Blog posts & Resources

Chaotic Work Environments: How to make sense (and progress) in the midst of chaos at work

Originally published in the Product Marketing Therapy newsletter.

As a product marketer who’s experienced the full spectrum of chaos in a workplace - from being the tenth employee at a tiny EdTech startup to joining a thriving SaaS organization working on emerging products, I’ve gained some key insights.It’s a common misconception that chaos only exists in startups or small businesses. Whilst it typically crops up more frequently in fast-paced environments, it can happen in any type of organization, so it’s best to learn how to handle it.Along the way, I’ve found that chaos can be a powerful drive for professional growth, provided you channel it in a way that benefits you.

How do chaotic workplaces manifest?

Chaos manifests in the stress-inducing, typically negative emotions you associate with work - such as unending urgency, never feeling on top of your workload, and feeling vague about direction or the “why” of work. Essentially, you feel like you’re going 120%, but you don’t necessarily know or understand what you’re working towards.Let’s dig into some of the root causes of chaos in the workplace.

What’s the impact of a chaotic workplace on your psyche?

Now that you can recognize the reasons for chaos in a workplace, how does this impact your role as a product marketer?

A chaotic workplace can be a curse… and a blessing

Despite all the above points seeming doom and gloom, remember that chaos can be a channel for positivity in your career - it’s all in how you frame it. Here are some ways chaos can aid you as a product marketer.Developing a growth mindset. I encourage all product marketers to cultivate this mindset, no matter their career stage. A growth mindset is about not being comfortable - challenging yourself to persist, adapt, and learn. Viewing chaos as a way to seek new opportunities can propel you forward.Being flexible and adaptable. This is a crucial skill for any product marketer to hone. Quickly responding and adapting to market changes can help build your muscle in pivoting positioning and messaging, and broaden your knowledge of new markets and segments.Seeking innovation. Dealing with chaos often leads to creative problem-solving, which can help push you to think differently and explore new processes and methods - challenging the status quo.

How to handle chaos early in your product marketing career

As someone with a non-linear career path, I landed in product marketing later on rather than fresh out of an internship or college. Here are my top tips from early experiences in handling chaotic environments.1. Handle your work and time first. This is a challenge for most junior product marketers. As someone with a reasonably high work capacity, I often overestimate what I can deliver and don’t factor in enough time for contingency. Moreover, chaos can make it seem like everything is essential, which simply isn’t the case.Personal example: As a naturally organized person, I love ticking off my to-do list. Yet this can be a way to self-validate and to feel “productive”, rather than work on what’s important. Something that helped me prioritize early on and avoid discord was using the Eisenhower matrix to help me understand what work was important and what was more of a distraction. I’m also an advocate of the “eat the frog” method, which simply means you choose your most important task for your day and do it first.2. Seize any opportunity you can. I tell this to everyone I know who is interested in product marketing. You will never be given anything - you have to take it. Chaos can often “hand” you these opportunities.Personal example: I was a generalist marketing manager at Kahoot, an EdTech startup with no existing product marketing function, for a few years. When I learned the business was looking to develop a new product for businesses rather than consumers, I offered to support the VP of Product with how they took this to market. This started with small projects like building a customer feedback loop and helping with market research surveys. It grew to partnering closely with them on messaging and agreeing on all launch assets. Before I knew it, I was in product marketing!3. Seek out guidance and mentorship. Asking for help isn’t a weakness. It can be tempting to pretend you’re on top of it all, but chaos will burn you out if your pride prevents you from getting support.Personal example: In all my roles, I’ve actively sought mentorship from senior leaders. This doesn’t have to be a formal program - you can ask it when appropriate in a one-to-one, for example. Something I’ve done a lot is ask the mentor how they would approach a certain situation - such as a stressful product launch, dealing with executive changes, or how to handle conflicting feedback.

How to handle chaos as a senior product marketer or leader

Once you’re more established in your career, handling chaos should be familiar and easier to navigate unless your product marketing background is in a large enterprise company or a highly established industry. Here’s where some different advice comes into play.A caveat - while I’ve managed a few people and small teams in the past, I’m not currently a people manager. So, I’m approaching this from a primarily individual contributor perspective.1. Never stop self-advocating for you - and your team. Once you have a track record, thinking it will speak for itself can be tempting. Never stop documenting and sharing wins to aid with reflection, no matter how turbulent things might be.Personal example: In every role I’ve been in, no matter how busy I am, I document my wins, as well as positive feedback from peers and leaders. It’s hard to carve out time to reflect, so I typically do this once a quarter. Having a paper trail of successes not only helps you advocate for yourself but also can help you reflect on the bigger picture when you’re caught up in daily chaos.2. Build strategic alliances. In addition to your direct stakeholders in product, marketing, and sales, seek out other alliances, so you can get buy-in for new processes and approaches to reduce chaotic ways of working.Personal example: While working on AI features at Atlassian, I partnered with various cross-functional leaders to identify and implement more strategic and efficient ways of working.I also recommend Wes Kao’s newsletter on how to build influence, in particular her essays on how to use language strategically.3. Lead by example with your team, peers, and reports. Even if you’re not a people manager, being an inspiring and stable force in the face of chaos is important.Personal example: In multiple roles and stages in my career, I’ve offered myself as a mentor to several junior product marketers. You can hold regular one-on-one meetings to offer career advice and feedback. Also, be sure to provide feedback “in the moment”, and privately, where appropriate, to juniors on your team. Make sure they are open to receiving feedback first.By leading by example and maintaining a positive outlook, product marketers can turn chaos into opportunities for innovation and growth. Finally, make this your mantra - it’s not personal. It never is. When you feel the chaos getting to you, don’t let it make you second-guess your own capabilities.

