Taming the tiger: a product team’s guide to risky projects
Be opinionated, embrace criticism, and improve the arguments of others.
Imagine being handed a ‘mission impossible’: You have just five weeks to build a groundbreaking generative AI product, and you’re doing it with a team that’s never worked together before. The odds are stacked against you — according to Gartner, a mere 53% of machine learning projects progress from prototype to production. Even organisations seasoned in AI would find this daunting.
With over a decade of product management experience under my belt, I thought I was ready for anything. But this mission was different. It turned my long-standing product principles upside down and fundamentally changed the way I’ll approach product management from now on.
Through this challenging experience, I learned three unorthodox but invaluable lessons that I like to call my "Tiger Team Tactics". Although these ideas are not new on their own, when used together, I’ve found them to be a productivity game-changer. Whether you are an experienced product manager or taking on a leadership role for the first time, these tactics will empower you to lead your high-stakes projects to success.
Join me as we dive into these hard-earned insights and tools for corralling your own ‘team of tigers.’
Tiger Teams and the AI Goldrush
Generative AI is sparking a modern gold rush reminiscent of the dot-com boom of the 1990s. Even McKinsey estimates that generative AI could soon contribute up to $4.4 trillion annually to the global economy. Naturally, such estimates have piqued the interest of many organisations.
In this high-speed landscape, the traditional playbook for incremental product development is being tossed aside in favour of rapid, game-changing outcomes that directly meet a clear user need. Enter Tiger Teams, a high-stakes, high-reward strategy birthed during the Apollo 13 era. These specialised squads are becoming the go-to approach for companies eager to seize immediate opportunities in this surging AI revolution.
A Tiger Team is a melting pot of diverse skill sets — from engineers and data scientists to analysts, marketing and sales professionals — united under a single mission. Traditional frameworks of product management often fall short in this setting because they focus on lengthy problem identification, market validation and iteration. However, in order to gain a competitive edge, it is important to prioritise harnessing specialised technologies or ideas to resolve existing problems. This requires a shift from managing products to managing people and strategy.
Leading a Tiger Team demands a different playbook, one that favours swift execution and competitive positioning over traditional, extended pre-planning and poses a unique combination of challenges:
Ambiguity: Pioneering an untested concept with unproven market demand.
Velocity: Achieving ambitious objectives on a tight deadline without compromising quality.
High Risk: Confronting the ever-present risk of failure.
Team Dynamics: Navigating complex interpersonal and professional relationships under stress.
Stakeholder Equilibrium: Striking a delicate balance between team expectations and upper-management imperatives.
It's not just a technical challenge; it’s an emotional odyssey. You shoulder not just the aspirations of your team but also the high stakes set by your organisation. So, how do you build trust, maintain productivity, and encourage open dialogue amid such pressure with the hope of success?
In the following sections, I’ll unpack the three Tiger Team Tactics — being opinionated, critical feedback and steel manning arguments — that helped me successfully steer a Tiger Team and launch our AI product within an ambitious six-week timeframe.
Tiger Tactic 1: Embrace Opinionated Leadership
Your First Question: What Does “Good” Look Like?
The cardinal rule for leading a Tiger Team as a product manager is to be unapologetically opinionated about what a “good” outcome looks like.
It's about having a clear vision: a way to help you and the team decipher whether a decision is good or bad, based on whether it gets you closer or further away from where you want to go. It doesn’t mean being inflexible or resistant to change; instead, what “good” looks like sets the stage for crucial conversations and decisions that must be made in a time-sensitive environment.
See, in fast-paced, high-stakes settings like a Tiger Team, lengthy brainstorming sessions and extended workshops are luxuries you can’t afford. Adopting an opinionated stance provides crucial clarity, streamlining complex decision-making and ensuring alignment across the team.
And being opinionated isn’t just about setting a course; it’s about wholeheartedly owning the mission. This is important because the heightened sense of responsibility eliminates ambiguity and cultivates a fertile environment for actionable feedback.
“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.” — Helen Keller
Crafting Your Opinionated Vision: A How-To Guide
With traditional product development, the focus starts with identifying a valuable problem, followed by seeking a solution.
However, as mentioned, an opinionated product leader flips this paradigm: Start by defining what a successful outcome looks like (‘What good looks like’), and let that vision guide your problem-solving efforts. Below are practical steps I’ve found effective for crafting such an opinionated vision:
The Press Release: They say you can’t think clearly until you can write clearer. Start with a hypothetical press release you’d like to publish upon project completion. Borrowed from Amazon’s ‘working backwards’ approach, this technique crystallises your vision in clear, concise terms. Share it with a small group, then refine until that vision resonates with and impresses your audience. Fun tip — Slides have their use, but nine times out of 10, the answer to getting buy-in from busy execs is a one-page memo.
The Product Six-Pager: Expand on your vision with a comprehensive product document outlining the problem, inspiration, proposal, guiding principles, success metrics, and FAQs. This is more than a checklist; it serves as your strategic blueprint and should be a basis for broader constructive criticism. Strong six-pagers don’t just make their case; they anticipate counterarguments, points of contention, or statements that might be easily misinterpreted.
