Product Therapy – "Coaching Time Management"

Host: Christian Idiodi
Guest: Chris Jones (SVPG Partner)
Release Date: December 19, 2024

Episode Overview

In this episode of Product Therapy, Christian Idiodi and Chris Jones tackle one of the most pressing, yet rarely discussed, challenges in product management: time management. The conversation goes beneath the surface of overloaded calendars and constant meetings to explore how product teams can escape the trap of “busyness,” carve out time for real product discovery, and focus on what truly drives impact. The episode offers practical frameworks, coaching approaches, and actionable tips to help listeners maximize their effectiveness and bring more value to both their companies and their personal development.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Core Problem: Urgent vs. Important

• Main Insight: Many product managers are overwhelmed with meetings, rituals, and stakeholder demands, leaving little time for genuine product work, discovery, and strategic thinking.
  • Chris Jones: "The urgent quadrants will always win over the important quadrants. So something that is high importance but low urgency is always going to get a backseat to something that is high urgency and low importance." (03:14)
• Key Framework: Eisenhower/Covey's "Urgent vs. Important" matrix is highlighted as transformative, framing the challenge as one of prioritization, not just workload.

2. Cultural and Operating Model Roots

• Systemic Issue: Problems with time use are often rooted in company culture or the operating model, especially in organizations that don’t embrace empowered product teams.
  • Chris: "Every signal that these people are getting in terms of what it means to be successful in their company is leading them to use their time this particular way." (06:32)
• Symptoms of Unhealthy Time Use:
  • Endless meetings, especially in consensus-driven or low-trust cultures.
  • Overemphasis on status updates, check-ins, and approvals.
  • A reactive approach to discovery—doing it during delivery instead of as a dedicated practice.

3. The Meeting Epidemic

• Meetings as a Cultural Addiction:
  • Meetings are often mistaken for actual product work and become a default way to signal activity and importance.
  • "Meetings have become like the drug of choice for the modern product organization...a badge or a symbol of, you know, I am doing important work." (07:23)
• Driving Factors: Lack of trust, lack of context, and absence of empowered teams fuel a meeting-heavy culture.

Practical Tips for Reducing and Improving Meetings

• Calendar Audit: Have managers and individual contributors systematically review which meetings are truly necessary.
  • "This pile, you should definitely go. For this pile, somebody else can be there. This third category, I'm just going to suggest you stop going and don’t tell anybody. If anybody complains, tell them to come to me." (10:24)
• Radical Experiment: One anecdote describes stopping attendance at nearly all meetings and only returning when someone complains—drastic, but illuminating.
• Combatting FOMO: The sense that missing a meeting means missing out is both individual and cultural; requires coaching and awareness.

4. Tools for Self-Awareness & Coaching

• Pie Chart Exercise: Managers should ask team members to illustrate how they spent their time in broad categories—actual time, not idealized time.
  • "Give me the pie chart that you actually had and then we can talk about, you know, the pie chart that we both collectively wish you had." (14:12)
• Case Story: A product manager realized most of his “customer time” was actually rescuing deals, not doing proactive discovery, through this exercise.

5. Actionable Meeting Strategies

Christian’s seven tips for tackling meetings:

1. Default to 20-Minute Meetings: Avoid the habitual one-hour block—start small and calibrate up only as needed.
   • "There’s a phenomenon called Parkinson's law...the amount of time you take to complete something will expand or contract based on how much you assign to it." (18:10)
2. Start Meetings at Odd Times: Prevent back-to-back scheduling and give people breathing room.
3. Written Narratives Before Meetings: Inspired by Amazon, requiring written context ensures fewer, more valuable meetings.
4. Limit Attendees: Keep to fewer than 8 for maximum effectiveness.
5. Purpose and Agenda Requirement: Meetings should always have a clear purpose.
6. Use the Decline Button: Declining unnecessary meetings is empowering and impactful.
7. Coach for Culture Change: Leaders must model and coach effective meeting behavior, not just leave it unmanaged.