How I became a children’s author in my spare time... and how you can too

Like so many others, I live on a different continent to the one I grew up on. This means I am miles away from many of my friends, and only get to see them a few precious times a year. As many of my friends and relatives had children over time, it’s hard to feel connected to their lives, as I rarely get to see them.This got me thinking - how could I ensure these kids (ranging in age from 1 to 6) develop a connection to their “Aunty” Daniella, even though she’s not physically present all that much?

From product marketing to children’s writing

A solution sparked once as Canva announced they had launched some new story book templates. The templates are so charming and diverse, I fell in love with them immediately.Each template has its own theme, sample pages with dummy text, and handily, a couple of “resource” pages at the start featuring scenery and character elements you can easily use.

Along with the story book templates, Canva also recently launched a new “character builder” app - a simple tool where you can choose simple body parts, hairstyles, and faces with different expressions to build your own custom character. This was ideal to give each child their own cute, illustrated avatar.Thus the idea formed. I would write a unique story for each child, and bring them to life via Canva’s templates and graphic design editor! I would then print each story as a hardcover “photo book” - all via Canva - therefore providing a completely unique and special gift they could cherish for a long time.It seemed totally serendipitous - I have always loved writing stories since a young age, but my lack of skill in design and illustration held me back from taking them any further.So for two months, I embarked on redirecting my creativity into a whole new avenue in my evenings and weekends.As product marketer, it also gave me the added bonus of being able to “dog food” the Canva experience for this specific purpose - from conception, to creation, to production!

Building unique stories and characters

I quickly became enthralled by the potential in children’s writing. Each of my stories has its own theme, and each child is the protagonist. However the situations, learnings, and protagonists’ skillsets differ.

From being an astronaut exploring the Solar System, diving under the sea, encountering animals in the Amazon rainforest, and even being a little stegosaurus in the Jurassic period.Practically, I brainstormed some basic story settings, then started writing the stories first in Notion. I used dividers to split out where I thought each page break would be. I looked up guidelines on how long to make a story for each age group, the range of vocabulary to use, and themes to focus on - such as friendship, overcoming adversity, understanding diversity, and fostering a curious mindset.This also proved to surface interesting insights. For example, I discovered that children around the age of four or five start to really become aware of their peers and want to read stories with protagonists who are several years older than them - i.e. someone they can look up to.The most exciting challenge was writing a full story for my cousin’s 6 year old girl. I wanted to sufficiently challenge her with new words but not overwhelm her, as well as build a mini “hero’s journey” narrative. This story definitely took the longest, but was incredibly rewarding to finish.I then pasted the text into a Canva template, built a character and dragged in elements to illustrate each page.

Using Canva Print to bring my stories to life

After painstakingly building the stories in the Canva editor and after 12,000 rounds of proofreading, I was ready to print!Mercifully, Canva’s entire Print experience is seamless and reassuring. It took me all of five minutes to feel confident my books were going to look great. I chose the glossy, hardcover option with free delivery. I then received lots of email updates on the status of my order.

Once the books arrived in the mail - far quicker than I was expecting! - I had butterflies, and couldn’t wait to see them. Honestly, I was blown away by them. Each book looked fantastic and professional, with striking colors and a high quality finish.

Interested in writing children’s stories? Here are my top 4 tips for newbies

1. Do your research firstAs with anything else, know your audience. Word count, vocabulary, and appropriate themes all vary wildly depending on a child’s age.2. Write, then editIf you’re new to this, you will write far too much, and far too maturely for a child to understand at first. I found it easiest to put my ideas on the page, then meticulously edit to make the stories more concise, and easier to follow. To aid this, I imagined the story being read out loud by the kids’ parents.3. Get Canva ProI know, I know - I work for Canva so of course I’m going to say this! But objectively, the Pro offering provides so much value for such a low price. It’s just a no brainer. With Canva Pro you unlock so many more premium elements, which made building my stories much easier.4. Stay patientAs I mentioned earlier, it took me two months of work to create six unique story books. Don’t expect creativity to flow endlessly - it takes time! I often found myself too exhausted or uninspired on certain days to write, so I often had to take a step back. It was worth it in the end to stay determined.