Communication in Product Management is critical. Product Leaders have one of the most important roles in communicating with their team, stakeholders and downstream to users. They must be the “Repeater-In-Chief” - repeating a very clear message over and over again until everyone gets it.
Product Leaders can learn from Marketing. Marketers follow the “Rule of 7,” which says an audience must hear a message seven times before truly retaining and understanding it. Guess what? The rule applies to your team as a Product Leader.
New product leaders can struggle with this. They’re used to doing the work and driving results. Suddenly they find themselves repeating themselves and that can be annoying at first. But you have to realize as a product leader, you need to scale your impact through your team and you do this through communicating strategy, vision, your roadmap and the principles that make your team successful. You must repeat yourself over and over. This doesn’t mean you are always repeating a canned message the same over and over to different audiences. Hone your message and tailor it to the audience while finding creative ways to deliver the message.
Why is repetition and your role of “Repeater-in-Chief” important? When you communicate and when you are compelling - whether it is high level strategy or tactical delivery related - you generate interest, concern, questions, identify complications. Communicating and repeating yourself opens up important dialogue while ensuring your audience has clarity of what is important to you.
So when you’re feeling annoyed by repeating yourself, or if your audience starts to get annoyed because they’ve heard your message so often, then you know you’re doing your job as “Repeater-in-Chief.”
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