4 Methods for Product Leaders to be Comfortable with Procrastination with Sabrina Mach - Productized 24 TalkInTen

We’re excited to bring you more exclusive content from Productized 2024, our third conference of the year! This series continues our TalkInTen format, where we deliver concise, impactful conversations with industry leaders pushing the boundaries of product and business agility. Each episode is packed with fresh insights, actionable strategies, and real-world examples to help teams and organisations thrive.

In this episode, we’re joined by Sabrina Mach, who explores a counterintuitive yet powerful approach to leadership: the art of strategic procrastination. Sabrina shares how stepping back, slowing down, and taking time to reflect can actually lead to better decision-making, more innovative solutions, and stronger team dynamics. She explains how this pause isn’t about doing nothing—it's about giving yourself and your team the space to think and act more effectively.

Sabrina on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sabrinamach/

Here is the synopsis of Sabrina's Talk:

In a fast-paced world driven by technological advances and shifting customer behaviours, product leaders often rush decisions without taking time to think. In this talk, Sabrina explores methods to help product teams step back, let ideas simmer, and view challenges from new angles, while also guiding stakeholders to embrace this necessary pause for better outcomes.

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Host Bio

Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.

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Transcript

0:00

Welcome to a very special series of episodes of the Product Agility Podcast, broadcasting for two days, direct from Lisbon Portugal and product ties 2024. This year, we're bringing you more exclusive bite-sized wisdom with our Talks in 10 format, where we're going to be diving into actionable insights from some of the best and brightest minds in product leadership. And attendees this year are being spoiled with talks and workshops from the likes of Radakadot, creator of radical product thinking and Rich Morinov, author of the art of product management, helping us all find some joy in what we do. But it would be a pretty shitty conference if it was just two people. There are so many more people here, and they're going to be getting as many of them as possible on here to share their talks in 10. Now before we begin, a huge thank you to our sponsor, Sheev Limited. Sheev is the company which has bankrupted this podcast pretty much since day one. I want to take an opportunity just to share with you and make you aware we do some awesome stuff. Whether it's training your product teams or coaching your product teams with clarity and alignment, or you know just a simple thing I've actually making OKRs work in organisations, these are all things that we are very good at. So do head over to www.sheev.co.uk, see what we do and get in contact with us. Also check out the show notes for a tasty little discount code over any of our courses. Grab a notebook because the next 10 minutes are going to be packed with actual tips from the best in the business. And here begins a talking 10. It's getting very empty. It's almost like it. 10 of us left. It's quite nice. I don't know if that's because people are hiding. We've missed a hide and seek game. That's what it is. They're all playing hide and seek. Happened last year. I just have to turn my own. No one did. No. Believe you. Playing hide and seek is a great, great, great way to procrastinate. See what I did there. Nice seat over. Yeah, thank you. Because your talk tomorrow is a Bruno. Mark, Mark. It's like the speed of sound. Yeah. All the shaver. Make three here. Yeah. I think I like the idea of a day. Actually, Mark free shavers, the best a person can get. I think it's a great way now to do it. So, Sabrina, I've been really excited to talk to you all day. It's so nice to come at the end of day because it's been some really good content. I think that your title of your talk was really interesting. It was three methods for product leaders to be able to be cool procrastination. It's enticing. Can you give me and the listeners a bit of an insight into just what it is you're saying here. It's not like playing hide and seek just to be lazy. I'm going to be direct. German. Yeah. Are you German? I am from Europe. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like gone. Well, basically, I'm going to tell our product leaders to procrastinate more. Okay. Why? Because actually, I think one pain that we always feel or something that's sweeping us off our feet is the rapid change that's happening around us in the markets, in the world, and in our work. So, it always feels like we need to rush forward to keep up. But actually, what we need to do is to slow down and take time to think what's actually the right action we want to be doing. So, in a way, I'm saying, let's procrastinate the action of rushing forward and just doing something so that we can keep up and take time to go slow and think. What was that old phrase? Was it less more speed, less haste or something? Oh, yeah. Less haste, more speed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That kind of thing. I had no idea what it means. But actually, I should have put that on the slide. Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's not too late, is it? No, we have a slide lock. I'll just get a post-tonate stick on the screen. Now, I think it's really interesting because I thought when I read it, when I read the title, was it was a post-assore on Reddit. You have an e-familiar Reddit? Yeah. Yeah. It's like the garbage bin of the internet. And in there, there was somebody on the product management forum saying how they decided to have the job was really stressing about, and they weren't getting anywhere. It's very decided just to stop doing stuff. And they said they've never had so much positive feedback. I can believe that. And what they found out was that they were just getting in the way all the time. And that by not trying to make all the decisions and not trying to do it, or actually for teams doing much better, and so now, but then they're kind of too good to be extremely pretending to go to meetings. There's something there in actually not rushing forward. So it's three methods. It is three methods. What's one of those methods? Actually, one of them is kind of related to your story in a different way. So one of the methods I advocate for is the time box. And that's probably the one that we all have a mind when we first hear about procrastination. But often it feels like we can't actually take that time away from our team. Like people get almost a panic attack when they say, take a day a week on deep thinking time. And the reactions are usually like, oh my god, I can't do that. My team's relying on me. But we need to take that time so that we can go slow and think, because when we walk away from the problem, we're more creative. We're able to solve problems in a better way. We're able to de-risk things and see things we wouldn't see when we're just rushing forward. And actually by taking that time box, you're able to amplify your own impact because you take that thinking time. But, and here we link back to the story you shared, is when we are not available, we provide the space for our team to step up and develop their skills and leadership. So the benefit of procrastination is actually twofold. We're amplifying