Steps to rein in chaos

a 3 step process. no, it doesn't have to be this way

Author

Jamie McCroskery
July 15, 2024

I hear from so many founders, PMs, and leaders (especially at founder led organizations) a desperate plea to reduce chaos in their jobs.

  • “people have never worked with a product manager” they say

  • “this is a shit show” they say

  • “we get involved at the last second” they say

These are actually things I’ve actually said 🙂, having worked at CPG and health companies firing up new technology competencies and building a complex startup myself. Tons of cross functional partners, strong opinions, and chaos!

As a fuller throat example, here’s something straight from from Reddit that almost verbatim matches what I keep hearing:

I’ve started as a PM in a new team where they’d previously been building a product without a product manager.

I’m still in the early stages where I don’t fully understand the ins and outs of the product / operating model, so I’m leaning on some of the business stakeholders a bit.

My biggest problem is that it is basically a mess, there are loads of things that don’t work, and EVERYTHING is apparently “high” priority. The dev team are confused and frustrated, the business wants everything now and doesn’t understand why small things will take a while (despite having around 70+ other small things in Jira being worked on as well).

Man, for some of you this could be like a blank slate and awesome. I’m a relatively new PM (1.5 years) and this is pretty exhausting.

Any of you ever been here? Would love to know your first steps.

Thanks!

- sufferer on reddit

3 steps to dealing with chaos

  1. Handle the chaos internally — i.e. not getting too exhausted, burned out, frustrated. Step one is being very clear with yourself about what you can control vs what you cannot. Trying to control the latter will cause immense pain. There will be chaos for a bit no matter how determined you are, and you can only really control your reaction to it — which is keeping a clear head and going to step 2.

  2. Diagnose why there’s chaos — there are so many possible reasons! A higher power out there is giving you an anthropological / management case study to just observe what’s happening. First get the facts about what’s happening, how decisions are made. Focus on specific examples so you can make sure you’re grounded. Then make the stories about the facts you observe are happening — the root causes. Viewing things this way will take the emotion out of it and help you see things clearly.

  3. Figure out what you need to do to solve the chaos — often times chaos is just a symptom of lack of strategy or communication of it (it would be easy to prioritize if everyone knew what they were building and why), unclear processes for making decisions (politics and fire drills are way less likely if everyone is on the same page about how decisions are made), and just inertia.

Solving these can be pretty complex, so let’s look at our Reddit friend.

Solving chaos in the example from Reddit

He’s exhausted. I would be too. First, he’s going to have to figure out how to manage that so he can bring his most creative, thoughtful, empathetic self to resolving the chaos.

Why there’s chaos — it’s difficult to say from a distance, but I’d imagine there are broader cultural issues, review process issues, strategy, and communication issues.

If there's not a clear strategy of course it's going to be a free for all.

If there isn’t a clear way of making decisions, then anyone can make a decision and veto / put in projects.

If there hasn’t been an owner, then things probably aren’t prioritized against a strategy or communicated out.

All of which are chaos.

How to resolve the chaos — some of these will be solvable, some not. But you do what you can.

It’s likely that the causes are these are big, hairy, deep rooted issues.

But getting caught up solving them from the get go with a hammer as a new person isn’t the way. Who wants some new person in a random role telling them how to do their jobs?

Instead, in the immediate term quick wins are helpful that show his people the value of having him there vs. telling him.

Ideally that includes getting some sanity to the prioritization and communicating that out to partners so you actually deliver on time and resolve a pain point that is important to the rest of the team.

In parallel, I'd really figure out who the key players are that are needed to enact change and develop rapport with them, understand their priorities, and show them the way you think will solve theirs & your priorities together so they’re involved and believe in the solution.

Then you can start making the changes together, not just you on an island but the people who have credibility and can contribute to yours.

Remember, chaos is a gift

There’s no better opportunity to learn how to lead than solving a chaotic situation because nobody likes chaos.

If chaos is solvable (meaning not consistently reinforced by well meaning but bad leadership practices from above), then you’ll learn a ton and have an epic win.

You’ll learn how to self regulate, observe gaps, learn how to solve them, build relationships, and get people onboard with a vision of how things could be.

Just try not to get caught up in it too much in the process.