Product for Product Management

EP 125 - The Book "Managing Priorities" with Harry Max

Feb 19, 2025

47:00

Prioritization is one of the cornerstone activities that we all do as product people. Some are done mindfully, with a process in place, and some are done on an on-going basis, without even thinking of it. In many cases, we struggle to find the right way to prioritize, especially when there are many factors involved, and many team members and stakeholders with conflicting needs.

In the episode, we met with Harry Max, a product leader, Managing Partner at Peak Priorities LLC, COO at productOps, and author of “Managing Priorities: How to Create Better Plans and Make Smarter Decisions”. With his extensive experience building products, and following his TEDx and South by Southwest talks, Harry found himself diving into many discussions about prioritization. This later on launched his journey to write the book.
In Managing Priorities, Harry gathered many priority related tools, but first started it with the DEGAP framework, which helps put everyone in the mindset of the need for prioritization.
Join Matt and Moshe as we chat with Harry and learn:

What DEGAP is: slowing down the process and planning how to prioritize properly. The framework includes 5 steps - Decide, Engage, Gather, Arrange and Prioritize
Different levels of prioritizations we need to make in life
The importance of understanding others’ priorities; better engagement to be part of the process, be heard, and be taken into considerations
Prioritization is not the end result, just an input to our decisions and eventually, the actions to take
Eisenhower Matrix - what is it, how different people might use it differently, and how in some cases it can help us in our prioritization process
The important of “cost of delay”, and how to use it in our prioritization discussions
Precision vs accuracy - the importance of words and understanding what they mean to each of us
Max Priorities Pyramid - what is it, who is it useful for and where can people find it (see link to the Miro template below)
Which method would he suggest to our listeners today
Where should people start to set up their prioritization method
And much more!

You can connect with Harry at:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harrymax/
email: harry@harrymax.com
Website: Harrymax.com
Max Priorities Pyramid Miro board: https://miro.com/miroverse/the-max-priorities-pyramid-template

You can find the podcast’s page, and connect with Matt and Moshe on Linkedin:

Product for Product Podcast - linkedin.com/company/product-for-product-podcast
Matt Green - linkedin.com/in/mattgreenanalytics/
Moshe Mikanovsky - linkedin.com/in/mikanovsky/

Note: any views mentioned in the podcast are the sole views of our hosts and guests, and do not represent the products mentioned in any way.

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