Why decision-making is a Product Manager’s most valuable currency

• What is our product's long-term vision?
• What is the next piece of work with the potential to create the most outcome?
• What unique value does our product offer?
• What are our product's key success metrics?
• Do we work on tech debt or new features?

Product decisions like these are the most powerful currency we as Product Managers can leverage to create impact and drive product success. They guide your team and ultimately determine whether you and the product succeed.

The best product managers I've spoken with share a few different views on making product decisions that I will outline in this article. They seem to have mastered the art of making better, more informed, and more impactful decisions. I'll explore why I believe decisions are the core currency of a product manager's role, how the best in our industry approach decision-making, and how they leverage the right decisions to create maximum impact.

The anatomy of a great product decision

Product decisions are rarely simple. I probably faced 1-2 pretty clear decisions in my career. All the other times they carried multiple layers. Going left or right usually gets dictated by lots of variables like customer needs, team resources, business objectives, and future implications.

Each decision involves trade-offs and often comes with unseen influences and ripple effects, such as internal biases and external pressures from stakeholders or the market. The best product managers make these complexities visible before taking important decisions.

Decision quality vs. speed

One of the most common challenges, I hear over and over from all types of product people is balancing the need for speed (if we wait too long or analyse too much the conditions have changed) with the need for high-quality decisions. We want to make the best decision with the least needed input (less time to prepare) fast. You see the challenge here.

To strike this balance, you can use predefined frameworks like for example the RICE scoring model, which gives you a rough idea on what blanks to fill to be able to make an “informed” decision. In this case you have to think about different factors like reach, impact, confidence, and effort upfront.

The multiplier effect of high-impact decisions

But not all decisions should be created equal. Some might result in positive ripple effects that boost product growth, strengthen team alignment, and enhance customer value. Choosing the right solution to develop, the timing for a product launch, or the strategy for pivoting can all have significant downstream impacts. Positive and negative. Understanding which decisions might have this multiplier effect can be a game changer. Amazon is using a nice framework to classify decisions into reversible and irreversible decisions to see how much upfront might be necessary. The less a decision is reversible the higher the quality of the decision should be.

Tools like Opportunity Solution Trees (OST) help to visualize potential pathways and assess which decisions can unlock the most value. By mapping opportunities and their potential solutions and experiments, you can can better prioritize and communicate which initiatives will drive the most meaningful results.

Data-informed vs. data-driven

I think we can all agree that being data-driven is a cornerstone of modern product management, but data alone isn’t always enough to feel confident about a product decision. The best product managers know when to rely on data and when to incorporate their own intuition and experience. Paul Adam’s coined the term Product Sense (now they call it Product Judgement) that exactly explains this concept of “knowing” the right answer without relaying on too much data. Data can guide decisions by showing trends and informing hypotheses, but it doesn’t capture every nuance of the market or customer behaviour.

Shreyas Doshi often emphasises the importance of being data-informed rather than solely data-driven. It’s way more important to use historical data to inform a decision that maps perfectly to a new strategy then blindly following the data to plan your next steps. Most of the time we have to trust our instincts and live with incomplete data to make the best possible decision as fast as possible.

How to build confidence and accountability in decision-making

One of the most effective ways to build confidence in decision-making that I’m trying to practice myself for years now is being as transparent as possible. If something works, great, if it doesn’t, be honest and change or fix it. Same with decisions. You have to be 100% transparent on how you got to a decision.

This involves keeping a clear record of major decisions and holding retrospectives to review their outcomes ideally with your team and stakeholders. Looking back to evaluate decisions and learn from mistakes is something that our industry in general is not really good at in my opinion. In general, the goal of these reviews isn’t to assign blame but to learn what worked, what didn’t, and why. This approach encourages us to learn continuously and helps us to get to better choices and outcomes in the future.

When your team and stakeholders understand the reasoning behind your decisions and see that the outcomes are reviewed openly, it fosters exactly this trust that you want to create and a culture of shared accountability. This builds deep collective confidence, allowing everyone to feel more invested in the product’s success (and failure).

Leadership buy-in and cross-functional alignment

In most companies today you need the support of leaders and stakeholders to be able to decide something. That’s why I also see it as a currency, you can invest in decisions and either win or lose credibility. You also would not buy stock without reading about the company or ETF right?

The same goes for these shared decisions you will have to make on a daily basis. We must be skilled at communicating decision proposals and final outcomes of a decisions process in a way that aligns with the company’s broader objectives and includes involved views and opinions. This involves presenting a clear narrative that shows why a decision was made, who made it ultimately and how it ties into the overall strategy.

Biggest learning here from the top 1% of produce leaders I talk to. Involve other teams, leadership and stakeholders early and often, because when they are part of the decision-making process or understand its rationale, they are more likely to support the outcome and work together effectively to implement it. (Feels like a no-brainer, but is super complicated and hard work to get right)

Conclusion

Making decisions lies at the heart of product management. These choices shape a product's direction, influence a team's path, and create value for customers. The best product managers understand that making confident, well-reasoned decisions is a skill—one that requires a blend of data, intuition, and strategic thinking.

Let's treat each of our decisions as an investment, a valuable currency that product managers can leverage to drive greater impact and become stronger, more confident leaders.

In the next weeks, I’m going to share more thoughts on how we can get more confident when making product decisions through strategic mapping.