Comments on: How Do Product Managers Reject Bad Ideas?

By: nick coster

nick coster — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 11:23:47 +0000

I find that the problem with many “ideas” that come to product management and often come from product managers is that they are a description of a solution.

Great product ideas need to be described in terms of the problem that they solve. There is nothing wrong with sharing the solution as well, but the problem needs to worth it to the user.

By asking the following questions I can either discover the gem of an idea or expose it as a waste of time :
1) Who is it for? (ie who is the target user)
2) What is the scenario that the user is in?
3) What is the problem that the user needs resolved that they would be willing to exchange some value for?

Answering and then communicating the results of these questions will actually open up the innovation process to new and exciting solutions as well as the original one.

If questions can’t be satisfactorily answered then the “no” often takes care of itself.

–nick coster

By: Stewart Rogers

Stewart Rogers — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 22:29:31 +0000

I generally recommend to people that rejecting is bad. The last thing you want to do is discourage the submitter from submitting future ideas.

That being said, I think it is important to communicate with people where their ideas sits in relation to other ideas and what is ahead of their idea in the queue.

Managing ideas/enhancements/feature requests could be a full-time job if you have a large number of users. In this case, start to think of technology to help with this. Otherwise, use it as a excuse to talk to your users.

Stewart

By: DB

DB — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 10:17:17 +0000

@sandra – Useful tips on persuading your arguments at Harvard Business Review. The first one (Adopt your boss’ point of view. ) is probably the hardest but best one. http://blogs.hbr.org/baldoni/2009/10/the_smart_way_to_influence_you.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-MANAGEMENT_TIP-_-DEC_2009-_-MTOD1217

By: Sandra

Sandra — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:12:19 +0000

I like this topic. I would like to hear more specific success stories re: CEO’s and supervisors, and telling them “no”.

By: Christopher Cummings

Christopher Cummings — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 13:53:47 +0000

Heh — thanks, Patrick — but your reference works just fine And I think you’re right about the need for criteria to weigh ideas against. An idea, in and of itself, might sound (and be) fantastic. But if it doesn’t fit with the company strategy, or deliver real value to your customers, someone’s got to call that out. It sounds so obvious, but, too often, doesn’t seem to actually happen.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 23:09:04 +0000

BTW – my apologies for the bad attempt at inserting pop culture. It’s harder than you make it look

By: Patrick

Patrick — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 23:02:53 +0000

I think the right answer has something to do with having a clear set of principles that you apply so consistently, others can predict your reaction and act accordingly.

For instance, if I brought some crazy wild scheme to Qui-Gon Jinn, he would tell me to be patient. I slowly learn that he always is telling me to be patient, so I start doing my own pre-filtering of his criteria set for an idea. Over time, I don’t come to him with my ideas if I haven’t demonstrated patience first.

I’ve started to see this work in reality. For about 3 years now I’ve been consistently reminding our professional services team that any good idea has to be phrased in terms of customer value or we just won’t be able to make it happen. They have figured out how to get by that first gate of the idea process by slowing down and making it fit into the correct customer value-based structure.

Result: the ideas that can’t be rephrased are “good” ideas that get shot down without me having to be the bad guy