Visualising the Vision: Many recommend low-fidelity visuals initially, but I argue for starting with high-fidelity, especially if you have a skilled designer on your team. High-quality mockups lead to more honest and effective conversations from the get-go.
Don’t let your vision document become an overlooked email attachment. Schedule a focused team discussion to discuss it: allocate 15 minutes for silent reading, followed by a structured round-robin feedback session. Use this feedback to fine-tune your vision, transforming it into a “shared vision” that galvanises the entire team.
Takeaways
Strong leadership doesn’t mean steamrolling others. Hold strong opinions, but be willing to change when presented with compelling counterarguments:
Kick off your project by sharing a clear, opinionated vision and then explicitly ask for feedback.
Utilise both a press release and a six-pager as foundational guiding documents.
Focus on “good” outcomes rather than just problems to solve — trust me, by doing so, you’ll naturally identify the right problems to solve.
Risks and Caveats:
Team Alienation: Being too opinionated can alienate team members, undermining collaboration and morale. This is a pitfall I’ve experienced firsthand. Keep an eye out for this (Rules 2 and 3 should help here).
Confirmation Bias: A strongly held vision might cause you to seek out only the information that supports your views while dismissing valid concerns or data that contradicts them.
Regardless, I would recommend you seize every opportunity to pose the question — to yourself and your team — “What does ‘good’ look like?” and formulate a strong perspective based on that inquiry.
Coming up, we’ll delve into the critical skill of actively seeking and incorporating feedback to ensure a balanced and practical approach.
Tiger Tactic 2: Actively Seek Criticism
Jim Collins once noted, “Good outcome with bad process reinforces bad process.” To address this in product management, feedback is not just welcomed — it’s vital. While strong opinions can streamline decisions (as outlined in Rule 1), it’s crucial to counterbalance this by actively seeking criticism.
Being overly opinionated risks creating a divisive, ‘you’re either with me or against me’ environment, which can stifle creativity and overlook valuable perspectives. To break free from this echo chamber, we need to establish structured mechanisms for gathering constructive feedback.
Daily “Superfriends” Meeting: Coffee and Candor
The most impactful tool I have for candid feedback is the “Superfriends” meeting. This 15-minute daily stand-up involves key team members like tech leads, designers, and analysts. The sole question asked to each member is, “What is top of your mind right now?” Everyone gets a minute or two to share their thoughts.
The objective of these meetings is not to solve all problems but to establish a continuous feedback loop. These quick check-ins not only gauge the team’s pulse but also preempt potential issues, thereby enhancing decision-making.
Sprint Retrospectives: Your Regular Reality Check
While many product teams are familiar with the fortnightly Agile Retrospectives, their importance, especially in time-sensitive settings, can’t be overstated. DON’T BE TEMPTED TO SKIP THEM! These retrospectives still play a crucial role in team cohesion. They offer a platform for active listening and discussion. You don’t just collect feedback; you honour it by integrating insights into future sprints.
Team Surveys: Empowering the Introverted
Not everyone is comfortable voicing their opinions in a group of peers or superiors. Anonymous surveys offer a channel for even the most introverted to share their thoughts without inhibition. These unfiltered inputs can reveal unexpected but vital insights.
Turn Criticism into Goals
Feedback can often feel like criticism, and nobody loves a critic. Yet, critics can be the sculptors of a masterpiece. Serious concerns that emerge from feedback should be candidly discussed and consciously integrated into team goals and objectives. While you may not act on every piece of feedback, it’s essential to at least acknowledge and consider it.
Transparency in Decision-Taking
Constantly communicate the ‘why’ behind your decisions, whether you decide to act on the feedback or stay the course. This cultivates a culture where criticism is not merely tolerated but actively sought and helps more team members feel connected to the project and its outcomes.
Takeaways
By systematising feedback mechanisms, we aim to build an environment where criticism catalyses ongoing refinement. Feedback is important for identifying and addressing bad habits and ensuring that it is delivered in the right context to avoid feeling like unwarranted criticism.
Risks and Caveats:
Analysis Paralysis: Too much feedback can overwhelm decision-making processes, slowing progress and causing indecision.
Over-Reliance on Consensus: While feedback is valuable, a product manager must sometimes make unpopular decisions. Striving for universal agreement can weaken your strategy’s effectiveness — remember to stay opinionated and have solid reasoning to back it up.
In the next section, I will explore how to master conflict resolution through the Steel Man Technique, ensuring that criticisms serve as stepping stones rather than stumbling blocks.
Tiger Tactic 3: Master Conflict Resolution with the Steel Man Technique
“Conflict is the beginning of consciousness,” as psychoanalyst M. Esther Harding pointed out. Leading a Tiger Team involves more than just decision-making; it requires mediating high-stakes situations without causing division.
The secret? Emotional intelligence coupled with an approach for managing diverse opinions.
Feedback is a Double-Edged
A Tiger Team is both passionate and opinionated — qualities that can be both an asset and a potential liability.
While a rich diversity of viewpoints can ignite innovation, it can also become a disruptive force if not carefully managed. It is critical to create a safe space where team members feel their opinions are valued.