6. Meeting Types & Their Functions

Chris’s four meeting types:

• Communicate Status: Should be minimized or moved offline.
• Decision-Making: Pre-work (written narrative) helps ensure effectiveness.
• Problem-Solving: Only assemble groups when necessary for actual solution work.
• Relationship-Building/Spontaneity: Especially crucial in remote contexts; often overlooked, but actually productive.

7. Reclaiming Time for Discovery (Real Product Work)

• Emails and chat, alongside meetings, are the second and third biggest time drains after meetings.
• Proactive vs. Reactive Work: Product managers should shift from firefighting to proactively diagnosing and solving real customer problems.
  • "Do you feel more like a firefighter or do you feel like a physician diagnosing problems?" (26:10)
• Discovery as Day Job: Discovery is not a "phase," it’s the fundamental role for product managers and designers, ideally about half the day.
  • "Discovery is your major, delivery is your minor...Ideally the majority of your time should be spent on discovery activities." (27:38)
• Clarification: Discovery includes interactions with tech leads, stakeholders, planning, not just customer interviews.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Meetings Culture:

  "Meetings have become like the drug of choice for the modern product organization... It’s almost like how many meetings do I have a day is a badge or a symbol of, you know, I am doing important work."
  — Christian Idiodi (07:23)

• On Prioritization:

  "The urgent quadrants will always win over the important quadrants..."
  — Chris Jones (03:14)

• On Fixing Meeting Overload:

  "Default all meetings to 20 minutes. If after a couple of times you find out you need more, keep adding until you calibrate to the right amount of time you need...but start with 20 minutes."
  — Christian Idiodi (18:10)

• On Discovery:

  "If you are a product manager or designer, discovery is your day job...discovery is your major, delivery your minor."
  — Chris Jones (27:38)

• On Radical Solutions:

  “One of his main product people was just buried right. ...[The CEO] advised his person to stop going to every single meeting. Just don’t go to any of them and we're going to see who complains and then we'll put you back in those. And that was just his strategy for kind of getting it unstuck.”
  — Chris Jones (11:23)

• On The Power of “Airplane Mode”:

  "On your cell phone there’s a button, it looks like an airplane. Push that button. Magical things will start to happen in your world."
  — Christian Idiodi (31:41)

Timestamps for Important Segments

| Time | Segment | |----------|------------------------------------------------| | 00:00 | Introduction & The Time Management Dilemma | | 01:37 | Why Time Management is Crucial in Product | | 03:08 | Urgency vs. Importance Framework (Eisenhower/Covey) | | 05:02 | Symptoms & Cultural Roots of Chronic "Urgency" | | 07:23 | The Addictive Nature of Meetings | | 09:39 | Practical Meeting Audit & Radically Cutting Meetings | | 13:18 | Coaching FOMO & The "Pie Chart" Tool | | 17:01 | Measuring Time, Setting Boundaries, and Coaching Change | | 18:10 | Seven Practical Meeting Techniques | | 20:57 | Chris’s Four Meeting Types | | 24:51 | Relationship-Building Sessions in Remote Work | | 25:46 | Email, Chat, and the Proactive/Reactive Divide | | 27:38 | Discovery: Major vs. Minor, Shifting Time Allocation | | 29:50 | When Does ‘Real’ Discovery Work Happen? | | 31:41 | “Airplane Mode” as a Time Management Tool |

Episode Summary & Takeaways

• Awareness and Reflection are Key: Product people must step back, audit their time, and recognize the invisible habits and cultural expectations that drain their focus and energy.
• Meetings are Not Product Work: Being busy is not the same as being effective; calendar audits, meeting triage, and setting firm boundaries are necessary steps.
• Empowered Teams Reduce Waste: Trust, clear vision, and real discovery practices are the foundation for reducing unnecessary meetings and maximizing meaningful output.
• Discovery is Core, Not an Afterthought: Product managers and designers should treat discovery as their primary activity, not something squeezed in after hours.
• Coaching and Leadership Matter: Leaders play a critical role in modeling, coaching, and protecting time for true product work; individuals can take initiative, but systemic change accelerates results.

Memorable Closing Advice:

"On your cell phone there’s a button, it looks like an airplane. Push that button. Magical things will start to happen in your world." (31:41)

For more resources, articles, and workshops, visit svpg.com.