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I've worked in a cross functional organization as a product manager for about 8 years now and I finally feel as though I can articulate a need that has existed
by jujodi 7y ago
I've worked in a cross functional organization as a product manager for about 8 years now and I finally feel as though I can articulate a need that has existed for quite some time. There are a few problems.
* Someone isn't asking a question to team members that should be asked on a regular basis
* Someone is manually asking a question to team members on a regular basis
* Someone is asking a question during a meeting that should be asked before or after the meeting
Here are some examples of these types of questions
* As a team leader - Is there anything you'd like me to specifically address to the team during our weekly status meeting?
* As a sales manager - What feedback did you hear from customers this week about our product?
* As a product owner - What do you think should be our top 5 priorities for the next 3 sprints?
* As a scrum master - Is there anything that is blocking your current objectives?
There's an interesting side effect of not asking these questions regularly and asynchronously. Instead of getting the best answers from the group, you get the perspective of the loudest, fastest talking person in the meeting and it becomes the focus of discussion.
We built Keyory to solve this problem. You can ask recurring questions to a group of people and have the aggregated responses delivered right to your inbox. You can configure your questions to be sent out daily on specific days, weekly, biweekly, or even monthly on the first day of a month. Then you forget about it and read the answers all in one place, in your email.
- ska 7y ago> Instead of getting the best answers from the group, you get the perspective of the loudest, fastest talking person in the meeting and it becomes the focus of discussion. I think this particularly is a sign of poor meeting discipline, and have found that the people facilitating them can learn the skills needed to stop this from happening.
- jujodi 7y agoHere's an example of a case where I don't think good meeting discipline can help. If I'm in a meeting and I ask everyone on the engineering team what they think the number 1 highest value tech debt item is at the moment, then only the first person to answer is giving me an uninfluenced opinion, because every other person has now heard someone else's perspective and possibly altered their own before their turn. Instead, I prefer to ask every engineer to come to the meeting with their answer written down (or aggregated in my inbox with Keyory already) so that I can see what everyone's unfiltered opinion is and then direct the meeting from there.
- ska 7y agoI agree asynchronous communication can be important also, but disagree with at least the way it was articulated. "First comment" can have an anchoring effect, sure - but there is no reason that it has to dominate or really constrain the rest of the conversation. Your example sounds like the primary focus of a meeting. I agree people should come prepped for discussion then in order for it to be effective.
- jujodi 7y agoI knew there was some Daniel Kahneman in what I was trying to explain I just drew a blank on the word haha. That's really good feedback though, I'll have to work on a better way to articulate the particular struggle I'd like to focus on and not skew it with such strong wording about something completely different
- rejschaap 7y agoIn this situation I would ask everybody to write it down, collect all the notes, stick them on the wall and discuss them one by one.
- jujodi 7y agoOr if you're remote, screen share the Keyory email. It's been a long time since I've had a functional team meeting (vs. status or cross functional) anywhere but zoom
- tmpz22 7y agoAmazing concept. As an engineering manager, the main cause of my drinking is juniors NOT asking questions either for an immediate blocking issue or for a very clear learning opportunity. I imagine for many questions are not asked in order to reduce or delay doing actual work. It'll be interesting to see what excuses remain after implementing a solution like this.
- jujodi 7y agoThanks! And they can't say you never asked if they needed help either. Keyory won't solve your people problem though, unfortunately
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ckluis 7y agoCan you offer the ability to plan out weekly questions and pre-populate each weeks question with a different question?
- jujodi 7y agoWhat's an example of how the question might change each week? If the use case is "ask a different question each week" then it probably isn't for Keyory
- Aeolun 7y agoLike, cycle through 4 questions that are repeated every month? I guess you can set it up as 4 separate series, but then managing them becomes a pain.