{"id":15651,"date":"2017-03-23T18:19:48","date_gmt":"2017-03-23T18:19:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/productcollective.com\/?p=15651"},"modified":"2019-06-17T04:30:06","modified_gmt":"2019-06-17T04:30:06","slug":"proactive-vs-reactive-achieving-the-right-balance-of-both","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/productcollective.com\/proactive-vs-reactive-achieving-the-right-balance-of-both\/","title":{"rendered":"Proactive vs. Reactive &#8212; Achieving the Right Balance of Both"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Predictive management, not reactive management. <\/strong>Being a good reactive manager is to be admired. It means that you can calmly deal with surprises and quickly come up with solutions (rather than getting stuck looking for root causes). On the other hand, a person who practices predictive management might have been able to remove herself sufficiently enough so as to be able to see the problems arise in the first place. Really, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thebalance.com\/good-management-predictive-vs-reactive-2275893\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">like John Reh suggests<\/a>, it takes a solid mix of the two to be an effective manager.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Product owners: it\u2019s time to rethink reactive product management. <\/strong>It&#8217;s important to be proactive, to have a vision and a plan to make it happen. Or as Brad McCarty quotes &#8220;plan to work and work the plan&#8221;. But <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fullcontact.com\/blog\/product-owners-reactive\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">he also reminds us that you should also be prepared to be reactive<\/a>. Without doing so, you won&#8217;t be able to respond to shifts in business focus, user feedback or major failures.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How to make sense of the firehose of ideas for your product<\/strong>. Oftentimes, being proactive means carefully <em>not<\/em> reacting to the firehose of feedback that will come your way each week. Instead, you must foresee the types of requests that you will regularly receive and have a plan to deal with them. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.productplan.com\/5-essential-elements-of-prioritizing-features\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">As Maddy Kirsch explains<\/a>, &#8220;you can\u2019t afford to prioritize a specific set of feedback just because it appears urgent&#8221;. Instead, you should &#8220;ask yourself if implementing the suggestion or feedback will advance your product\u2019s strategy&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Lessons from 30 days in product management. <\/strong>Being proactive also means moving fast to get things done.\u00a0Medha Ghatikesh <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.invisionapp.com\/product-management-lessons\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">gives us an example<\/a> of how a &#8216;procrastinating manager&#8217; can waste a whole day of a teammates productivity just by waiting to send an email. You must always think ahead and consider how your work, or lack of work, will affect things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Predictive management, not reactive management. Being a good reactive manager is to be admired. It means that you can calmly deal with surprises and quickly come up with solutions (rather than getting stuck looking for root causes). On the other hand, a person who practices predictive management might have been able to remove herself sufficiently [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15652,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Proactive vs. Reactive - Achieving the Right Balance of Both - Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/productcollective.com\/proactive-vs-reactive-achieving-the-right-balance-of-both\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Proactive vs. Reactive - Achieving the Right Balance of Both - Product Collective | Organizers of INDUSTRY: The Product Conference\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Predictive management, not reactive management. Being a good reactive manager is to be admired. It means that you can calmly deal with surprises and quickly come up with solutions (rather than getting stuck looking for root causes). 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