On working style
On working style

Below are some best practices for your role in Product. Feel free to try them, break them, and make them better. As a Product leader, one of your main goals is to make high quality, high-conviction decisions, as fast as possible, within an

equanimous⁠

atmosphere.

If a decision is reversible, make it and then update senior stakeholders. If it is irreversible, escalate before making it.

This allows us to stay nimble as the company and Base Building grows. It also helps codify autonomy and responsibility. An end-of-week summary will keep stakeholders informed without them being blockers.

Optimize for
`maker-time and manager-time`⁠
. All team members try to cluster meetings together, ideally after lunch, to enable deep uninterrupted work.

Keep all documentation aesthetically-pleasing, structured, and centrally-linked.

All documentation should be clear, organized, persuasive, and

valuable⁠

, often with

proper prose⁠

. Further, all documentation should be organized so that an entire project can be handed off to someone with one Slack message. Constantly pruning your documentation radically reduces the time it takes for you to get new team members up-to-speed. It also creates a sense of calm for your team. For best-in-class product management documentation see

this⁠

and

this⁠

Aim for as much asynchronous collaboration as possible. When a meeting is needed, ensure there is a pre-read and agenda.

Asynchronous collaboration is usually more productive at Latch as it allows people to use their deep-work blocks to be thoughtful about a topic. Meetings can still be a powerful (but expensive) tool for brainstorming, feedback, updating, and motivating (ie. kick offs). All meetings should have a pre-read (even if a few bullet points) and an agenda, with the exception of update meetings like standups. Use your best judgement as to when a meeting is and isn’t needed and feel free to question the need for a meeting if one drops into your calendar.

Be responsive without getting trapped in responsiveness vortexes.

Building trust as a Product Manager is to show that you are in control. That means responding within a day to messages and emails. However, this doesn’t mean you need to drop everything you’re doing or interrupt your maker-time. Set aside periodic windows to check email and Slack. If you don’t have an immediate answer, respond with a quick ‘on it’ or ‘I will get back to you by X time’ until you have carved out sufficient time to be thoughtful about the topic. Communicate a deadline for your next response to create a sense of momentum and velocity.

To create a process, start a process.

Good processes are the absolute minimum that is required for great people to collaborate and succeed. They are often temporary and repeatedly questioned for their efficacy. Bad processes are over-engineered, are dreamt up in theory rather than practice, and are unchanging. When creating a process, start testing it as soon as possible and frequently question its efficacy especially once it is successful.

If you’re not asking ‘dumb’ questions, you’re not going deep enough.

First principles thinking helps reduce bias, uncover truth, and drive novel perspectives and invention. By definition, first principles approaches require you to uncover the atomic and fundamental elements of something. If you’re questions don’t sound elementary, you’re not reaching the simplicity of the problem, and you are not truly understanding the solution space.

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On working styleOn working style