Quick Read: Circle of Competence
Circle of Competence is a great mental model that can help us solve problems quickly.
In the context of Product Management, you can use this mental model and benefit from quick and effective solutions.
Not all problems are given to you with sufficient time to think. Especially when you are in brainstorming sessions or strategy meetings, you need to come up with effective solutions, quickly.
For such scenarios, you can use Circle of Competence, tweaked slightly by yours truly.
Here’s how:
Any problem you see will almost always be connected to your areas of expertise.
This means that the skills you have can be used to understand this problem by say 30%.
For the rest of the problem, the other 70%, that’s where we need to put additional work and figure out what to interpret and solve for.
If you refer to my GIF above, the problem gets split into two parts:
30% → falls in your circle of “what you know”
70% → falls in your circle of “what you may or may not know”
This splitting helps you realise:
- The 30% can be solved by capitalising on your existing knowledge and past experiences
- The 70% will need more time and effort
It also ensures the following:
- You don't make vague assumptions to come up with a mediocre or a bad solution to the overall problem
- You don’t waste time building trust or assuring your stakeholders, that the solution you have, is a good one
Thus your Circle of Competence ensures:
- Improved quality of your solutions
- A whole lot of time, saved by you while you come up with a solution, pitch it, get buy-ins, build and launch it
And that’s a lot of time saved and returns on efforts maximised!
Consequently, frequent use of this mental model has helped me:
- Tackle multiple projects easily
- Plan my product roadmaps quickly
- Get better sleep!
If Circle of Competence fascinates you, do give it a try to solve your most day-to-day problems.
Further Read:
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