The Steel Man Technique: Intellectual Honesty
The key is to approach the argument with the intention of changing your own mind if necessary.
For this reason, I favour the Steel Man Technique for managing feedback. The approach is simple — make the other person’s argument better than they can. Once improved, present both your own argument and the bolstered version of your opponent’s stance back to the relevant group members. If you can improve upon your opponent’s argument in a way that defeats your own, it’s time to change your mind.
This may initially seem counterintuitive: why argue for a viewpoint you fundamentally disagree with? The answer is simple yet profound. By articulating your opponent’s argument in the most robust way possible — steel-manning it — you accomplish several things simultaneously:
Intellectual Integrity: You demonstrate that you understand the critique or opposing viewpoint deeply enough to improve upon it. This is intellectual honesty in action, an indispensable virtue in any team environment, especially a high-stakes one.
Building Trust: When you can articulate a team member’s viewpoint better than they can, you earn their trust, a fundamental element for team cohesion. Challenge yourself to do this consistently.
Critical Self-Assessment: If the ‘steel-manned’ argument stands up better than your own, it’s a red flag that you need to reconsider your stance.
Clear Communication: The technique pinpoints exactly where agreements and disagreements lie, making it easier to find a mutually agreeable path forward.
Organisational psychologist Adam Grant highlights that when managed effectively, conflict can serve as a catalyst for creativity. The goal is to help both parties become their most authentic selves and achieve satisfaction rather than compromise.
In my own experience with our own AI product, implementing the Steel Man Technique has been pivotal. It not only helped me navigate challenging conversations but also fostered a better team culture.
Case Study from our AI Product
To illustrate the Steel Man Technique in action, let me share a recent experience from our AI project. With only two weeks until launch, I found myself at odds with our Head of UX. The issue at hand? A critical change in user flow that would also be challenging from an engineering standpoint. I was convinced my approach was correct; my colleague strongly disagreed.
Rather than dismissing their point of view, I took the time to understand and amplify it. I pushed myself to articulate their argument more convincingly than they had and, in doing so, gained new insights. It was bitter medicine to take (and one late night), but I needed it. The exercise prompted a beneficial change in our course of action, executed just in time for the project’s launch. The team understood the rationale for this last-minute shift and trusted the decision-making process.
The Steel Man Technique has helped me tackle confrontations both small and large. It facilitates course corrections without escalating conflicts, empowers team members to influence project decisions, and reinforces a culture that highly values opinions. Most importantly, this transparent method has built trust in decision-making, as everyone knows their input will be genuinely considered.
Takeaways
Steel Manning is more than just a tool for debate; it’s a framework for fostering intellectual honesty, building trust, and encouraging open communication within your team.
By embracing this technique, you not only challenge your own viewpoints but also create an environment where everyone’s perspectives are valued and scrutinised constructively.
Risks and Caveats:
Decision Complexity: While steel-manning is helpful, it can lead you to overanalyse, adding complexity and slowing down decision-making. Set time limits for decisions, acknowledge that you may not have complete information, and commit with the team, understanding you can adjust later if you are wrong.
Risk of Appeasement: If you find yourself continually steel-manning and adopting others’ viewpoints, you may deviate too far from your original strategy, goals, or vision. When this happens, work to remember what “good” looks like and be opinionated about it.
Overall, the key is to approach the argument with the intention of changing your own mind if necessary and to focus on helping both parties reach a mutually satisfactory outcome.
Leading a Tiger Team is exhilarating but demanding. The landscape is rife with unique challenges, but navigating them successfully is immensely rewarding.
Equip yourself with three indispensable Tiger Team Tactics — be opinionated yet open, proactively seek criticism, and embrace intellectual honesty during conflicts — to achieve the best outcomes for your team.
Here’s a quick recap of the rules to help you succeed:
Be Opinionated About What “Good” Looks Like: Set a clear direction and mission for the team.
Actively Seek Criticism: Establish a culture and system where feedback is encouraged and integrated into your strategy.
Apply the Steel Man Technique: Turn conflicts into constructive opportunities by making the arguments of others better than your own.
These aren’t just theoretical insights; they’re my hard-earned lessons from my experiences in developing AI products. Employing these principles does more than enhance your leadership skills; it uplifts your entire team, propelling your project toward defining what ‘good’ truly means.
Remember, leading a Tiger Team isn’t about winning battles of will; it’s about steering your team to a collective win for your users. In the end, the minor disputes and intense discussions will fade from memory. All anyone will remember is what you delivered.
Happy Tiger Taming, everyone!
Bibliography
Articles and books that influenced the development of my Tiger Team Tactics:
Why Team Building & Development Is an Important Competitive Edge, Bryan Kitch
Why Companies Stop Innovating, Steve Andriole
Aggregated knowledge from a small number of debates outperforms the wisdom of large crowds, Joaquin Navajas, Tamara Niella, Gerry Garbulsky, Bahador Bahrami & Mariano Sigman
Think Again, Adam Grant
Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon, Colin Bryar, Bill Carr
The Neuroscience of Goal-Setting and Its Impact on Your Culture, Lewis Kallow