our impact and that of the product that we're shaping, but also that of our team. So that's why it's important. We actually give ourselves that permission to take the time box so that we can reach those two outcomes that we're looking for. And is this something that you've done in your career? Yes, I do. You do. I do. So tell us a little bit about you and what it is you do. Oh, that's a good question. I'm not prepared for that one. Oh, yeah. Well, I, and the main reason is because I just switched from one organization I've worked for to a new company. So literally on day three. So I'm a like small panic on my face. And part of those three days I've spent at the conference. Oh, wow. But very exciting. My team was so excited about me being here. They'll join tomorrow as well. Oh, wow. Fantastic. So that's really nice to see that enthusiasm and my new colleagues. But in general, I can tell you what I do. So my role is to help clients on defining the design and product and actually help actually help clients build better products. And my background is that in design and product and bringing that lens into their product development to help amplify what they're creating. So what I often see is that there's a situation where teams just race forward because either they're super motivated or there's time pressure. Often it's both. So one story I fondly remember fondly and with sheer terror in my memory is where we were working for an automotive company helping them to build a system that manages the whole process from building to delivering the car. So complex thing. And there was a team working on product information and how that gets managed internally. And for one of those features, the team just raced ahead and built it without waiting for design. The designer was spread across multiple teams. So they weren't available. And the team was motivated. So they raced ahead based on what they understood from the DR ticket. Only to find out eight weeks later that what they had built does not answer the user needs. So that's situations where I see where we need to procrastinate the action of just building something. And that's a little bit that actually that's one of the big challenges that we face is that tension between how our environment and sometimes even ourselves expect what making progress looks like. Making progress is often expected to that we look busy. But actually, sometimes it should be lying on a sofa, sun shining on your face, reading a book, maybe having a nap, going full walk. And actually, fun fact, Albert Einstein is meant to have been floating in a boat on a river when solving hard physics problems. So to the arts observer, it looks like he's not doing anything when in fact he's actually it looks like he's procrastinating, but in fact, he's hard at work. So it's a little bit I'm playing a little bit with the word procrastination. Because what often happens is that we all have different expectations around what is it actually that we should be doing when we read the definition of procrastination, it says, the unnecessary delay of a task that needs to be done. So it sounds like it's very obvious what that task should be and that someone is delaying it unnecessarily. But who decides what that task is? Like I have a certain view around how we should approach this problem. You might have a very different one. And often what happens is that we don't actually align on that. You might think, oh my god, we're in crisis mode, we just need to act and stabilize the situation because I will losing customers. And I might think, don't worry, we've solved this many times before, we can just apply best practice. And because of that mismatch, we have that tension. But there isn't one right way of looking at that situation. There isn't the one task that should be done. So I'm playing a little bit with the word of procrastination in terms of our stakeholder, my colleague, my thing also brings us procrastinating. She isn't doing the thing that I think she should be doing. Well, actually, I'm doing exactly the thing I think we should be doing. And how do we navigate that tension around how we perceive procrastination? And how do we have our colleagues to feel comfortable with giving us that space to go slow and to think and not just do stuff? There was a nice quote yesterday. We can now build shit faster. But we're not creating value. And I think that's why procrastination and that sense is so important is reminding ourselves that we have to go slow to build better things and to reach a potential. So as a closing thought, thought is a question. People listen to this. They're relating to what you're saying, but they feel like it just isn't possible for them. Given the environment that are in the stress and the strains are under, if there's one quick piece of advice you can share with the listeners to help them find ways to create the space to procrastinate or get the courage to procrastinate, whatever it might be, what advice would you give them? What one tip? That moment when we feel that we cannot procrastinate, when we're in that anxious situation that you've just described, that is exactly the moment where we have to carve out a little bit of time. And it doesn't have to be big, right? If we think about the time box, it could be five minutes of sitting down and clarifying out for ourselves what's going on. What am I going to do next before I do it? So even just that tiny slice that we give ourselves helps us stabilize. So especially in that moment, we have to do it. And actually, I had a very nice conversation with one of the delegates here, who shared that even in an emergency doctor where it's an emergency room, I mean, people come in bleeding, arms, legs, maybe missing, even that person 95% of the time sits down for five minutes to write down what they're going to do before they do it. So if they can do it and we're building product, I'm sure we can take five minutes. And depending on how comfortable we feel, we can expand that time box over time and integrate that more intention into our practice. Thank you very much. It reminds me of my friend, Ahmad Fakmi. And he's got a great concept called a Gemba sprint, which I encourage people to look up. It's just fantastic. And he says, the Gemba's going by getting senior leaders to go and spend time doing work, actual work, for a whole two week period, let's say with the real teams. And he says, they will never find the right time to just choose the worst time. The worst time is the best time, because that's when you really need to do it. So I love what you're saying there. And yeah, thank you very much for sharing that. It's been awesome to get to meet you. I'm looking forward to missing your talk tomorrow because I will not have time to listen to it. But I look forward to watching the video of it when it's released. If people want to find out more information about you, LinkedIn. Yes, you can find me on LinkedIn. And I also happen to have a podcast. It's called Creating Better Products. And it focuses on capturing real stories from product leaders. Not just the successes, which we all love, but whenever we hear the success, we're like, come on, give us the juicy story. So we also talk about all the things that went wrong and the lessons learned so that anyone can take away, actionable things to incorporate that into their world. Listeners, get typing. Creating better products is what you should be listening to next. Thank you very much for coming on. Everyone, thank you for listening. This is us. Thank you very much.