gather like this to often be of much higher quality than actual meetings because folks have all week to think about it and respond to it.
And of course some of the quieter folks are the ones most active.
Also.. using this format.. i might kick off 4-5 brainstorms in a single week.... so it also scales better time-wise.