Summary
Product teams, including those I work with, struggle to overcome the grinding momentum of product delivery timelines to make room for adequate discovery, learning, and application through research. The game of product development becomes fiercer when it's not the first time, but the fourth team assembled to tackle a complex product space. In well-trod territory, strong opinions may abound, and talking past each other and rehashing approaches is rampant. Challenges that face researchers as partners in product development include establishing a sense of shared team vision, separating facts from fiction, and moving the team past hang-ups to establish a research strategy and product direction. This case introduces the idea of "grinding momentum" and outlines a stakeholder engagement process known as a FOG session that helps all team members across functional expertise areas claim voice, hear others, and share in collective aha moments that define next steps. Using a mixed-methods approach, a process is outlined to frameshift the value of existing knowledge spanning many departments within an organization, bring together distinct expertise vocabularies and analyses, and propel product partners to identify true knowledge gaps.
Key Insights
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Organizations mature from relying on intuitive product management to incorporating data telemetry and then research for analytical insights.
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Decision-making tensions arise when research is seen as too slow or overly analytical compared to intuitive business pressures.
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System 1 (intuitive) thinking is fast and automatic but prone to bias without regularity, practice, and feedback.
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System 2 (analytical) thinking is slower and effortful but improves decisions when time and information allow.
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Grinding momentum drives teams to push decisions rapidly without shared foundational knowledge, risking misalignment.
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The FOG method uses facilitation to explicitly separate facts supported by evidence from opinions and guesses.
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Facilitated sessions encouraging diverse team members to submit questions help reveal collective knowledge gaps.
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Research reshaped as a shared knowledge creation process rather than an authority fosters better cross-functional alignment.
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Handling contested facts involves anonymizing contributions and providing multiple avenues for team expression.
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Researchers must advocate for evidence quality and escalate leadership conversations when teams rely on bad or unsupported data.
Notable Quotes
"Slowing down with research can help us move faster overall."
"The definition of intuition is knowing without knowing how you know, I just know it."
"Expert intuition can be wrong or right, especially under uncertain contexts without regular practice and feedback."
"Research is both analytical and intuitive but often perceived only as intuitive, which risks it being dismissed."
"Grinding momentum is a shared mental model that drives forward decision-making due to pressure and timelines."
"The fog method helps separate facts from assumptions to break unproductive decision loops."
"Research becomes a partner in knowledge creation and shared discovery rather than an arbiter of truth."
"In the fog sessions, facts must have evidence-backed sources, opinions are beliefs without evidence, and guesses are forward-looking considerations."
"If something is seen as a fact but lacks solid evidence, it’s our responsibility as researchers to highlight that gap."
"When teams rely on bad data reports repeatedly, it’s necessary to analyze and escalate to leadership to address underlying issues."
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