Navigating Uncertainty: How This Product Manager Made a Bold Decision with Limited Data During a Crisis
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INTERVIEWER
I'm gonna shift to the next question. Sure. And for this one, I want you to talk to me about. Uh, a product, uh, decision. For which that you were responsible for, for which there wasn't enough. Um, data or benchmarks in order for you to make what you felt like was, you know, kind of a, a well-informed decision, right? You still had to make a decision. So in the absence of sufficient data, what, what guided your choice and how did you make the call?
CANDIDATE
Hm, can I take a second to think, think. Cool. So, and I just want to pare it back just so I get it, not uh, I had to make a decision, but I felt like I didn't necessarily have. Enough data to make maybe the best, OK. Let's think here. Um, but I'm not responsible for that decision, so I don't necessarily want to go to with that one. I think what I'll go with in the interest of time is. I was on this product called. It was a new product, um. And what we were trying to do was build a business case and justify essentially to a business unit why, why they should take on the cost of this build. So, we'll start with more, a little bit more on what it is. Um, online notarization would completely take the go the specific notary in person out of the equation. You could do it all digitally. Um, it was during the pandemic. It was a time when All Schwab Schwab branches were closed and furthermore, things were becoming more and more so we saw, we saw, uh, an opportunity to be innovative, uh, possibly on behalf of the client. Um. Where, where I don't think we had the data around online notarization was. Just how, how many people would really adopt it to offset the cost, and when I think back as to why maybe folks didn't buy, especially people did not decide to fund ultimately, um. It's because we're just pushing forward, hey, we should build this now, we should build it now, we should build this now, but not with a compelling case of like, hey, the adoption rate and cost and it will be these sorts of things and also, you know, here is how long it's gonna take us to build. This is how it's gonna differentiate us as a firm. I feel like we're really lacking data, um. And how we would justify the cost ultimately, um, because we didn't have any tests or anything around adoption rate. It was that. There's a lot of questions around whether or not it would really be the thing to build right now.
INTERVIEWER
Um, OK, but given that it was the front end of COVID, right, and, and it was kind of, you know, we did, obviously there's a lot of stuff that just did not, we didn't know what, we didn't know. Um, but Were there Yeah, I guess that's the way to ask it. Were there data points in the marketplace that suggested this was a viable path, or were you guys pioneering and cutting a new path?
CANDIDATE
Yeah, no, there that's, that's a really good point. There were mature vendors, right? Um, so a lot of what we had to influence was How can we Maybe convince. Schwab, this, this is an acceptable risk. It's being done out there. It's something that's worth paying for and something that can serve clients, um. And that that's, I think we kinda, in a lot of ways fell short. I also feel like We had a business case in that we knew we could save X amount of money with straight process automation, so meaning like people would have every single paper had to be notarized and processed when submitted to an office. There was gonna be a $1 cost savings there, pretty much like, no matter where you cut it in people, um, no longer having to process those sorts of things, um. But we, we could not. Really influence broad enough for stakeholders that, hey, you should take this on and build it. And I think the one thing that be able to put us over the edge is if we actually did an MVP quickly. And just tested to see the kind of volumes we would get. Cause then I would have more numbers to say, hey, we got 10% adoption, we're not marketing at all on this single form that's the highest volume, it's gonna pay for itself, um. And I do think It's bad too with the, with the TDA and Schwab conversion. Um, that's where resources were going, we probably should have recognized that sooner, just pivoted earlier.
INTERVIEWER
But so just as someone who has done notarizations in the past and just what a pain it is to find a person who can do it, blah blah, right, I recognize that it's a, it's a process that can draw a lot of anxiety from customers who are trying to purchase a home or do any number of things where you need a notary. Um, But I guess I'm confused here because the way you're walking me through this, you're saying you didn't have enough data. There were mature vendors in the marketplace, which says to me, that's, that's a piece of data, right? But as a company, Surely you have internal offices and, and uh a field office, I don't know what the right word is, I'm gonna say field office, field office owners who you could reach out to and say, help me understand how many notarizations need to happen within your four walls. In a given week and then from that extrapolating out or even like doing a survey of customers because you know, I would imagine they're tracking what kinds of tracking detections require notaries and you could do a survey of the customers. So there's, there's any number of ways you could have kind of gathered data, but what you're telling me is, or what you've said multiple times in this answer is that you didn't have any data and there was no way to get data. But I just kind of just rattled off two very quick ones based on what you've just what you've said. So I don't understand. I, I want you to support the statement that you didn't have enough data.
CANDIDATE
Yeah, and, and that makes a lot of sense cause all the things you said are true, and I think the angle where I feel I, I didn't know how much is that despite having All of those things that you described without going through them like tit for tat, I still couldn't convince. Uh, anyone to actually build it. Um, so that's why I kind of like went forward, I was like, oh, how I've actually done it, like hindsight 2020 how could I have convinced folks, and despite knowing straight the amount of power of attorney forms that we processed every year, um. I felt like there's just, I didn't have enough, so I probably the the best way to put it is that I have enough to get support, um. You know, my answer, right? So that's probably where like a lot of the friction comes in and it's the first time I really told this story from the story of failure and it's more that I had of data, but I didn't have enough to Convince anybody to build it in the run. If that helps.
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