3 Operational Efficiency Lessons From A Product Leader

Efficiency is a core focus of many businesses. While the term is often associated with specific activities, it can also be applied company-wide. Operational efficiency can improve employee output, streamline growth, and create superior customer experiences.

To tap into this comprehensive advantage as a company, you must bring the right components together. Nupur Jain is a product manager on the Google Gemini team with over 15 years of experience leading product development and innovative projects. Her experience optimizing workflows, building cross-functional teams, and driving sustainable growth has created a track record of top-tier products and solutions across the technology sector.

Recently, Jain shared some of her insider knowledge. She offeres valuable insights— all of which start with unlocking greater operational efficiency across an enterprise.

1. Engage in Structured Problem-Solving

Creativity and innovation may be top skills in 2024—but they cannot exist without structure. Unbridled brainstorming is a great example of this. Gordon Torr, Global Creative Director of JWT, famously said of the popular ideation technique, “[Brainstorming] didn’t work, it never had worked, it never will work, and there was proof that it couldn’t work way back in 1965. If, during all this time, any ideas found their way out of brainstorming sessions and were implemented successfully to the great delight of all, it was in spite of the technique, not because of it.”

When you create without structure, it’s challenging (if not impossible) to identify failure, let alone manage success. Jain provided her own example of how a lack of structure can hamstring growth. She explained, “In one previous experience, constant product roadmap changes due to stakeholder disagreements and a lack of strategic clarity led to delays, increased costs, and a product misaligned with customer expectations.”

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Jain and her team established not just better strategy and priorities but clear processes. This gave everyone on the project a better understanding of what they were working toward. “I’ve seen firsthand,” she concluded, “that empowering teams through clarity of purpose and transparent communication ensures quality is maintained while morale remains high, even as we rapidly scale our product offerings.”

If you want greater operational efficiency, you must create constraints and parameters for problem-solving. This structured approach makes it possible for everyone to maintain momentum as they grow a brand in the same direction.

2. Data-Driven Decision-Making

Data is the new normal. Every year, businesses become more dependent on data, not less. Jain emphasizes the need to track the right data, which starts by finding the right metrics.

“The most crucial KPIs for operational efficiency,” Jain explains, “often tie directly to business impact and user value. These include revenue growth, user engagement metrics, time-to-market for new features, and resource utilization efficiency.”

She adds that during the product development stage, things like cycle time, bug resolution, and resource utilization are common metrics. These and others like them provide insights into the flow of ongoing work. They create a cadence and expectation that make it easier to predict issues and make more informed decisions. They even show you where and how to invest in forward-thinking technologies that will be most effective.

Tracking the right data, particularly metrics tied to business impact and user value, is essential for operational efficiency. Key metrics like revenue growth, user engagement, time-to-market, and resource utilization help predict issues and guide strategic decisions, especially during product development.

3. Collaboration

Jain refers to healthy, cross-functional collaboration as “the cornerstone of operational efficiency.”

She points out that it brings together diverse perspectives and overlapping expertise. This makes it easier to address existing and potential bottlenecks while leveraging shared resources in fast-paced environments, such as in a growing company.

Jain suggests weekly cross-functional reviews to improve collaboration and sharpen alignment across different groups, such as design leaders, engineers, and product specialists. When she worked at YouTube, she integrated cross-collaboration through regular team meetings and the inter-team sharing of documents. She also points to the power of collective goal setting as a way to keep everyone aligned and working together.

Review your current collaborative efforts. Where is there consistency? Invest in face-to-face-time, shared goals, and other collaborative-focused initiatives to improve efficiency on a company-wide level.

Investing in Efficiency for Sustainable Growth

Structured problem-solving, collaboration, and data-driven decision-making are critical for efficient growth-oriented operational activity. These strategies are essential to enhancing your operational processes and reaching your growth goals.

Start by thoroughly analyzing your current operational activity. Where do you need more structure? Where do you lack communication or data? Identify the problems and then implement these tips to reveal your company's full potential through a hyper-efficient operation.