Thinking, in Baidu's entry, is interpreted as: the generalization and indirect reaction process of the human brain to objective things. Before the advent of the Internet era, this was not a very hot word. Now we often see different people's interpretations of product thinking and internet thinking from major scientific and technological information media and WeChat friends circle. For example, Lei Jun of Xiaomi once had a famous seven-character formula for Internet thinking, called "concentration, extreme, word of mouth, fast", "being a pig on the cusp" and so on.
Thinking is actually an instinctive behavior of everyone. If you work hard in different positions, you will have different modes of thinking. A product manager should not only know how to make products, but also have the thinking of productization. He should know who the users you serve, what your user needs are, how to continuously meet the user needs, and iteratively improve the products in the process of meeting them to create more user value.
Because of the complex environment, the situation faced by the product manager and the people he contacts, he has to do a lot of thinking, practice and communication around the needs in the process. Having an efficient way of thinking will be of great benefit to solving problems encountered in daily work and making product decisions.
Among them, logical thinking is a typical symbol in the thinking of product managers.
What is logical thinking?
Product managers often use concrete images in their minds to solve various problems. For example, when an existing product is used as a reference and changes are made on this basis to generate functional requirements; When designing product processes and simulating various usage scenarios in the brain; Extract suitable product elements from multiple competing products and recombine them to form new functions. ...
The thinking to complete this series of work is the logical thinking to understand the essential characteristics and internal relations of things in the form of concept, judgment and reasoning. Undoubtedly, this is one of the most important ideas of PM. Summary, analysis and reasoning ability in demand stage; The ability to determine the product architecture capability process in the design stage; Demand priority and planning and scheduling ability in the development stage; The data feedback and iterative ability after online need the support of logical thinking.
The following is my personal experience in improving logical thinking:
1.MECE
Barbara minto, a senior consultant of McKinsey, first put forward this concept in her book The Golden Pagoda Principle, which later became one of the important principles of strategic consulting industry. Feng Tang, a famous writer, wrote such an article "The Golden Pagoda Principle of Lao Dan" in his essays. He made a good summary of the principle of the Golden Pyramid and wrote:
Interested parties can read this article online.
The so-called MECE is translated from "mutually exclusive collective exhaustion", which means independence and exhaustion in Chinese and is pronounced as "my opinion". Independence means that the causes that can affect the problem are divided into clearly distinguished and non-overlapping factors. Thoroughly exhausted is comprehensive and thorough, without omission.
MECE is usually used to start with a top-level problem and decompose it layer by layer. In practical application, you just need to keep asking yourself two questions:
Have I considered all possible factors and have I missed anything? If so, look again.
Is there any overlap between these factors? If it is, it is de-duplicated.
In the actual combat of product managers, MECE principles are often used, such as the registration and login process of websites or apps. We need to take all possible factors into account, such as what prompt should appear when the password is wrong, what to do if the account number does not exist, and so on. In the process of combing the product process, we should consider the initial state, normal state, boundary state and error state of the product clearly.
2. Induction and deduction
Induction and deduction are logical thinking methods widely used in scientific research. In fact, this way of thinking is also of great benefit to the work of product managers. Scientific research must follow two ways: from special understanding to general understanding; Then from knowing the general to knowing the special. It is found that the general reasoning form and thinking method are induction in the special; Deduction is a ubiquitous special reasoning form and thinking method. Induction and deduction are two contradictory and interdependent thinking methods in the process of unified understanding.
If the above words are difficult to read, then we can try to understand them simply.
Induction: It is to list things with some same attributes one by one, and then find the common ground. For example, a dragon gives birth to a dragon, a phoenix gives birth to a phoenix, and a mouse's son can make holes. This is an induction (dragon, wind and mouse belong to the same category).
Deduction: arranging the factors that influence each other in the order of cause and effect, time sequence and importance, and then looking for a breakthrough. For example, Tai Chi gives birth to two instruments, two instruments give birth to four elephants, and four elephants give birth to gossip. This is a deduction (starting from Tai Chi and recursing backwards).
In practical work, product managers can use MECE principle for induction and deduction, thus decomposing a complex problem into various single factors. This process is like peeling cocoons and smoothing out a mess.
The most intuitive thinking display can be like this:
What is the background of this question? (Context, historical reasons)
What are the people and factors related to this problem now? (remember MECE's law and list them by induction. )
What is the key reason for this problem?
What is the secondary reason?
What are the solutions to this problem? Write down all the possibilities by induction. Find out the specific steps of each method by deduction)
Give a chestnut:
One day, the boss asked you, why is the registration conversion rate of our product website so low?
At this time, when I encounter such a problem, I usually have a series of ideas in my mind:
Problem background: the website registration conversion rate is low, and the boss may want to know the reason, and the other party definitely wants to improve the registration conversion rate;
People and factors related to the problem: it may be related to technology, such as bugs in the registration process; It may also be related to the operation. Is the quality of users attracted by the channels launched too low? It may also be related to the product design itself, such as the complicated registration process;
Cause of the problem: We should rule out specific reasons, such as trying to see if there are any functional problems during the registration process; Then ask if the operation has launched any new channels recently; If it is the product design itself, then it is necessary to monitor the conversion rate of each step in the registration process;
Solution to the problem: if it is a technical bug, it is urgent to find a technical solution; If it is the channel problem of operation and delivery, communicate with the operation to adjust and optimize the channel delivery; If it is the product design itself, you need to know the basic conversion rate of each step and use the data as a model. Then, according to which link loses more users, you put forward your own product registration improvement hypothesis, and then you implement product improvement iteration to verify whether the hypothesis is true with data. If not, continue to observe;
3. Say the conclusion first
It is inevitable for product managers to make various reports every day. At this time, logical product managers often say conclusions first, instead of expounding a bunch of arguments that others are not necessarily interested in.
McKinsey has a famous elevator theory: sell your solution to customers within 30 seconds of entering the elevator. In such a short time, no one will listen to irrelevant nonsense, so the first sentence conveys their core point: what is our plan and why is it the best choice? This conclusion actually condenses a lot of thinking of product managers, because reaching a conclusion means that you must have a series of viewpoints to support it, just like writing a paper. First, the core argument, then the sub-arguments supporting the core argument, and then the secondary sub-arguments, in turn, are arranged downwards.
"Deductive induction and MECE" is your analytical thinking process; "Say the conclusion first" is the expression after you have finished thinking. The person who speaks the conclusion first can catch the attention of others at the beginning, and then demonstrate the correctness of the conclusion step by step, so that the audience will not lose their way. What can make the conclusion clear often represents a whole set of thinking and analysis process behind it.