Prioritization conflicts are exactly the situations when Product Managers must step away from traditionally accepted management tools and frameworks a

Prioritize Through Purpose – Below Water Level

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2024-10-07 11:00:03

Prioritization conflicts are exactly the situations when Product Managers must step away from traditionally accepted management tools and frameworks and look deeper into Purpose.

In 2005 when I went to Australia to study, my parents had to finance the tuition and the living expenses with a student loan. Then it took us about 4 years to repay it. While I was repaying it, I had a very specific target for the payback period. To squeeze out every single cent from the salary I kept diligent and detailed track of my expenses in a spreadsheet. Every time I received my salary, I updated the spreadsheet, the moment I spent anything I updated it at the end of the day. Every month I set aside funds for rent, food, etc., not touching those funds, while experimenting with lower and lower allocation to expenses to see how much more I could repay in a month.

The spreadsheet was a useful tool to tell me where I stood. But, it could not tell me where to spend, when and most importantly why. Decisions of spending habits were not driven by a mechanical spreadsheet but by an over-arching purpose. While a spreadsheet would tell me that this month it is within budget to spend 5 AUD to have a beer, my purpose guided me to save that 5 AUD and channel it to repay the debt as soon as I could.