Leading Through Lean Times: Essential Tools for Product Managers

The past few years have made one thing abundantly clear: tech companies, like many industries, go through cycles of expansion and contraction. In this context, we often talk about two distinct phases—lean times, where resources are constrained and companies must focus on doing more with less, and buffered times, where the business has more resources and the focus is on scaling, growth, and investing in future opportunities.

The COVID-19 pandemic provides a real-world example of this cycle in action. Initially, the tech industry experienced a massive surge in demand, leading to a phase of growth and investment. But as we’ve moved into the post-pandemic era, many companies have had to enter a lean phase, right sizing their operations and making tough decisions to adjust to the new business landscape. Companies like Meta and Twitter, for instance, saw mass layoffs as part of larger right-sizing efforts after over-expanding during the pandemic boom.

As product leaders, navigating these cycles is part of our role. Lean phases require a different approach—one where every decision must be strategic, and resources need to be maximized. Let’s explore the tools product managers can use to successfully navigate lean periods and how these same tools can set you up for long-term success when resources are more plentiful during buffered times.

Prioritization: Making Tough Choices for Impact

One of the most critical skills during lean times is the ability to prioritize effectively. When resources are stretched thin, product managers are often faced with competing initiatives, all of which seem important. But as I always remind my team: "When everything is a priority, nothing is." It’s essential to make tough choices about what will move the needle and focus on those areas.

This concept of disciplined focus aligns well with the principles outlined in Greg McKeown's book, "Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less." McKeown emphasizes the importance of identifying what truly matters and having the courage to say no to distractions, an invaluable mindset during lean periods when resources are scarce. If you’re looking to dive deeper into this mindset, I highly recommend reading his book.

Take Amazon during the 2008 financial crisis, for example. At a time when many companies were scaling back, Amazon doubled down on AWS (Amazon Web Services), prioritizing its long-term potential even as other business areas were reduced. This strategic focus on a high-impact initiative positioned Amazon to not only survive the downturn but emerge stronger.

Prioritization frameworks like MoSCoW, RICE, and the Kano Model can help guide these decisions. Whether you’re weighing customer impact, effort, or market demand, these frameworks ensure that product teams focus on the highest-value work.

Tip: Encourage your team to evaluate every task and initiative through the lens of impact and urgency, even when resources aren’t constrained. Building this muscle during buffered times makes it easier to pivot quickly when lean periods come.

Embrace Cross-functional Collaboration

During lean times, silos can be detrimental to progress. To stretch your resources, product teams need to collaborate closely with other departments, from sales to marketing to customer support. Cross-functional collaboration amplifies the impact of every initiative and ensures alignment across the organization.

Slack is an excellent example of how cross-functional collaboration can lead to success. Early on, Slack aligned its product team closely with customer support to gather insights on user pain points and feature requests. This collaboration helped the company avoid wasting resources on non-essential features, focusing instead on what mattered most to users. Even as Slack grew, these early habits ensured that the product team was always working on high-impact initiatives.

By establishing strong cross-functional relationships during buffered times, you create a foundation for lean times when resources are tighter. These relationships allow teams to align more easily, share insights, and make informed decisions without the friction that often accompanies siloed organizations.

Tip: Use lean phases to break down silos. Host regular meetings with other departments to share updates, align on goals, and explore opportunities for mutual support. Cross-functional collaboration can stretch resources further by pooling knowledge and expertise.

Data-Driven Decision-Making

In lean times, gut instincts alone won’t cut it. You need data to back up your decisions, ensuring that limited resources are going toward initiatives with the highest likelihood of success. Whether it’s customer feedback, product usage metrics, or market trends, leveraging data can help pinpoint where to focus efforts.

Netflix has long relied on data to guide its decision-making. By tracking user preferences and viewing habits, Netflix makes informed decisions about which types of shows and movies to fund, even during challenging market conditions. This data-driven approach allows Netflix to allocate resources more effectively, ensuring that it invests in content that resonates with its audience while avoiding unnecessary spending.

By investing in data tools and infrastructure during buffered times, you set your team up for success in lean periods. Having the right data available at all times allows you to make quick, informed decisions when resources are tight.

Tip: Build a culture of data-driven decision-making. Regularly review customer data, product performance, and market insights to guide your team's focus, ensuring you stay aligned with the highest-impact initiatives.

Leverage Automation Where Possible

Automation can be a product team’s secret weapon during lean phases. By automating repetitive tasks, you free up valuable time and resources that can be better spent on strategic initiatives. For example, automating parts of your testing or deployment pipeline can help your team maintain momentum without needing additional headcount.

Shopify’s early investment in automation paid off when the company faced leaner times. By automating its customer onboarding process and portions of customer support, Shopify could scale without needing to hire aggressively. When lean periods arrived, the company’s automation efforts allowed them to maintain efficiency and continue serving customers effectively, despite resource constraints.

Buffered times are the perfect opportunity to invest in automation. Identifying areas of your workflow that can be streamlined during good times will make the transition into lean periods less disruptive.

Tip: Identify tasks consuming your team’s time and explore automation tools to handle those processes. Streamlining these areas ensures that your team can focus on more impactful work during lean periods. This includes leveraging other efficiency tools such as generative AI in doing more with less, something I wrote about in another article so check that out if you want to learn more.

Ruthless Backlog Management

A bloated backlog can be a serious drain on your team’s focus, especially when running lean. During lean times, it’s crucial to be ruthless about backlog management. Every feature request, task, or idea that doesn’t contribute to the core mission should be deprioritized or cut.

Basecamp, a company known for its simplicity, is famous for its disciplined approach to backlog management. By intentionally keeping its product lean, Basecamp ensures that only high-priority features make it into development. This laser focus on what matters most allows the team to remain nimble and avoid distractions, even during lean times.

Building a habit of regular backlog reviews during buffered times ensures that when lean periods come, the team can quickly identify non-essential tasks and maintain focus.

Tip: Schedule regular backlog review sessions. Trim the list of tasks to ensure that only the highest-priority items remain. This discipline keeps the team focused and ready to adapt when resources tighten.

Use Lean Times to Build Long-Term Strength

The strategies we use in lean times aren’t just for survival; they’re tools to help us thrive when resources are more abundant. By honing these skills—prioritization, collaboration, automation, and data-driven decision-making—you’re not only maximizing your team’s impact during resource-constrained periods, but you’re also preparing them to be even more effective when times are buffered.

Amazon’s focus on AWS during the 2008 financial crisis, Slack’s cross-team collaboration, and Netflix’s reliance on data are all examples of how lean times can serve as opportunities for long-term strength. These companies didn’t just weather tough periods—they used them as steppingstones for future growth.

By building a culture of focus and collaboration during lean times, you can extend the periods when the company is running "buffered." When the business environment improves, these practices will allow you to ramp up faster, seize opportunities more quickly, and stay focused on delivering real value.

Conclusion: Thriving in Lean and Buffered Times

Lean times are tough, but they don’t have to slow you down. By leveraging the right tools—whether it’s smart prioritization, cross-functional collaboration, data-driven decisions, or automation—you can keep your product team focused on delivering value, even when resources are limited.

More importantly, the habits you build during lean periods will help your team excel when the company is thriving or even more importantly, minimize the time you spend cutting and maximizing the time spent adding to your bottom-line. By staying disciplined and focused, you not only survive lean times but lay the groundwork for even greater success when resources are plentiful.