Effective Written Communication for Product Managers
How to make sure you are getting responses to your emails and Slack messages.
A typical day in the life of a Product Manager involves a good amount of communication. This ranges from brainstorming ideas to providing feedback, following up on tasks, sharing progress updates, and more. Communicating effectively continues to be one of the core competencies for Product Managers.
With the rise of remote working, written communication has become all the more important. The goal is to successfully convey your points as well as prompt feedback or action without overwhelming your calendar with meetings that are costly in terms of resources and time.
At Product People, we rely heavily on written communication, both internally within our team and externally with our clients. In this article, we will share some of our tips, tricks and tools that we use to communicate effectively and efficiently.
Choose The Right Channel
Choosing the right medium is a critical part of communicating effectively. Nowadays, the most common options found across organizations are:
- Messaging platforms (e.g. Slack, MS Teams, Google Chat etc.)
- Meetings (Online or in-person)
Choosing the right channel is the first step to communicating successfully. While it is also important to consider the context of your organization (we hear there are still some email-only orgs), for most cases, it’s not a very difficult decision if you consider the right factors.
The decision tree below helps visualize our thought process when it comes to choosing the most suitable channel based on the nature, complexity, and urgency of your message and the expected conversation around it.
State the Purpose
Understanding your purpose and stating it clearly for your reader makes both of your lives easier.
Are you simply passing along the information to your reader, or are you looking for them to act on your information? In the former case, make sure to indicate that your message is ‘For Your Information (FYI)’. In the latter, if you are expecting your reader to act, clearly define the ‘Call To Action (CTA)’ preferably at the end of your message.
Providing one topic and one CTA per piece of communication makes it easier to discuss the topic more effectively. While it is highly recommended to keep one CTA in one piece of communication, if you have to mention more than one, then make sure to use a numbered list and not bullet points. Bullets make it difficult for your reader to refer back to your points in their response. If your list is numbered, it is easy for them to use that number as a unique identifier while providing you feedback.
If you are communicating on your messaging platform, e.g. Slack/Teams/Google Chat, limit your message to one topic and one CTA and prepare another message if you have more than one topic.
In email, include the purpose in the subject line and tailor the format of the content accordingly. If your email contains the minutes of a meeting, then you may send them out in one email while clearly defining a numbered list of action items.
Stay Concise
It is important to remain concise and on topic to communicate effectively. Avoid unnecessary fluff. Keep your sentences simple and structured. Use simple language without clichés, jargon, or big ‘buzz’ words that blur the meaning.
While it is recommended to stay concise, it is also key that you provide the necessary context and adapt your language to the situation. In certain scenarios, for example, while providing feedback, direct language may not necessarily be the most effective approach. It would be useful to be polite and empathetic to not damage your relationship with your audience.
Greetings and Signatures
This is fundamental writing etiquette. A PM should know when to be formal and when to skip formalities and go straight to the point.
On quick and informal channels (i.e., messaging platforms like Slack), a greeting and signature are not necessary, therefore avoid writing ‘Hello’, ‘Hope you had a great weekend’, or signing your message with your name. In some cases, the greeting rule could be an exception, for example on announcement channels where posts are relatively rare.
In an email, it is highly recommended to put together a greeting to ensure a polite start as well as a signature towards the end.
In conclusion, Product Managers are expected to exercise influence without authority, and to do that successfully, excellent written communication skills are key. We hope these tips will help you master the basics of written communication and allow you to reflect on your present day practices, making them more effective and thoughtful.
